By JENNIFER CLANCY
Following the 2024 election, liberals made a move to leave the X platform citing reasons such as ‘I can no longer support Elon Musk’ or ‘it’s a Nazi wasteland’ or ‘I can’t participate in a cesspool of misinformation and mistruth’ or ‘Musk has rigged the platform’s algorithm against journalists and external sources of information so there’s no point’ — all real comments and arguments I’ve heard from clients, brands, friends, and even pundits on podcasts and in newsletters that don’t otherwise typically comment on politics or media trends in such a way.
Politico pinpoints the conundrum more succinctly than most: “Should left-leaning people and Democratic voters wall MAGA off as much as possible and hope that eventually it suffocates? Or try even harder to meet those voters where they are, or at least understand them?”
It’s hard to get a firm number on how many users might have left (X declined to confirm but cited record high platform use in the days and hours leading up to conclusive election results). As reported by third-party aggregators including SimilarWeb and SemRush, in the month following the election, platform traffic dipped about 2.2% but already appears to be bounding back.
In other words, if you left X as a reaction to 2024 election outcomes, that decision is akin to spending half your life savings on a parka because one day dropped under 80 at your equatorial home. It’s a shame to see this kind of mercurial decision-making, especially by companies. One down day on Wall Street doesn’t make you dump your entire portfolio, right?
While some brands might be making strategic communications decisions based on whims, emotional reactions, or to take a stand for their personal politics, what they fail to consider is their audience. Maybe even less apropos of their community (realized), a hefty consequence to being present and engaged with everyone that isn’t already singing their song, is the cost to the importance of their mission and the message.
If you’re working for inclusion, representation, diversity, ethical behavior or standards of conduct; or if your goal is equality, unity, or hope, don’t the very people you are abandoning on X — particularly these younger and highly impressionable minds that largely comprise the X demographic — need you, your brand, the ideas you believe in more than anyone else? What’s the point in posting if only for those who already agree with you?
Before I dive into the issue of to-X-or-not-to-X, I want to be completely transparent about my stance. As a human, I value kindness, honesty, and productive teamwork and collaboration. I’ve dedicated my career to teaching, writing, and promoting the skills needed to find, assess, create and action credible, trusted information. These are my core operating principles in my personal relationships, in my work, and how I engage online.
In business, no matter your industry, there is nothing more important than keeping your eye on the ball: Losing sight of your purpose and mission is a critical failure in my book. It’s easy to let distractions like politics, disagreements about news coverage, or personal preferences eclipse your lens or focus. But the decisions you make as a business or as a person in the public sphere become bigger than you the minute you hit post or decide to delete your account.
Is your brand’s intention to stop using the platform where a significant percentage of men and users ages 20–40, seek news and information? Are these demographics not relevant or of value to your brand strategy? What exactly are you communicating to them or reinforcing in their perceptions by leaving X? Is your intention or reasoning for doing so clear? Do these folks not need you or your message? Are they not part of your community or worth bringing into the fold? If you left X, the move instantly labeled you as a liberal. Is that damaging or even relevant to who you are as an organization or what you hope to accomplish?
Some hard facts to think about before you decide to jettison X as a forum for your ideas or brand enhancement:
- According to SimilarWeb, traffic on X in November of 2024 clocked in at 4.47 billion visits (which was only down 2.2% from the month before the election).
- SemRush reports 611 million monthly unique X users, of which 58% are under the age of 35; 41% of which have a favorable opinion of X (compared to only 26% of this age group that has an unfavorable opinion).
- According to Pew Research, 48% of users access X for news and information; and 57% say that it increases their understanding of issues and current events.
- Pew also found that users who identify as Democrat @mentioned both Donald Trump and Joe Biden at higher percentages than Republican and All-User groups.
- While elonmusk is the largest account by measure of followers, BarackObama is second, and Cristiano, justinbieber, rihanna, katyperry, narendramodi, taylorswift13, realDonaldTrump, and ladygaga fill in the top 10. All remain active on the platform and have continued posting since the election.
X is a huge audience to walk away from. If your principles or viewpoints are so valuable, why then would they only be applicable to certain people? If you don’t agree with the politics of a person, brand or channel, does that justify furthering the divide and retreating into your echo chamber where everyone already agrees with you? If you were on the losing side of an election, is it not counterintuitive to then make a decision to disengage with the very voters you need to turn the tides next time around?
Many have opted to create profiles on alternatives to X including Bluesky and Meta’s Threads. Using other platforms is great, but neither can match the capabilities or audience of X. Brands do not have a way to track impressions, and neither of these channels currently have ad functionality, a primary way for new accounts to gain visibility, grow network, and increase reach. Although Bluesky has not announced any plans for adding ads services, Threads is opening up a pilot program in early 2025 to a closed, internal user group that could be widened more broadly by the end of the year.
The biggest drawback to not having an in-platform ads suite is audience targeting. Brands cannot geofence content to relevant communities or geographies, which is a problem on a platform like Threads where only 16.29% of total traffic is derived from US accounts (the lion’s share comes from Taiwan, Brazil, Japan, and Vietnam representing 39.52% of all traffic as reported by SimilarWeb in December 2024). Understanding who you are reaching stems largely from metrics provided via ad campaigns, so not having that data makes it difficult to understand the impact of your efforts or if you should maintain or adjust your strategy.
Posting on Bluesky or Threads certainly won’t hurt anything, and you might build up a respectable audience over time. But if your strategy is to swap X out for one of these, be sure to calculate everything you’re losing accurately and objectively.
In summation, I’ve never seen a case where deciding to duck-and-run resulted in achieving the very thing deemed worth fighting for. And even though I was surprised and disappointed with the election result, it fired me up that much more to build dialogue, to make meaningful connections with those that see the world differently than me, to show that I am not afraid to continue fighting for what I believe in, regardless of who we send to Washington.
I don’t say this lightly, and I don’t think it will be an easy road. But I do know this for certain: The men, the young people trying to find their footing, the economically disadvantaged, those who feel invisible or unseen, those who believe America is heading in the wrong direction, the workers who are unable to retire, the families struggling to feed their children, the teachers and students who live in fear of violence at school, the folks who feel like they need to protect their religious beliefs, the seniors who deserve comfort and dignity in their last chapters of life, the police officers and veterans who have fought to defend and protect us at home and abroad — are all worth it. And many of them are on X.
Regardless of political views and election cycles, X is a dominant social media player and it’s not going anywhere, at least for now. The real question is whether it is wise to abandon these millions of users and demographic segments from learning about and participating with your company. You should think harder about that.