Why CIEEM Chose to Leave X/Twitter

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By Sophie Lowe ACIM, Digital Marketing and Communications Coordinator at Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM)

The decision to walk away from a social media platform in which you have thousands of followers and good influence is not to be taken lightly. But when the reputation of the platform becomes questionable, as an organisation you should consider whether continuing to use it poses a risk to your own.

The Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) has been on X, formerly known as Twitter, since 2012. In those twelve years, the Institute has seen rapid growth and built up a respectable 9000 plus followers on X.

But the platform is now vastly different and in November 2024, CIEEM made the decision to stop posting on the platform entirely – no longer able to turn a blind eye to what was happening.

So why did we stop posting on X?

1. Elon Musk, extremism and misinformation

Since Elon Musk acquired X in 2022, the platform has found itself on the receiving end of controversy and negative attention.

seabirds circling in an electric blue sky — Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

In the six months before we made the decision to leave, many organisations and high-profile individuals abandoned X due to the platform failing to moderate misinformation, and extremist and racist content. One of Musk’s many changes to the platform since his acquisition included loosening content moderation rules, enabling controversial figures to post extremist views and make money from it without consequence. The lack of action against misinformation and extremism continues to leave many X users feeling unsafe. And Musk’s outspoken and right-leaning views, for example when he posted on his own account that “civil war is inevitable” after the UK riots in the Summer of 2024 only proved to stoke further tensions.

Musk’s heavy involvement in the most recent US presidential election was also a cause for concern. In November 2024, The Guardian newspaper announced it would stop posting on X, stating that “X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse”. In the lead up to the US election, Musk encouraged his followers to report any “potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities”, which quickly snowballed into misinformation and unverified stories sweeping the platform. We found it troubling that one man held the power to highlight and boost posts from some people, while hiding posts from others.

All of this to say, CIEEM felt like it could no longer turn a blind eye to a platform in stark contrast to our company values of inclusivity, kindness and respect. The direction of the platform concerned us, and we didn’t want to be a part of it – it no longer felt like a place that we should have an active presence on.

2. Functionality and paywalls

It was not just the alarming content that has caused us to question our use of X. Since Musk’s takeover, the functionality and features of the platform have been reduced for free accounts. While as a free account we were once able to access analytics to measure our performance and improve our marketing strategies, this was no longer the case. The marketing team was no longer able to track and monitor data on audience engagement, conversion rates and social media Return on Investment (ROI). A premium account to access analytics and other functionality costs in excess of £100 per annum, which as a small non-profit, is a cost that we could not justify.

Musk believes that charging users a small fee is the only way to prevent the platform from being overrun by bot accounts. If that’s the way that X is headed, then we expect to see a lot more users leaving the platform in the coming months and years. We don’t think it makes sense to stick around on a platform that’s lost our target audience.

3. Analytics

Speaking of data and analytics, we had observed a considerable decline in our engagement and new followers on X in the year before deciding to leave the platform. This spiked periodically around Musk’s takeover, the 2024 summer riots in the UK and the latest US presidential election results. This suggested our audience was becoming so unhappy with the platform itself that they decided to leave it altogether.

In fact, when surveyed, the majority of CIEEM members that responded said that they no longer used X.

Final thoughts

This article has not been written to try to influence you or your organisation to follow in our footsteps and stop posting on X, but to highlight the many reasons why we as an organisation decided to remove ourselves from what we feel has become a negative and controversial space. It was a tricky decision to make but one which we feel was aligned with our values.

Our focus now is to evaluate alternative platforms to X, such as Bluesky or Threads, to identify whether our audiences are active on them and whether we should have a presence on them. Our other option is to decide whether we go down a different route entirely like launching an Instagram account to reach a younger audience or invest more of our time and effort into LinkedIn, our most successful account.

Watch this space…