We’re a social media agency that doesn’t work on one of the world’s most famous social platforms. We’re aware this is a bit like a bakery that’s opted out of flour. People ask about it in almost every discovery call, usually with the careful tone reserved for asking about a visible scar, so here’s the whole answer in one place.
The decision
We stopped working on X after the platform changed in ways we weren’t willing to attach our clients to. The ownership’s direction, the dismantling of content moderation, and the environment that followed created a simple problem: we could no longer tell a client, honestly, that their brand was safe appearing there. And “honestly” is the load-bearing word at this company. It’s on the homepage. It would be awkward.
Some things worth being precise about, because precision is the point:
It’s a values call, not a traffic call. Plenty of brands still get reach there. We’re not claiming the audience vanished. We’re saying reach isn’t the only variable, and the other variables got heavy.
It’s about what we’ll put our name to. Every platform we recommend is an implicit endorsement: your brand will be safe here, the neighbourhood is sound. When we stopped believing that, continuing would have been selling something we didn’t believe. There’s a word for that, and agencies already have enough reputation problems.
It’s not necessarily forever. Platforms change, and they can change back. The stance gets revisited against the same criteria that set it. A permanent grudge would be as unthinking as pretending nothing happened.
What it cost
Honesty means including this section. Saying no cost real things: reach we’d helped build, a channel some prospects expected, and the occasional discovery call that ends politely early when a company wants full-platform coverage. We’ve watched competitors take work we declined. That’s the price tag, and pretending values are free is its own kind of dishonesty.
What it bought
More than we expected, honestly.
It made our values legible. Every company’s website says “integrity.” The word is wallpaper. A visible, costly no is the only version of values that people actually believe, because it’s the only version with a receipt. Clients who chose us since have told us this stance was part of why: not because they cared deeply about X, but because it proved the honesty thing wasn’t copy.
It clarified who we’re for. The businesses we want to work with, passionate, close to something bigger, building for the long term, tend to care where their brand stands. The ones who just want maximum reach at any weather are better served elsewhere, and now both sides find out in minutes instead of months.
It made our advice trustworthy in a specific way. When an agency that demonstrably says no to revenue tells you a platform is right for you, that yes means something. Our recommendations got heavier the day one of them became refusable.
What this means for your business
You don’t have to care about our platform choices. The transferable part is the shape of the decision:
Pick values that can cost you something. A value that never collides with revenue is a decoration. Decide in advance what you’d decline, so you’re not inventing your ethics live, under deadline, in the worst possible week.
Write the reasoning down, not just the rule. Our stance has criteria, which is why it can be revisited without being abandoned. “Never” is brittle. “Not while X, Y, Z” is a position.
Say it in public. A private principle protects your conscience. A public one builds your brand and, more usefully, binds your future self on a tired day. We wrote about this same mechanism with AI in our Honest AI Policy: the published line is worth more than the private intention, every time.
The short version
We gave up a platform to keep a sentence true. Expensive sentence. Still cheaper than the alternative, which was every other sentence becoming negotiable.