English [German Version]

So, you really, really want to leave X, but you can’t because there is this one community that exchanges the best baking recipes, discusses the latest news on the political situation in northern Kenya, because it’s where the most sophisticated discourse on data protection issues is conducted or the next action against patriarchy is planned.

I get it. What you are suffering from is called lock-in. For our purposes, it is enough to understand that there are others, who feel the same about you. People can’t leave X because you matter to them.

So it turns out that everyone wants to leave, but no one is leaving. You are unintentionally holding each other hostage to Elon Musk’s benefit. That has a name too: it’s called the “collective action problem”.

You need to understand: you can’t just leave, because you’re a plant. You need to repot yourself.

Here’s how it’s done:

Step 1: What is your community?

Communities on X are loosely connected networkes of people who gather around a topic, rather than a definable group. Try to define them anyway:

Questions you may ask yourself:

• What topics does the community gather around?
• How many people are likely to be part of the community (more like 50 or 1000, or even 10,000?)
• What does the community feel towards staying on X?
• Are some parts of the community already on other services? If so, where are most of them?

Be careful: a large community of more than 10,000 people will be difficult to handle and means a lot of work.

Step 2: Who are the key players in the community?

All communities have visible and less visible members. Create a top 10 of the most important accounts of that community.

The following criteria may play a role here:

• Reach
• Degree of interconnectedness with other community members
• A special status
• Reputation, thoughtleadership or being a rolemodel
• Diversity

Caution: Pay attention to inclusion and diversity. If your top 10 only includes white men, you probably haven’t looked closely enough.

Step 3: Form gangs

Message all 10 accounts and convince them to help you move the community. You will be surprised how many appreciative responses you will get (as I said, almost everyone wants to leave). Some will also decline, sure, but that’s fine.

Important: at this step, you should not come across as moralizing or demanding:

• Not: “The community has to move!”
• Rather: “You are important to me, I value the community. Will you help me moving the community somewhere safe?”

Caution: One friendly request is enough. No elaborate persuasion. You don’t have to convince everyone. Two or three allies are enough for starters, but the more the better.

Step 4: Group chat

Open a private group chat (on X or somewhere else) with everyone who wants to join.

What you should work out together:

• Where is the community moving to?
• By when should the move be complete? (one to two weeks?)

Be careful: don’t specify everything from the outset. Stay open to your colleagues‘ suggestions. Make democratic decisions. You are now a gang.

Step 5: Organize

Goto Step 2: Each of you writes to 10 other community members who are important to you. Recruit whoever wants to join the effort, and let everyone else know: “From then on, we’ll only be there and there, join us!”

• successful news in the chat.
• Share an open document to coordinate and note the old and new handles so that everyone can find each other.

Step 6: Public

Only when you feel the majority of the most important tweeters are on board, you start the public campaign. Post a lot and make it clear that the show will be over soon on X and where to go instead.

Everyone retweets everyone.

Remember: many participants in the community are silent readers, they should get the memo too.

Step 7: Hospitality

Make sure that newcomers find their way around the new service and, above all, that they find each other and that the conversation gets rebooted.

Take care of each other. Leaving hurts.

No, it will never be like Twitter again. But now there is a chance for something new.