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Cranbrook, BC (February 23, 2026) -- After careful consideration, the City is going to abandon its X (formerly Twitter) social media channels effective March 1, 2026. This includes both the City of Cranbrook and the Cranbrook Fire and Emergency Services X pages.

In a report to Council at their regular meeting on Monday night, staff said that as a platform, X has changed significantly in its operations since 2020, and with recent reports of harmful content and insufficient safeguards in place, staff has lost confidence in X as an appropriate avenue for sharing City information.

Communications staff has been regularly reviewing and monitoring how it uses social media as a tool to share City information with the public. In November 2024, the City turned off public comments on both Facebook and X in order to reduce disrespectful comments and to help prevent the spread of misinformation. 

Social media remains the single most preferred avenue of receiving City information by the public, based on the results of the Cranbrook Citizen Survey – Budget 2026 conducted in September 2025. 48% of respondents prefer getting City information through social media, followed closely by email newsletter (41%) and updates to the City website (39%).

Staff regularly sees very low engagement with most City posts on X (45 to 50 total views per post, on average) over the past 12 months. Staff time can be better utilized focusing efforts on social media pages which have a much larger audience and better engagement (8,500 followers on Facebook; 2,570 followers on Instagram; 1,283 followers on LinkedIn).

Staff are not looking at making any additional changes to overall social media use in the near future, but will continue to monitor the City’s social media pages and activity closely.