Former President Petro Changes Communication Strategy on X After Sharp Drop in Engagement

Former President Gustavo Petro changed his communication strategy: Two events that occurred in the past few hours related to former President Gustavo Petro, apparently unrelated, caught the country’s attention, especially that of people who follow him on the social network X, where the former president was very active during his administration, to the point that many came to say that he governed and conducted international relations through posts.

First, Petro announced this Thursday, Aug. 20, a change in his communication strategy on X. He reported that from now on, his messages will be “much more spaced out” and will be limited to “strategic messages for the Colombian nation.” In addition, he suspended the replies section of his account because, as he wrote, “it has been taken over by Zionist troll farms.”

That section, according to Petro, will be redirected, “beyond my personal tweets, toward high-quality articles about the national or global situation.” And he asked the “progressive network” configured on his profile not to limit itself to reading, but to actively retransmit his posts. For him, “a cultural battle for the soul of Colombians has begun, and lies and rudeness are the fundamental form of the ‘culture’ of fascism.”

Petro changes his communication strategy for his favorite instrument

The decision was surprising because the former president was very active on that social network since he was a senator, a presidential candidate, and head of state between 2022 and last Aug. 7. In reality, it was his platform for announcing government decisions, attacking his enemies, and even shaping the country’s foreign policy.

In the first months of his government, his Twitter fury toward the outside world is remembered. In September 2022, when Chileans said no to the new constitution, he tweeted a bewildering “Pinochet is back.” With El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, he has engaged in bitter debates on social media.

He dedicated a first message to Argentina’s President Javier Milei: “The far right has won in Argentina; it is the decision of its society. Sad for Latin America, and we will see … .” Peru declared Petro persona non grata for saying during the protests that Peruvian police officers “march like Nazis against their own people.”

His Twitter diplomacy perhaps reached its peak when, through X, he disauthorized the entry of U.S. planes carrying Colombian migrants. Donald Trump responded with 25% tariffs and visa suspensions. The crisis was resolved, but it came close to derailing relations between the two countries.

It was clear that he overused the social network X because of his disdain for traditional media, which he considers to be owned by Colombia’s wealthiest people and reproducers of capitalist values.

Upon leaving the presidency, Petro lost engagement

However, a second event occurred a few hours later. Journalist Jorge Espinosa also shared on X a data analysis that provided context and an explanation for Petro’s decision: The engagement of his posts remained very high while he was president of Colombia and during the first days of the transition, but recorded an abrupt decline when he left office.

The analysis divides the account’s performance into clear periods. In June 2026, the posts in the sample averaged between 650,000 and more than 1 million views, with between 1,500 and 3,000 replies. In July, there was a slight decline because the range was between 600,000 and 900,000 views, with 1,400 to 2,500 replies.

Between Aug. 1 and 10, still in the transition phase, the averages rose to between 800,000 and 1,200,000 views and between 1,800 and 3,500 replies, a level described as “extreme.”

But everything changed definitively between Aug. 19 and 21, in his capacity as former president, when the averages fell to 150,000-200,000 views and 700-1,100 replies, a level described as “moderate-low.” That reduction is equivalent, according to the report, to a drop of between 70% and 80% in views.

For that reason, Espinosa bluntly raised the possibility that Petro’s decision to restrict his activity and close replies was related to this collapse in reach. In principle, there is only a temporal coincidence between the two events, but causality cannot be ruled out. Engagement remained high while Petro was president, even in the first days afterward, but declined consistently after he left office.