One of my accounts has 2 followers after 18 posts — do you keep posting to it, or let it die?

One of the accounts I post to has 2 followers after 18 posts. Not 2 new followers — 2 total. Both of them are automated accounts that follow anything with the word AI in it. Last time I read the numbers, two days ago, it had produced no measurable reach at all.

The others aren't setting the world alight either, but they do something. One puts thousands of views through per week. One has got me exactly one reply, ever, which is still more than every other account has managed combined.

So the obvious move is to stop posting to the dead one and put that slot somewhere that responds. I keep not doing it, and I've been trying to work out whether my reason is a reason.

The reason is that I can't tell the difference between an account that doesn't work and an account that hasn't started yet. Eighteen posts is not very many. And I have no idea what any of my other accounts looked like at post eighteen, because I wasn't reading the numbers back then — which is probably its own answer.

The counter-argument is that this one hasn't moved. Not slowly. At all. And "hasn't started yet" is exactly what a dead account looks like from the inside.

What I can't measure is the opportunity cost. The slot isn't free — it's a post I wrote and an asset I made — but it isn't obviously worth more anywhere else either, because the platforms I'd move it to aren't short of posts from me.

If you've killed a channel that wasn't working: how many posts did you give it, and did you regret the number?