[HN Gopher] EFF is leaving X
___________________________________________________________________
EFF is leaving X
Author : gregsadetsky
Score : 972 points
Date : 2026-04-09 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| kennywinker wrote:
| As we all should. I'm not playing in a billionaire's toxic
| propaganda sandbox, neither should you.
| sirbutters wrote:
| Why is your comment getting shadowed. The F is wrong with HN
| crowd.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| These are interesting numbers for engagement but don't mean as
| much without equivalent stats for the other platforms. It's a
| little like when a news story quotes only a percentage (but not
| the absolute figure in $) or vice versa.
| snayan wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Assuming they use the same principles everywhere, they're
| getting more views on Mastodon and Bluesky? That is surprising.
| jeltz wrote:
| Not really, their target audience is much more likely to hang
| out on Mastodon and Bluesky. So even if the impressions might
| be fewer the quality of them is almost certainly higher.
| redox99 wrote:
| Also if you tweet a link to the content instead of tweeting the
| actual content, you get penalized by the algorithm.
|
| They do this in almost every tweet.
| mrits wrote:
| "The math hasn't worked out for a while now."
|
| How lazy do you have to be to not like this math. They act like
| tweeting is some sort of significant effort.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Tweeting is easy. Managing the weirdos that respond to your
| tweets is hard.
| alwa wrote:
| I read "the math" there as doing something a little more
| figurative. It seemed to me like they led with circulation
| figures less because they care about their CPM efficiency or
| whatever, and more to use "views" as a kind of synechdoche for
| "the people who want to hear what we have to say."
| wang_li wrote:
| They're an advocacy organization. They should want people who
| don't want to hear what they have to say to hear what they
| have to say.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Brand reputation from staying on Twitter is part of the math.
| tempaccountabcd wrote:
| How could you possibly lose reputation from that?
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| They lose credibility within their extremely narrow in-
| group.
| colechristensen wrote:
| TL;DR
|
| Nobody reads their posts on Twitter any more because most of the
| people are gone.
| Vaslo wrote:
| lol what? Still hundreds of millions of users on X.
| ethanrutherford wrote:
| "what do you mean there's no more sheep in my field? There's
| hundreds of wolves!"
| jeltz wrote:
| Apparently not ones interested in what EFF is writing.
| thomasarmel wrote:
| Thanks, maybe I can suggest posting here the statement in their
| website instead of the tweet, in order to avoid generating
| traffic on X
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| I will follow them on linkedin.
| ks2048 wrote:
| > To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the
| views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
|
| That's a huge drop. It could be changes to the algorithm or it
| could be their former readers are no longer on X. I suppose it's
| both.
| enether wrote:
| It could also be that the world as a whole cares less about
| privacy today than they did seven years ago. Without a relative
| measurement from a similar platform, it's a bit of an empty
| statement
|
| One thing that has certainly changed is that algorithms have
| become more aggressive. If your content isn't performing well,
| it gets hidden much faster and more aggressively than before.
| This makes sense when you consider it from the PoV of the
| platforms (they have much more content to choose from)
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Definitely both, potentially with one driving the other. While
| Twitter has always had an inclination towards quippy hot takes
| and similar, in its transformation into X it's taken a hard
| turn towards junk politically-slanted engagement bait above all
| else[0]. Content with any semblance of substance or nuance and
| especially anything misaligned with controlling interests gets
| buried.
|
| The EFF is at odds with both facets of the current US
| administration as well as the big corporate donors in its
| pockets and its posts deal with nuanced topics, and so
| naturally its posts are among those not surfaced as often.
|
| [0]: https://substack.com/home/post/p-193285131
| busterarm wrote:
| I'm a former EFF member and donor and have an X account. Their
| engagement problem isn't with X or X's members. It's with the
| EFF itself.
|
| A decade ago they lost the plot. They pulled some bullshit and
| lied to their entire membership in order to boost their
| cronies/friends at the Library of Congress. They framed efforts
| to keep the LoC under loose Congressional/Presidential
| oversight and free to do as they want as some Anti-Trump fight.
| Requests about why they would do this went completely
| unanswered to the membership.
|
| The EFF Board serves their own goals and believe themselves
| unaccountable to their membership, so they no longer get my
| money and I no longer entertain or signal boost their message.
| numpad0 wrote:
| They divide up users into groups a la Google+ groups(separate
| and against following/followers system) and restrict global
| visibility of your tweets unless you win the daily lottery, in
| which case your tweet gets bajilion views, or something.
| Attempts to bypass that system is penalized.
|
| Not saying it's working, but I believe something like that is
| their current design intent of that joke of a massive backwards
| revolver. The way it currently works is that only those smart
| enough to bypass the penalization wins.
|
| EFF reps on Twitter probably aren't "smart enough" to game that
| system, so they stay in the tiny group, and therefore they
| won't get the views.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706120
| dgacmu wrote:
| It is, but the other one is a link to their twitter post,
| whereas this is the longer self-hosted statement. This is a
| better, more informative source.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Just noting it. The other post was submitted earlier. The
| mod's can figure out how to combine/reconcile. Update: I
| think you are correct and this one won :)
| mellosouls wrote:
| If they justify it in terms of reach and impressions then say
| they will still be on BlueSky and Mastodon then you know it's
| purely ideological.
|
| Which is fine but just be honest about it.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| They're the Electronic Frontier Foundation. _Of course_ they
| 're ideological. That's the whole point of their existence.
|
| Anyway,
|
| > _Twitter was never a utopia. We 've criticized the platform
| for about as long as it's been around. Still, Twitter did
| deserve recognition from time to time for vociferously fighting
| for its users' rights. That changed. Musk fired the entire
| human rights team and laid off staffers in countries where the
| company previously fought off censorship demands from
| repressive regimes. Many users left. Today we're joining them._
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eff-leaving-x
| 0ckpuppet wrote:
| Twitter never cared about users rights. Read Matt Taibbi's
| congresional testimony on Twitter's censorship machine.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Read, was bs, as expected from matt
| myko wrote:
| It was very interesting because it came to light the
| administration in power at the time, trump, leaned heavily
| on Twitter to promote what they wanted and hide they wanted
| hid. Meanwhile Biden's campaign requested revenge porn be
| removed and Matt and friends got extremely upset about that
| and called it government overreach (Biden wasn't in office
| at the time, of course).
|
| Very funny when you think about it, but sad too
| tyre wrote:
| If you're citing Matt Taibbi as a trustworthy source, man,
| I don't know. He's up there with Bari Weiss for "they're
| either intentionally bad faith, stupid, or both" levels of
| nuance.
|
| These are not serious people.
| unselect5917 wrote:
| I not only read what he wrote, I read the screenshots of
| OG twitter. And what he said mirrored what they said.
| They were incredibly one sided an censorious as hell.
| Your post is basically just an ad hominem. A fallacy.
| angoragoats wrote:
| For something to be an ad hominem, one needs to be 1)
| addressing or responding to an argument 2) by attacking
| the character of the person making the argument rather
| than the substance of the argument.
|
| Even though OP didn't provide them, I can think of many
| supporting examples for their assertion that Bari Weiss
| and Matt Taibbi are either intentionally operating in bad
| faith, or stupid, or both. So this does not at all meet
| the definition of ad hominem.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| So it's OK now? Or it wasn't OK then or now?
|
| You claim about fallacies later, but this is a also a
| fallacy.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Of course they're ideological. That's the whole point
|
| Yes, but their ideology _was_ free-speech absolutism. This
| move, and this statement, suggests that they're moving away
| from that ideology to one of selectively free speech.
| basisword wrote:
| Please explain. How does this suggest they no longer value
| free speech?
| nandomrumber wrote:
| That's not what the comment you replied to said.
|
| They said the EFF's ideology use to be _free speech
| absolutism_.
|
| From the EFF post linked to that we are discussing here:
|
| _Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists,
| and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every
| day._
|
| <snip>
|
| _neither is pushing every user to the fediverse when
| there are circumstances like:_
|
| <snip>
|
| _Your abortion fund uses TikTok to spread crucial
| information._
|
| _You 're isolated and rely on online spaces to connect
| with your community._
|
| That very much makes it sound like the EFF values free
| speech, but only if that speech is speech they agree
| with.
|
| What about if your anti-abortion find uses X to spread
| crucial information. What about if you're isolated and
| rely on X to connect with your community?
|
| What if you're not _a young person, a person of color,
| queer, an activists, nor an organizer?_
|
| The EFF used to be _free speech absolutists,_ it's
| evident they be taken over by _progressive liberals_ who
| favour free speech _they agree with_.
|
| Look in to the history of cases they have litigated.
| There's definitely at least some where I disagreed with
| the content of the speech, but agreed with the right to
| say it and that the EFF were correct in supporting the
| case.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| So because EFF does not post their news in my small
| Australian home town newspaper they're not free-speech
| absolutists?
| array_key_first wrote:
| Being a free speech absolutionist DOES NOT mean plastering
| your speech everywhere, including Twitter. Those are
| clearly two different concepts.
|
| Also, literally nothing about this says anything about
| other people's speech. Them deciding not to use twitter
| doesn't mean you can't, obviously.
|
| I feel like everyone is losing the plot a bit. Are we
| understanding the words we're saying before we choose to
| say them?
| rbtprograms wrote:
| what are you even talking about? they arent suppressing
| free speech, they are leaving a platform. this might be the
| most bot-like response ive ever seen, if youre not a bot
| then go outside, read a book, just log off my goodness.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The reach and impressions on Twitter are fake though, and posts
| containing links are suppressed.
|
| (Of course the EFF are ideological, that's their entire
| purpose!)
| rockskon wrote:
| Sometimes it's not just about quantity. Not all impressions
| are equal.
|
| And like it or not - Twitter is still the preferred
| communication platform of quite a few influential people.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| Interactions on X are _notoriously_ low-quality and botted
| to hell, so "not all impressions are equal" might not be a
| great point to push here.
| rockskon wrote:
| And not all influential people are Elon Musk or Catturd.
| unselect5917 wrote:
| According to what metric? Your obvious hatred of Musk?
| Just like 90% of everyone else on here and reddit?
| sixothree wrote:
| I don't like it and I haven't used it since before the
| whole nazi salute thing. I feel gross just accidentally
| following links to that place. Why would I support it or
| the people who use it?
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| Link suppression is contested. Nikita says they're not
| deboosted. This guy tested it, found evidence they're no
| longer deboosted:
| https://x.com/phl43/status/2041893735827460446?s=20
|
| Nikita says they were "never" deboosted, but Musk said they
| were going to do that and it was a huge topic...?
|
| https://x.com/nikitabier/status/2041911302541730237?s=20
|
| He says here about an interface change. I've noticed this
| change. The sites are opening in a kind of sub window with
| the feedback UI still visible. I found this annoying but now
| I see the point.
| watwut wrote:
| The article is honest and open about reasons.
|
| What is dishonest is to write as if there was something wrong
| with leaving twittwr for "ideological" reasons.
| bakugo wrote:
| Citing low engagement numbers as a reason for leaving while
| continuing to maintain an active Threads account is the
| opposite of honest.
| zuminator wrote:
| Where's the dishonesty? Low engagement matters when you
| have to pay for it. It doesn't cost them anything to
| maintain an active Threads account.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Their front page says "The leading nonprofit defending digital
| privacy, free speech, and innovation for 35 years and
| counting!"
|
| They are an organization that exists to support an ideological
| viewpoint. Any political stance is ideological!
| surgical_fire wrote:
| We are talking about EFF. They are essentially an advocacy
| group, 100% ideological by definition.
|
| It would be dishonest of them to pretend they were not
| ideological. Staying on Twitter was likely worse for their
| mission then leaving it.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| Just looking over recent posts, the EFF gets more interaction
| on BlueSky than it does on X despite 1/3 the followers and
| being on a much smaller site.
|
| I think that says it all.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Plus, even if it did get less engagement, I imagine that
| BlueSky is full of the sorts of people who donate to EFF.
| vetrom wrote:
| What does it say? EFF has not bothered to engage with
| basically anyone that replies to them on X the platform at
| least since Dec 1, 2025. Searching for EFF replies from older
| posts also shows that they basically never engage with X
| users, apart from using it as an advertising firehose.
|
| If they spent any appreciable amount of time replying to
| people and not just themselves, their X impressions would be
| considerably larger. X themselves has been clear that
| engagement weights impressions/recommendations/algorithmic
| display, and EFF has done none of that.
|
| It looks to me like a people at EFF problem, not an X
| problem.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| They don't do that kind of stuff on BlueSky either and do
| better there, and BlueSky doesn't have the audacity to
| demand a paid subscription.
|
| Also, I don't think the kind of engagement X's algorithms
| reward would be good for the EFF's image as a serious
| organization.
| supern0va wrote:
| >then say they will still be on BlueSky and Mastodon then you
| know it's purely ideological.
|
| Both Bluesky and Mastodon are open/federated networks, which
| aligns more with EFF's values. So, yes, but I don't think for
| the reasons you're hinting at.
| chaosharmonic wrote:
| "Open source network that isn't controlled by corporations"
| _is_ ideological, but not quite in the same way that you seem
| to be framing this.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Yes, EFF is a civil liberties group and always has been, which
| makes it a purely ideological movement.
|
| Let's be honest and look at the engagement numbers of the post
| announcing this:
|
| X post: 124 comments, 79 reblogs, and 337 likes
|
| BlueSky post: 245 comments, 1400 reblogs, and 6.2K likes
|
| Mastodon post: 403 reposts, 458 likes
|
| These numbers, combined with the facts that Mastodon and
| BlueSky are aligned with internet freedoms while X is strongly
| aligned against internet freedoms, make for a clear-and-cut
| case that it's past time to leave the platform.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Which internet freedoms is X strongly aligned against?
| kennywinker wrote:
| Just one example, but having to be logged in to view most
| content on there was a recent change that made it pretty
| hostile to the openness of the web platform.
|
| You can find links to other criticisms of twitter in TFA:
|
| Interop: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/twitter-and-
| interopera...
|
| Privacy: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/twitter-
| removes-privac...
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/08/twitter-and-others-
| dou...
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/twitter-
| uninentionally...
|
| Accountability:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/twitter-axes-
| accountab...
|
| DM encryption: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/after-
| weeks-hack-it-pa...
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Have you tried using Facebook, Linked-In, or Instagram
| while not logged in?
| ijk wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're using Zuckerberg's sites as
| examples of internet freedoms.
| Fezzik wrote:
| All of them, I think?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_freedom
| tumult wrote:
| Banned third party clients and interoperability. Use their
| software to access your data on their servers, on their
| terms, or get shut down. Hard to think of anything more
| anti-internet freedom. I left when they did that, years
| ago.
|
| They would not be able to enforce it on desktop computers,
| short of banning every user one-at-a-time, but they can
| easily blanket-ban it on mobile phones by requesting Apple
| and Google remove unauthorized third-party clients from
| their app stores. (Which they will do. Apple even lists
| unauthorized clients for services controlled by other
| parties as against the rules. Whatever that means.)
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Do Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok allow third
| party clients?
| tumult wrote:
| Probably not, and I've never used any of those, and never
| will. X used to, and doesn't now.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Yeah, I'm confused. Why say one thing when you mean another?
|
| Maybe I need to re-evaluate some of the youtube people that I
| stopped watching because they were so carefully neutral, not
| wanting to offend the nazis, I thought. Perhaps that's just
| american culture to try to avoid politics at all cost and I
| shouldn't view it like they sympathize with that camp?
|
| (To provide context, I'm from the Netherlands. I know we sit,
| ehm, 'far right' on the honesty spectrum but I hadn't the
| impression that American culture was very different in that
| regard, at least if you adjust the scales of pleasantries and
| exuberism to our usual range, which this EFF post has none of)
|
| Edit: what u/ceejayoz said downthread
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706961> could be the
| answer: it _is_ about the numbers, but you have to offset them
| for how many _other_ people think you 're an ass for being
| there. Nobody thinks you're an ass if you're on Mastodon,
| you're just posting to whatever server you think fits your
| niche best, so even if that were only a few thousand views per
| post then that math might work out to better publicity than ten
| times as many views and hanging out on X.com
| adipose wrote:
| can you clarify what the ideology is and how they are not being
| honest about it
| antonvs wrote:
| He means morality, but he doesn't want to admit it.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Well if you look at their bullet points:
|
| - _Greater user control_ how is any of the other platforms they
| have no problem with any different than twitter?
|
| - _Real security improvements_ where is end to end encryption
| on all the other social media? And why do they need end to end
| encryption to broadcast a message to the public?
|
| - _Transparent content moderation_ wait, the EFF is now calling
| for more censorship?
|
| The first two points are clearly nonsensical, only the third
| one has at least some logic. Though if the EFF has turned pro-
| censorship, I am having bad feeling for having given them money
| in the past.
| antonvs wrote:
| "Purely moral" would be a more accurate way to put it.
|
| "Ideological" in this context is what you say when you're
| trying to deny that there's moral dimension to the issue. Which
| you absolutely are.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| That statement pretty clearly shows that they have certain
| ideological concerns that they value more highly than the kind of
| stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about (digital
| privacy, open source, patent trolling, etc).
|
| Through that lens, I guess it makes sense that they see TikTok,
| Instagram, and BlueSky as worth their time and presence but not
| X.
| bakugo wrote:
| Agreed. The fact that their Threads account[0] is still active
| (remember that site? yeah, me neither, I had forgotten it
| existed until I saw it linked on eff.org's socials page) makes
| it clear that the opening statement about "the numbers not
| working out" is deceptive.
|
| You have to scroll down a bit further to find their real reason
| for preferring those sites:
|
| > people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use
| Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day
|
| [0] https://www.threads.com/@efforg
| matt-attack wrote:
| Wow I never thought the org I've donated to all these years
| to fight for digital rights would find the need to use the
| phrase "queer folks". What a toxic mess.
|
| Please stick to your charter my friends.
| MidnightRider39 wrote:
| I don't even see them using that phrase in the linked
| thread? What's wrong with it anyway?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I don't see it either, funny how people had a knee jerk
| reaction without even visiting the thread and validating
| that the phrase even exists. Maybe it's even further down
| but without logging in I can't see it.
| throwawaypath wrote:
| That quote is in the linked EFF statement, which you
| clearly didn't read.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| True, I was looking at the linked thread as mentioned not
| the article.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Remind me again what the Q in LGBTQ stands for?
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| You're a little behind the times, mate.
|
| Threads has more daily active users than X and is growing
| quickly vs. the latter's cratering usage rates. Demographics
| trend younger, too.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| DAU for Threads is misleading, Meta seems to count
| impressions in Instagram where Threads sections sometimes
| show up. I personally know no one who uses Threads.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| > I personally know no one who uses Threads
|
| Real 'I don't know anyone who voted for Nixon' energy
| here.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That's why I didn't start off with that statement lest I
| be accused of anecdata which is fair. But it's true in my
| case. How many do you know that use Threads, especially
| on a regular basis?
| theshackleford wrote:
| > I personally know no one who uses Threads.
|
| I don't know literally anyone using twitter and yet
| obviously people do.
|
| Perhaps what the individuals we know are doing are in
| fact reflective of not very much.
| bakugo wrote:
| Sorry but no. I don't care what inflated numbers Meta brags
| about after redirecting random people from Instagram and
| counting that as an "active user", Threads is so utterly
| irrelevant that I literally forget it exists for months at
| a time because _nobody_ talks about it.
|
| Even here on HN, searching for links to threads.com in
| comments from the past year yields a mere 53 results. For
| comparison, searching for xcancel.com, an _unofficial_
| frontend for x.com that allows logged out users to view
| replies, yields 795 results.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| Threads is extremely 'normie-coded,' I don't think
| there's much overlap with HN demographics.
| kmijyiyxfbklao wrote:
| Twitter seems to be more popular in reddit too
|
| https://old.reddit.com/domain/threads.com/top/
|
| https://old.reddit.com/domain/x.com/top/
| qup wrote:
| There's not much overlap with any demographics.
| xigoi wrote:
| I still see links to X quite often. I don't think I have
| ever seen a link to Threads.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| freedom is intersectional. it's hard to fight for freedom while
| supporting those that actively limit the freedom of others,
| especially when the amount of impressions are no longer worth
| doing it for
| greenavocado wrote:
| "freedom is intersectional" is a fancy way of saying "I only
| support freedom for people I agree with." and the impressions
| line at the end is basically admitting it was never about
| principles, it was about clout. you didn't leave the platform
| because of ethics, you left because the algorithm stopped
| paying you for it.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| >"freedom is intersectional" is a fancy way of saying "I
| only support freedom for people I agree with."
|
| That is the exact opposite of what that means. It means
| freedom should be supported for all, especially for the
| oppressed. Those who stand for oppression in one way serve
| to benefit other forms of oppression
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Universality of human rights is a great principle that
| breaks down horribly the moment it makes contact with
| people who do not want you to have those rights. Like, even
| if you're a single-issue free speech maximalist, it is
| entirely self-defeating to argue that censorious tyrants
| should be afforded the benefits of free speech. The only
| purpose tyrants have of free speech is to use it to amass
| power to destroy free speech.
|
| And yes, to be clear, Elon Musk is a censorious tyrant. All
| the big tech leaders are, both because some of them started
| out as outright fascists and because the rules of the tech
| CEO game are, in the Nash equilibrium, unfavorable to
| liberal ideals.
|
| Dehumanization is another common tactic of tyrants. You
| look at the group of dissidents you want to censor,
| identify those who are weak enough to silence, and use your
| control over society and government to make them pay for
| not being on their side. Rinse and repeat until you've
| salami-sliced away every dissident's rights. The only
| effective means of stopping dehumanization is to render it
| ineffective by making lots of friends who understand and
| defend against these attacks. [0] The interminably dense
| social justice literature uses jargon terms like
| "solidarity" and "intersectionality", which seem almost
| calculated to piss off the unenlightened into reflexively
| opposing social justice because we might as well be wizards
| chanting Latin curses at people to sound smart. But the
| idea is simple.
|
| So yes, freedom _is_ intersectional - because it it
| ultimately comes from the people as a whole exercising
| their power to check the power of tyrants.
|
| [0] "Apes together strong", in case HN doesn't render emoji
| correctly.
| greenavocado wrote:
| "the only purpose tyrants have of free speech is to use
| it to destroy free speech" says who? you? so you get to
| read minds now, know exactly why someone wants to speak,
| and preemptively decide they don't deserve to? that's
| just you picking winners not defending free speech
|
| and you didn't call every tech CEO a fascist but you did
| call them all censorious tyrants who operate against
| liberal ideals. which is a fun thing to say on a website
| where you're freely saying it. if the tyrants are this
| bad at tyranny maybe they're not actually tyrants.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's explicitly not the logic EFF is using; they come close
| to outright rejecting it.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > ... when the amount of impressions are no longer worth
| doing it for
|
| > The Numbers Aren't Working Out
|
| I don't know. That's front and center. Can to share how
| that's an "outright rejection"?
| tptacek wrote:
| They explicitly say they're staying on other platforms
| whose ideologies they don't agree with.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Because there's enough people there to be worth it
|
| It's like how the Soviets and the Americans were allies
| in world war II, the pros outweighed the cons
| billfor wrote:
| Was it costing a lot of money or resources to say on X?
| If they got few impressions what does it matter? You can
| write the content once.
| geertj wrote:
| What exactly has Elon done to limit your freedom? For me,
| Elon has increased my freedom because I can read about
| certain viewpoints that were previously censored on Twitter.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Bro. He's still censoring viewpoints. He's also boosting
| his ideological viewpoints, which diminishes the reach of
| everything else.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-elon-musk-uses-
| his...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/23/business/elo
| n...
| geertj wrote:
| Which is the issue? That's he's censoring, or that he's
| sharing his own viewpoints? Your argument that the latter
| causes the former is not convincing, as there are plenty
| of opposing views on Twitter that get exposure.
|
| The fact that my post got flagged (edit: now unflagged)
| is maybe indicative that the differing viewpoint is the
| concern.
| meibo wrote:
| You are being, and have been, played. What is happening to
| the left now is exactly what you thought was happening to
| the right before Elon.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| "Thought was happening" is an interesting way to put it
| when they most certainly were being censored, and we know
| that we're even colluding with the FBI to suppress the
| Hunter Biden laptop story.
|
| Not to say that they're not doing the inverse now, but to
| paint it as some misconception that the inverse was
| happening before is just disingenuous.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| He ran DOGE and illegally destroyed science and arts
| funding across the US government. [0] He continues to
| interfere in elections, committing what is likely fraud. He
| silences viewpoints that disagree with him on twitter and
| routinely interferes with grok's training to promote his
| own viewpoints.
|
| Oh and he begged to visit Epstein's child sex slavery
| island. [2]
|
| I get that your moral compass might not be fully
| functional, but I draw the line at fascism, treason, and
| pedophilia.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_
| Effic...
|
| [1] https://www.thebulwark.com/p/yes-elon-musk-vote-buying-
| is-ag...
|
| [2] https://people.com/emails-reveal-that-elon-musk-asked-
| jeffre...
| gzread wrote:
| Which viewpoints?
| Brendinooo wrote:
| > freedom is intersectional
|
| What is your working definition of freedom? I'm interested in
| replying but I'd like to engage with you on your terms.
| tikhonj wrote:
| Ah yes, a non-profit reaching out to a broader audience for its
| activism is clearly a "certain ideological concern" separate
| from their core mission.
| bradyd wrote:
| This is the exact opposite of reaching out to a broader
| audience.
| nailer wrote:
| Check out the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression,
| they support anonymity, privacy and free expression:
|
| https://www.fire.org/
| panarky wrote:
| Where did you read that in their post?
|
| Because what I read is that their X posts are getting only 3%
| of the engagement compared to pre-Musk Twitter.
|
| The post insinuates that's because the platform intentionally
| down-ranks posts for ideological purposes.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Where you do you see this insinuation being made? I don't see
| anything like that.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| > Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and
| organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.
| pirate787 wrote:
| Clearly EFF is now more interested in virtue signaling than
| the privacy mission.
| Legend2440 wrote:
| The EFF is and has always been a political activist
| organization.
|
| Of course they care about ideological concerns.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Where in my comment did I claim otherwise?
| slg wrote:
| You discussed two distinct groups: "certain ideological
| concerns" and "the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF
| primarily cares about". I think you're getting this type of
| response because many of us can't see any actual difference
| between those two groups besides your own politics and
| assumptions.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| You might be right; I don't know what the broad populace
| thinks of what EFF does.
|
| I'll ask you then: What are the three main areas of
| advocacy where you think the EFF has been the most
| visible and/or effective?
| jeffbee wrote:
| EFF has basically only succeeded in defending Section
| 230, which makes me wonder if the people who talk in this
| article and the people elsewhere on HN denouncing Section
| 230 know about each other.
| Terr_ wrote:
| There's been a lot of misinformation around section 230
| in the last several years. This might be helpful, either
| as something to give out or to receive, depending.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-
| referre...
|
| Granted, it's from 2020, so there may be updated versions
| by now.
| slg wrote:
| I can't definitively give you a top three and honestly
| don't see any value in ranking them like that. I would
| simply describe them as the ACLU for technology and the
| Internet in that they fight for general civil liberties.
| X and more specifically Elon Musk have shown that they
| are on the opposite side when it comes to many of those
| civil liberties even if they all agree on some other
| issues. Online censorship (both explicit and through
| algorithmic bias) is the most obvious example that
| bridges your two distinct groups. Musk might claim he
| agrees with the EFF on that, but through his and X's
| actions, it's clear he doesn't.
| smaudet wrote:
| It's an association fallacy - Musk may be a radical
| extremist on the right, and a technology mogul, you may
| find yourself aligning with some of his world views (not
| all of them, remember he is an extremist relative to
| yourself).
|
| So when people support EFF's technological goals
| (freedoms for users on technology platforms), if they are
| themselves possibly on the right, they project their own
| values onto the organization or system (which here is the
| EFF).
|
| Never-mind if some of those values are incompatible with
| the values you think you hold (being authoritarian
| generally is incompatible with being not being
| authoritarian about technology). When someone points out
| the (otherwise obvious) contradiction to you, you're
| surprised that your set of values is incongruous.
|
| Now this can happen to anyone coming from any political
| starting point, they agree with something but find it
| doesn't quite fit with their world views. If you are
| deeply religious about it, you tend to hold on for dear
| life and either decide to "pick" on set of values over
| another (suddenly you realize, actually, yes you would
| like to enslave everyone) or engage in some form of
| hypocrisy or another (authoritarians are good, but for
| some reason or the other I'm going to make an exception
| for technology).
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I dunno. My understanding of coalition building is "we
| disagree about a bunch of stuff, but we agree on this one
| thing, so let's work together on it". You seem to be
| saying: "if you disagree with me on the other stuff, your
| agreement on this thing is rooted in a contradictory
| value system you haven't fully examined".
|
| Is that correct?
| smaudet wrote:
| Not exactly.
|
| Values have a hierarchy. You can't (effectively) agree to
| painting everything the color blue, if you can't agree
| what the color blue is.
|
| And you will run into a very similar issue when everyone
| starts objecting to the pink you have spread everywhere,
| despite supposedly agreeing to the color scheme.
| dvt wrote:
| > Not exactly.
|
| But then you go on to describe exactly what @Brendinooo
| described, just under the guise of your system of "value
| hierarchy." The problem is that you can always default to
| "our values are hierarchically misaligned" and then never
| have to do any coalition building ever.
|
| So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you
| can't.
| smaudet wrote:
| > if you disagree with me on the other stuff
|
| This part is too broad.
|
| Hierarchical values are just that. Not wholesale. We call
| that nonsense, e.g. I believe pigs can fly, therefore the
| sky is red. They are making an ontological error.
| dvt wrote:
| For a Christian, a top maxim in their value hierarchy
| would be rooted in Jesus' famous commandment: "Love the
| Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind." Now,
| if you're an atheist, this might be nonsense to you. You
| might not believe that Jesus was resurrected or that God
| even exists. To you, these are fundamentally irrational
| statements ("pigs can fly," etc.). Under your system, if
| you were an atheist and your opposition was a Christian,
| you could never possibly build a coalition because
| there's a disagreement at the top of the value hierarchy.
|
| But this seems wrong because people of different creeds
| and value systems do stuff together all the time. Or am I
| misunderstanding your point? What I understand
| @Brendinooo to be saying is: "we may not share the same
| moral framework (or _value hierarchy_ , using your term),
| but we do agree on X, so let's do X."
| snackerblues wrote:
| > So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you
| can't.
|
| By design. Activists and left-wingers in general enjoy
| losing and being underdogs and infighting constantly
| DaSHacka wrote:
| I don't know, I've noticed this in the right as well. I
| think there's always some degree of purity-testing to any
| community, though I agree there is more on the current
| (radical?) progressive end than average.
| smaudet wrote:
| Funny, how those in a hierarchical system political
| system struggle so much to understand, hierarchy.
|
| It's per the usual for extremist ideologies, chock full
| of hypocrisy and nonsense.
|
| Note that, I have no problem with conservative or liberal
| value systems...
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I guess, to use the terms of your analogy, I don't think
| people disagree on what blue is. "Don't add backdoors to
| e2e encryption" is blue; and plenty of people who are
| coded all over the political/ideological spectrum
| recognize it as blue and want the wall to be blue.
|
| You seem to be saying that people can't paint together
| unless everyone agrees on who holds the brush, what brand
| of brush is used, and what everyone's broader philosophy
| of painting is.
| zahlman wrote:
| > I think you're getting this type of response because
| many of us can't see any actual difference between those
| two groups besides your own politics and assumptions.
|
| I think that is why, yes.
|
| I also think the differences are _really obvious_ , and I
| genuinely can't understand why so many people here can't
| see that.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| This might be the most interesting insight I gained by
| commenting here today. I expected people to be on board
| with it; I didn't expect people to be so acclimated to it
| that they don't even see how others might notice it.
| r-w wrote:
| Why would you say "this statement shows XYZ" if you didn't
| believe XYZ was a new piece of information?
| Brendinooo wrote:
| My original comment did not claim that they were not
| ideological and it did not claim that that they do not do
| political activism, so a reply of "[o]f course they care
| about ideological concerns" makes no sense to me.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| You said the "statement pretty clearly shows that they
| have certain ideological concerns..." like you were
| uncovering some hidden truth or gotcha in between the
| lines here. Was that not what you intended to write?
|
| And then like what _is_ the point of your original
| comment if you agree that what you could only deduce
| earlier is now an obvious truism?
| danadam wrote:
| IIUC, "clearly shows" doesn't apply to "they have certain
| concerns" but rather to the part that you replaced with
| "...". In other words "the statement clearly shows that
| they value [their certain concerns] more highly than the
| kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares
| about"
| gred wrote:
| He's saying that they have ideological concerns _beyond_ the
| ideological concerns you would tend to associate with the EFF
| (digital privacy, open source, patent trolling, etc). I for
| one am sad to see that this is the case. There are fewer and
| fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being
| dragged into left /right tribalism.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| That's what the comment is stating, but I disagree with the
| statement. This is perfectly in-line with the EFF's
| mission.
|
| Keep in mind that X only has ~500 MAU, putting it in the
| same league as Pinterest or Quora.
| baggachipz wrote:
| The linked blog post specifically states that they're
| leaving Twitter because they have been silenced by the
| platform and, as a result, no longer consider it a viable
| communication vehicle. That it's owned and operated by a
| nazi is icing on the shit cake.
| gred wrote:
| > they have been silenced by the platform
|
| Where do you see that? All I see is a claim that it no
| longer makes sense from a financial standpoint (but no
| comparative numbers provided for the other platforms they
| are keeping, which is sus, especially given their
| presence on very niche platforms like Bluesky), and vague
| justifications based on identity politics and "community
| care" loci, which is either nonsense or deep argot
| unsuitable for the intended audience.
| mayneack wrote:
| Bluesky might have be niche in terms of users but it's an
| open platform like activity pub so it's at least quite
| aligned with the EFF mission.
| maltelau wrote:
| A free and open society is a prerequisite for the rights
| EFF fight for. We cannot enjoy the freedoms of digital
| privacy in a an authoritarian regime. The rights to fight
| for EFFs concerns are currently being threated by the
| fascist turn of the USA. Thus, the EFF and other likeminded
| organizations are very much justified in leaving X.
|
| > There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil
| rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.
|
| I would rather challenge this image that civilization is
| declining, independently of the political forces in power.
| This is a common motif in facism; I'm reading from your
| comment something along the lines of: "once we had noble
| organizations that were pure and didn't bother with
| ideology -- now things are worse, and in fact those guys
| are dirty for engaging in politics". What's really
| happening is that power in the US has been seized by
| fanatics and you fucks (respectfully) are letting them get
| away with it.
| gred wrote:
| Disagree with so much here. But if, in your mind, the US
| is turning authoritarian, this is a "cut off your nose to
| spite your face" move. They should be taking the fight
| where it most needs fighting. They should _not_ be making
| donors like myself question whether we still share
| objectives.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| You are completely correct in your analysis. Reading some
| of the responses here - people who think the EFF should
| only fight for some rights for some people and only on
| corporate platforms instead of across society at large -
| would be shocking if I hadn't already seen how willing
| rich tech bros are to overlook everyone and everything
| else for their own personal gain.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| What are you talking about? I feel like I'm taking crazy
| pills reading these comments.
|
| Do you not see that civil rights are being infringed _right
| now_, by the republican administration in our government?
| Protecting those civil rights will require criticizing and
| acting against republicans because the fascists on the
| right are trying to turn our country into an autocracy.
|
| Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but you can't be that
| fragile if you want to live in a free nation. The EFF
| taking a stand here is fighting EXACTLY the fight they need
| to be right now.
| arbitrarywords wrote:
| This is an important point and it feels odd that the entire
| discussion seems to not be able to engage with it, but on
| another level it might be the same problem. As a long term
| financial support of the eff I'm starting to get the same
| awkward feelings that made me question my financial support
| for Mozilla and Wikipedia. Any time someone views the world
| through a single lens, it highlights some things and
| ignores others and it seems like a net loss to the world
| that everything is being forced into a being judged along a
| single (increasingly polarised) axis
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Those concerns have evolved away from their original mission.
| Not an unusual situation for organizations like this as a
| they shrink and lose relevance.
| archagon wrote:
| What makes you think they are shrinking and losing
| relevance, other than feels?
| Arubis wrote:
| My sibling in sin, I have an EFF tee from about 2001-2002
| that reads, in boldface, "FREE SPEECH HAS A POSSE". They
| have always been broadly political.
| zahlman wrote:
| This does not address the substance of the comment you
| are replying to. In fact, that comment was itself
| replying to a comment making the same argument you are
| making, _explicitly explaining why it is non-sequitur_.
| poisonarena wrote:
| i went to an eff meeting at a hackerspace in 2006 or
| 2007, and it was hacker crypto nerds, mostly fat guys
| with ponytails that liked X files, gaming, and 2600..
| some went to 2600 meetings.
|
| I went 10-11 years later, and half the people at the
| meeting were transexuals, and it was a totally different
| vibe.
|
| Something happened..
| Barbing wrote:
| Sad to hear. Can you help me understand its shrinkage and
| loss of relevancy?
| 0ckpuppet wrote:
| just not twitter censorship
| UncleMeat wrote:
| They also mention that tweets today get far less engagement
| than they once did.
| r-w wrote:
| * _their_ tweets
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Right. Those are the only tweets that are relevant here.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I had the opposite impression, that this decision was primarily
| economic in nature. People (or at least the sort of people
| interested in the EFF) simply aren't on X/Twitter anymore, and
| so it's not worth posting there.
| conradfr wrote:
| But what is the cost of posting on X? Why do they even have a
| blue tick?
| jjk166 wrote:
| More than the cost of not posting on X.
| bpt3 wrote:
| That cost should be $0, so that's not the issue.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| It lends legitimacy to a declining site controlled by a
| white supremacist and filled with more neo-nazi's by the
| day.
|
| The fewer legitimate organizations posting on twitter,
| drawing eyes and views to the site, the better.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Its a bit silly to say that they are declining. For its
| specific niche (mass short form/viral content) there
| simply aren't any relevant competitors that even come
| close.
| bpt3 wrote:
| What is the cost of posting to X in addition to Tiktok,
| Bluesky, and Facebook? If it's not effectively $0, it should
| be.
|
| This is completely performative, and I personally don't think
| it's the best move.
| traderj0e wrote:
| It's not even ideological concerns about the platform but about
| the userbase. TikTok and Instagram have a lot of left-wing
| people on them, as they've alluded to, regardless of who owns
| those. Twitter users are too right-wing for them.
| jimmar wrote:
| So just talk to the people who you think already agree with
| you?
| traderj0e wrote:
| I guess? Washington Post and others were doing this for a
| while. As insane as it was for a "neutral" news source to
| officially endorse political candidates, it was earning
| them subscribers. And Fox News didn't do this officially,
| but it was obvious.
|
| If you want to give EFF more credit, maybe they figured at
| least they can reach people on TikTok who don't already
| agree but don't already disagree, while Twitter was just
| flaming.
| archagon wrote:
| How is it insane for a news source to endorse political
| candidates? This has been a routine function of
| newspapers for over a century.
| traderj0e wrote:
| It's insane for them to do it and also claim neutrality.
| They could just be honest and say they're a Democrat
| party newspaper. Yeah a lot of papers were guilty of
| this, and those were trash too.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| I didn't see that in the post. The thesis is pretty clear and
| aligned with EFF as a non-profit that has to allocate resources
| strategically:
|
| > To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of
| the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
|
| and
|
| > Our presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok is
| not an endorsement. We've spent years exposing how these
| platforms suppress marginalized voices, enable invasive
| behavioral advertising, and flag posts about abortion as
| dangerous. We've also taken action in court, in legislatures,
| and through direct engagement with their staff to push them to
| change poor policies and practices.
|
| It's pretty clear that all these platforms have various
| problems within EFF's purview, but the difference with X is
| that they're not getting value from using it.
| nicce wrote:
| They would also leave TikTok and Instagram as well if it would
| be pure ideological reasoning.
| rc_kas wrote:
| Did the CEO of TikTok and Instagram also do a Nazi salute on
| stage?
| pepperoni_pizza wrote:
| Not that I know of. But if you look at how TikTok and Meta
| impacted our society, you could argue they did worse.
| zahlman wrote:
| What do you mean by "also"?
| conradfr wrote:
| Yes to be honest the "But You're Still on Facebook and TikTok?"
| part is not really convincing. It's like they dislike Musk but
| miss the boat to quit for just this reason.
|
| On the other hand I don't think have ever seen their posts on
| X, I mostly hear about them via their mailing list.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| The rise of fascism is EXACTLY what I think the EFF should be
| concerned about. Don't you see the connections? Digital
| privacy, government market manipulation, free speech, these are
| all core concerns of the EFF and they are all of even greater
| importance under fascism.
| bpt3 wrote:
| And how does picking and choosing which social media
| platforms they blast content onto fight fascism? Are Tiktok
| and Facebook leadership known for their antifascist stances?
| janalsncm wrote:
| Would you mind spelling it out for people like me, generally
| aware of the EFF but haven't been following it too closely?
|
| What ideological concerns are they focused on? Imo wanting
| digital privacy has always been ideological, and to the extent
| it has ever been part of a culture war they seem to have lost
| that war.
| poszlem wrote:
| Another victim of the long march through the institutions.
| Ir0nMan wrote:
| This reads as very performative. You don't have to choose between
| posting 10 times a day or deleting your account; you could just
| post less or use it for major updates.
| tonymet wrote:
| well put. if their mission is to help protect vulnerable
| communities, and the effort to post on X is near zero ( it can
| be automated or take just a moment manually), they are
| betraying their mission to help protect as many vulnerable
| communities as possible.
| cogman10 wrote:
| That's not EFF's mission. They are not an organization that
| deals in helping vulnerable communities. They are an
| organization dedicated to improving electronic ownership and
| privacy.
|
| At most, X only serves as a marketing/fundraising mechanism.
| Nothing more. And the EFF doesn't really need to do that as
| I'm certain their victories and fights will still be shared
| on X without them.
| lxgr wrote:
| But then how would I know where to get more regular updates as
| somebody following them there? It used to be a bannable offense
| to even link to your presence on a competing side; not sure if
| it still is.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > It used to be a bannable offense to even link to your
| presence on a competing site
|
| Huh? This sounds like you mean before elon "free speech!"
| musk but I can only imagine that, if it ever was a thing, it
| was a thing after. At some point a competitor's links were
| being blocked, a little 'oops'ie with 'the algorithm' of
| course. Facebook also pulled some of those over the years. I
| don't know about outright bans though, especially concerning
| Twitter before Musk
| darknavi wrote:
| I can't tell if you're being satirical or if this is some
| 1984 re-writing of history, but Twitter definitely banned
| linking to other social media websites under Elon's rule.
|
| > "We know that many of our users may be active on other
| social media platforms; however, going forward, Twitter
| will no longer allow free promotion of specific social
| media platforms on Twitter," the company said in a
| statement.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/twitter-bans-linking-
| to...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/18/business/twitter-ban-
| soci...
| theshackleford wrote:
| You seem to have misunderstood them because they are
| saying the same thing.
| spicymaki wrote:
| Performative expression is critical. You need to actually do
| the thing you believe and if it is of political significance
| say it and do it visibly. Otherwise there is no impact.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| If you do that constantly then people rightly start to write
| off your performances as insignificant. Everyone should pick
| their battles because we all have a limited number of fucks
| to give about what anyone else does.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Not being able to respond or comment to problems the
| foundation stands for on the most popular platform is... not
| that
| tts626 wrote:
| There will not be any impact. + All activism is performative.
| TZubiri wrote:
| I think this is better than having an account with the last
| post being from 2019, with no explanation, looking dead, and
| still being able to receive messages from users.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| You have to be performative about this. It's like holding a
| sign while protesting, that's the whole point.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Ah yes, classic advice. Remain neutral while the vile humans do
| not. You must be one of them.
| bradley13 wrote:
| So they're still getting a million impressions s month, and
| that's not interesting Anyway, putting something up on Instagram
| and then also on X - that's pretty low effort, no? Weird
| decision...
|
| Also: 1500 posts per year, so around 4 per day - a bit much.
| There just aren't four important topics to talk about each and
| every day. Honestly, I wouldn't subscribe to that either. Maybe
| that's part of why their numbers are going down...
| txrx0000 wrote:
| This is unfortunate. Elon despite his flaws opposes mass
| surveillance and censorship, and that's the general sentiment on
| X at the moment. He just retweeted the Telegram founder 20 hours
| ago. [0]
|
| I'm afraid we're being divided and conquered. The people pushing
| for mass control are attempting to reframe the fight for digital
| freedoms as a "leftist" talking point, so that they can later
| ride the populist wave and use its momentum to kill online free
| speech and general purpose computing altogether. Perhaps the EFF
| has been compromised, because it should not be falling for this
| trick. It would be wise to use all of the information channels
| available to reach as many people as possible.
|
| [0] https://nitter.net/durov/status/2041979377773133898#m
| BobAliceInATree wrote:
| Elon, the guy that will ban anyone on X at the drop of a hat,
| opposes censorship?
|
| Comical.
|
| > It would be wise to use all of the information channels
| available to reach as many people as possible.
|
| How about their website, which is accessible to everyone
| because it doesn't require you to log in?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Elon despite his flaws opposes mass surveillance and
| censorship...
|
| Sure, just like he was pro-free speech, until he suddenly
| wasn't.
|
| His broken promise not to ban @elonjet is still up.
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456
| cbmuser wrote:
| Would you call it free speech if the whole world was able to
| track your position anywhere in the world 24/7?
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| I would fly commercial
| jjk166 wrote:
| The world still has the ability to track it, this guy was
| just calling attention to publicly available, unencrypted
| data.
|
| Further, Elon said he considered it free speech he was
| deliberately protecting.
| traderj0e wrote:
| Of all the verifiable complaints I've heard about Twitter
| censorship, the best left-wing one was "they banned the
| Elon Musk jet tracker" and the right-wing was "they banned
| people for saying there are two genders." Anyone have a
| better one for either of these?
| mayneack wrote:
| Yes. If you're just making arbitrary choices on each
| instance you're not a free speech zealot you're just making
| judgement calls like everyone else.
| fontain wrote:
| Elon is anti-censorship when it's censorship of racism,
| homophobia, sexism and the other things the woke liberal left
| hate.
|
| Elon is pro-censorship for the things he doesn't like, like the
| word "cis".
|
| You can be happy that Elon is allowing alt-right speech, that's
| fair, he has brought that back to Twitter, slurs are finally
| allowed again, truly the speech we all long for, but anti-
| censorship as a principle? Please. Pull the other one.
| traderj0e wrote:
| On Twitter, "cis" is about as censored as racism. Neither one
| gets you banned, but you're warned when posting.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| > Elon despite his flaws opposes mass surveillance and
| censorship, and that's the general sentiment on X at the
| moment. He just retweeted the Telegram founder 20 hours ago.
|
| There are probably things more relevant about X than what it is
| that Elon Musk currently proclaims about his political
| opinions?
| rangerelf wrote:
| This is to laughably misguided that it leans toward malicious.
|
| I mean, you're talking about Elon, the Doge guy, the one who
| organized mass hoovering of citizens data from whatever sources
| he could get his grubby mitts on? That Elon?
|
| Opposed to mass surveillance??
|
| And then you sprinkle some commonly known truths on top to make
| your comment palatable ("we're being divided and conquered!"),
| and finally you add a dash of malicious speculation to seed
| some doubt against the organization ("Perhaps the EFF has been
| compromised!! It's a trick!!").
|
| No thanks.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| It is malicious, and you shouldn't be downvoted for calling
| out someone who is so obviously arguing in bad faith.
| inkysigma wrote:
| His anti censorship stance isn't necessarily born out by the
| data:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/25/elon-mu...
| nutjob2 wrote:
| Is this the same guy that bought Twitter and then had his
| tweets promoted above all others and the AI bot a simp for him?
|
| Whats is worse, censorship or that only those with money are
| heard? Who do you think is doing the dividing and conquering?
| Not everything is political, sometimes it's just a rort.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| You absolutely need to pop the bubble you're in, because what
| you believe is the opposite of reality.
|
| There's a reason cryptographers laud Signal (the protocol) over
| MTProto (Telegram's protocol), and Signal (the app) over
| Telegram (the app). Telegram is not E2EE by default, does not
| have E2EE for group chats, and does not have a good
| crpytographic protocol, and Musk has long been rallying against
| Signal.
|
| Under Elon Musk, DOGE exfiltrated and breached American's data
| from the major government agencies they broke into, exfiltrated
| information to private databases (with DOGE employees leaving
| with flashdrives), Russian IPs accessing NLRB systems with
| provided credentials, and we're even seeing DOGE's once-alleged
| US citizen master-database project come to proposal as a DHS
| project under the SAVE act.
|
| In just a year, Musk and DOGE helped to expand the US
| government's mass surveillance capacity beyond what we've ever
| seen. This is not surprising, since Elon Musk is aligned with
| the United States fascist movement, and mass surveillance is a
| hallmark of fascism.
|
| We have a much stronger surveillance state, owing to DOGE and
| Musk.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| Which part of what I said is the opposite of reality?
|
| I'm aware that Telegram is not E2EE by default, and you have
| to turn it on manually. But it's not true that Elon has long
| been rallying against Signal. In fact, he endorsed Signal a
| while back along with Edward Snowden. He also later
| criticized Signal, as well as other encrypted messaging apps.
| I remember seeing a podcast clip of him saying something
| along the lines of "none of them can really protect against
| the government spying on him", which is true. If you're a
| high profile individual like Musk, nation states will expend
| lots of resources to spy on you, and no messaging app will
| protect you from that. The point of encrypted messaging apps
| like Signal and Telegram is to raise the per capita cost of
| doing surveillance so that surveiling the entire population
| becomes prohibitively expensive, but it doesn't prevent
| targeted operations on an individual by determined state
| actors. Having multiple options for those apps is a good
| thing, even if the apps are individually imperfect, because
| the government will have to deal with multiple apps instead
| of one, and that takes more resources.
|
| As for the rest of your comment, those claims aren't true, at
| least not in the way you stated. DOGE has been accused of
| mishandling sensitive records, and that part might be true,
| but I've not seen any evidence pointing towards the
| mishandling being a part of a evil plot to strengthen the
| surveillance state and promote fascism. Mass surveillance was
| already a problem back in 2013 when Snowden leaked it. In
| fact, it was already a problem before Obama's first term, and
| Snowden held off on leaking it because he thought Obama would
| introduce reforms, which didn't happen. The surveillance
| state is not a recent fascist movement spearheaded by Musk or
| DOGE. And I think a lot of the vitriol towards Musk is
| manufactured. He occasionally lies and is prone to
| manipulation like everyone else, but he's not the
| supervillain you think he is.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| > encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram
|
| Telegram less of an "encrypted messaging app" than
| Instagram was (which, until May 8th, has optional E2EE apps
| using the Signal protocol). It's simply incorrect to think
| of Telegram as an "encrypted messaging app" when the
| default use case is not E2EE.
|
| > the mishandling being a part of a evil plot to strengthen
| the surveillance state and promote fascism
|
| DOGE strengthened the surveillance state. It does not
| matter whether or not it's tied to a singular intentional
| plot.
|
| > Mass surveillance was already a problem back in 2013
|
| Yes, and mass surveillance was a problem even before 2013.
| We saw it greatly expand especially under the Bush
| administration under the guise of the "war on terror". As
| you noted, we haven't seen Obama or Biden reform to account
| for expansions of power that happened under the preceding
| administrations. (Hopefully we can get another Watergate
| style realignment!) So, you have to think about the world
| in systems thinking, and you have to think about how the
| state of things are changing over time.
|
| Musk endorsed Signal in 2021, but since then he's
| denigrated it as "vulnerable", promoted Telegram (which,
| again, is not even in the same ballpark), blocked Signal
| for a period and banned users for posting them, and has
| promoted XChat (which stores keys and metadata serverside
| and which does not even have forward secrecy).
|
| Musk is a proponent of surveillance and censorship, not the
| other way around.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > He just retweeted the Telegram founder 20 hours ago.
|
| Wouldn't that only strengthen one's resolve to not get invested
| in anything Elon controls?
|
| Telegram started out as being the privacy option, not owned by
| Facebook, encrypted chats were possible long before WhatsApp
| did that (not sure if whatsapp still sent messages in plain
| text on TCP/443 when telegram launched with TLS). It was a
| thing, and I believed it, and the UX was and is amazing, but
| they _still_ haven 't rolled encryption out further (not even
| to desktop clients, much less expanding/switching the protocol
| for, say, group chats) and then I recently looked at this
| Telegram dude's Telegram channel and... well, that's when I
| cancelled my subscription.
|
| My only problem is: what platform could replace it? Signal
| doesn't scale with thousands of members; Matrix could not
| decrypt message; Wire seems to have abandoned their consumer
| products; XMPP has no market share so you're really starting
| from zero; some others like Jami have mediocre-to-bad UX;
| Threema is paid (would be fine by me if a reasonable fee lets
| 10 other people use it free in the first year, say); Discord
| would just be swapping one walled garden out for another.
| What's one to do? I'm just looking to be part of communities,
| not start a new hobby by hosting a public Zulip/Rocketchat
| server and trying to bring about an exodus and convince
| everyone that my server is better
| Arathorn wrote:
| On the Matrix side, "unexpected" decryption errors got fixed
| in ~Sept 2024.
|
| (There are still a few scenarios where e.g. if you delete
| your identity keys by logging out of all your clients, you
| may get "expected" decryption errors. We're still working on
| those.)
| bko wrote:
| > Musk fired the entire human rights team and laid off staffers
| in countries where the company previously fought off censorship
| demands from repressive regimes
|
| Is the contention here that there is more censorship on X
| compared to Twitter pre acquisition? Is X more heavily censored
| than Facebook or TikTok
|
| They go on to say they're still on Facebook and TikTok and
| explain:
|
| > The people who need us most are often the ones most embedded in
| the walled gardens of the mainstream platforms and subjected to
| their corporate surveillance.
|
| None of this is unique to Facebook and TikTok and not for X.
|
| > Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and
| organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day
|
| I'm pretty sure all these demographics use X as well.
|
| It's just so bizarre. If you want to reach people, esp people
| that maybe come from a different perspective from you, why would
| you opt out of the best way to get your message across?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Is the contention here that there is more censorship on X
| compared to Twitter pre acquisition?
|
| That's easy to sustain.
|
| Pre-acquisition:
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456
|
| Post-acquisition: https://x.com/elonjet
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I'm not sure you understand the definition of the word
| "more". A single example does not prove "more".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are lots of similar examples.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspens
| i...
|
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1993828797066748081
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I was not dismissing the comment's claim, simply the poor
| evidence. Your evidence is far better.
| notahacker wrote:
| Twitter's own first published transparency report under
| Musk acknowledged they suspended 3x as many accounts (for
| policy reasons other than spamming) in six months as they
| had done over an equivalent period just before he acquired
| it.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I was not dismissing the comment's claim, simply the poor
| evidence. This is better evidence, albeit uncited.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| To talk to a botnet? no thanks. You can decide to just not feed
| into twitter.
| inkysigma wrote:
| X under Musk has sustained more government takedown requests.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/25/elon-mu...
| amatecha wrote:
| Is there any site that keeps track of companies/orgs and/or
| noteworthy people who have left "X"? I've noticed some pretty
| significant orgs leaving in the recent year or two and have
| repeatedly wondered if there's some kind of list out there. I
| mean, it would just be a handy list to show people when I say
| something like "more and more people are leaving that garbage
| site" and they want receipts and I'm like... "uh the province of
| New Brunswick was the latest I saw" >_> I found this list of
| celebrities in the meantime, at least:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/twitter-celebr...
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| That is just like when those US celebs moved to Europe after
| Trump was elected!
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| This reads like the classic Youtuber whose annoyed their views
| dropped (this almost always amounts to 'people don't actually
| like your content as much as you thought').
|
| >We posted to Twitter (now known as X) five to ten times a day in
| 2018. Those tweets garnered somewhere between 50 and 100 million
| impressions per month. By 2024, our 2,500 X posts generated
| around 2 million impressions each month. Last year, our 1,500
| posts earned roughly 13 million impressions for the entire year.
| To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the
| views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
|
| It's incredibly unlikely someone at X shoved the EFF in a 'low
| visibility' bucket. It's much more likely they've simply updated
| their alogorithms and the EFF doesn't hit some engagement metric.
|
| They're still getting 13 million impressions by simply posting
| tweets, I really don't understand 'taking a stand' here. Instead
| of 13 million they'll simply get 0... The opportunity cost in the
| worst case is a human being copy pasting a tweet, there's plenty
| of software to schedule posts across platforms though, which
| would make it essentially free even in user time.
|
| Imo, they had a 'personal stance' motivation, and dug deep for
| any reason to argue for it.
| dpweb wrote:
| However if you view your content as valuable and the algorithm
| does not anymore, it's probably not the best platform for you
| to be on.
| pdpi wrote:
| > It's much more likely they've simply updated their
| alogorithms and the EFF doesn't hit some engagement metric.
|
| It's even more likely that Twitter's audience in 2018 was
| fairly supportive of the EFF's goals, but X's audience in 2026
| is either indifferent or hostile.
|
| As they put it:
|
| > X is no longer where the fight is happening. The platform
| Musk took over was imperfect but impactful. What exists today
| is something else: diminished, and increasingly _de minimis_.
| lambdas wrote:
| I don't feel their stance is "I'm not getting enough attention
| and it's all Musk's fault and I'm leaving".
|
| More "X is simply not worth our time anymore". I can't say with
| any certainty that X is on a death spiral (personally it does
| feel that way), but the kind of crowd who have remained in
| spite of Musk's many public embarrassments (and the handling of
| Grok deep fakes and women) probably aren't the kind who are
| passionate about the EFF
| carefree-bob wrote:
| If that was really true, they wouldn't make a big post about
| why they are leaving, they would just turn off the lights and
| go elsewhere.
|
| The problem for the EFF is that they don't have anywhere else
| to go with nearly the reach of Twitter. Bluesky has only 15
| million monthly active users. They could pin their hopes on
| Facebook, but it's hard to think of a criticism of Twitter
| that wouldn't apply to Facebook.
|
| Basically the problem for EFF and a lot of the progressive
| activist orgs out there is that they want a mass global
| audience but a platform with progressive activist moderation,
| and that was possible in the heyday of the Biden
| Administration, but starting with Musk's purchase of Twitter
| and firing of much of the progressive activist staff,
| together with the loss in the Missouri vs Biden consent
| decree, it's getting harder to find a truly mass audience
| social media platform that is willing to enforce progressive
| activist social norms.
|
| As this realization sinks in, we are seeing organization
| after organization rage quit the mass market platforms and
| join more niche platforms that is moderated to their niche
| taste (e.g. mastodon, bluesky, etc), and this is just one
| example of that. The EFF of old would never have seen this as
| a problem, but for the present day EFF it's a big problem.
|
| Another option is a medium without engagement at all. You
| post your stuff and that's it, for example you can
| quote/amplify but not comment. No zingers, mocking quote
| tweets, no clapbacks, etc. I think an organization like the
| EFF could tolerate that, they want a pure write-only medium
| where you make a PR announcement that gets lot of attention
| but is not subject to any disparagement.
|
| Big orgs would love a system like that, but I'm not convinced
| it could draw a lot of eyeballs.
| otherme123 wrote:
| I work as a consultant for a small media, zero politics and
| very technical, and they report the same trend for X for the
| last 5 years or so. I was surprised that they told me they
| still want the "share on Twitter button" and keep the Twitter
| account but their activity there is nil, for the following
| reasons combined: 1) they have thousands of followers and
| thousands of impressions, but the engagement ratio (likes,
| comment, shares per follower) is abysmal compared with the
| other networks, 2) the format is different from other networks,
| while you can create something common for LinkedIn or Facebook,
| the Twitter share requires image re-crop and text rewrite (they
| don't use Instagram, the content doesn't fit) 3) while the main
| site receives a lot of clicks to read the full content (and see
| the ads that drive the income) from LinkedIn and Facebook,
| Twitter doesn't send clicks (people just read the header, at
| most hit the like-heart, and keep scrolling). Their conclusion:
| Twitter doesn't work any more for them and is getting worse
| (that said, BlueSky is even worse for them). Even spending 30
| seconds there to polish a publication are 30 seconds wasted.
|
| I don't know the numbers for EFF, but having 400K followers on
| X and getting between zero and five comments per post if you go
| back a couple of weeks (to skip today's fire), between zero and
| 20 retweets... sounds like a failed platform. They get better
| numbers from Facebook, a dying platform, with half the
| followers. They get similar or better numbers from Instagram
| with less than 10% of the followers they have in Twitter.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >between zero and 20 retweets... sounds like a failed
| platform.
|
| Or they're tweeting something their followers don't care
| enough about to engage with, so the platform stops funneling
| their post to other followers.
|
| Again, youtubers complain about this same kind of thing
| regularly. It's almost always just a 'you' problem, your
| content is simply not engaging.
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| More should follow them. That website is a complete cesspool at
| this point and if you're not noticing it I worry about how it's
| gonna effect your psychological wellbeing later in life. The
| internet is bad enough as it is, but that site is at another
| degree of awful.
| numpad0 wrote:
| > We called for: > - Transparent content moderation:
| Publicly shared policies, clear appeals processes, and renewed
| commitment to the Santa Clara Principles > - Real
| security improvements: Including genuine end-to-end encryption
| for direct messages > - Greater user control: Giving
| users and third-party developers the means to control the user
| experience through filters and interoperability.
|
| Makes sense. Especially the point 1 and 3 had been long-standing
| issues for Twitter since before the acquisition, and the
| situation had worsened since - only except that means to those
| became successively more adorably braindead.
| kjksf wrote:
| Are they getting that from Bluesky? Mastodon? LinkedIn?
| Instagram? TikTok? Facebook?
|
| Of course not.
|
| And yet they leave X and only X.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Because those aren't occupied by horrible people. Freedom is
| intersectional, you can't fight for freedom while indirectly
| supporting the oppression of others. Sometimes, the benefits
| of more eyeballs are worth it but there aren't enough people
| left on twitter for it to be worth supporting
| orwin wrote:
| I don't know about the others, but mastodon: yes to all
| three, since before twitter was bought by Musk. Twitter
| interoperability use to be good though, but i don't know what
| they did after locking the public API. Do you have a more
| limited access to twitter api now? or is it still locked?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Why are you guys so unprepared against someone pointing out
| that disciplinary actions and criteria for those on Twitter
| had always been broken? It's obvious that
| canned_responses.xlsx you were given didn't include responses
| for that, and that's weird.
|
| Twitter account bans had always been so broken that account
| bans, account ban evasions, tweet deboosting avoidance, etc.
| has all, long, been natural parts of life on it, since at
| least 2010s. I might as well argue that it would not have
| gone so far "down", psychologically, to the point that its
| old management would have sold the entire thing to Musk and
| for people to genuinely believe in positive outcome under
| him.
|
| The very least you guys could have done it is to _recognize_
| the fact that inconsistent, unclear, unenforced policies of
| _old_ Twitter existed && are not consistent with yours. You
| guys don't even do that. How even.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| You don't seem to be aware of the context of the quote, and
| you don't seem to be aware of the state of social media.
|
| 1. These are not reasons they listed for leaving X. These are
| lists of problems they identified on Twitter. They did not
| leave until 2026.
|
| 2. Yes, you get better transparency with Mastodons, owing to
| the fact Mastodons are usually operated and moderated by
| people with an interest in transparency. BlueSky moderation
| is also done more transparently (see its labeling system) and
| in ways that are less absolute (see BlackSky, etc).
|
| 3. Yes, you get better user control with Mastodons and
| BlueSkys. There are third party apps which work well, owing
| to them having open APIs. BlueSky - Mastodon bridges are
| common.
|
| 4. It's not "only X". EFF hasn't posted to identi.ca in 13
| years, Flickr in one year, or comp.org.eff.news since 2000.
| an0malous wrote:
| I closed my X account Tuesday evening after the US-Iran ceasefire
| was announced. Something just snapped finally and I realized
| there's no value in monitoring the situation and all these
| accounts are just monetizing my energy and attention with no
| value provided.
|
| The only social media I'm going to keep for now is Reddit and
| YouTube because I think it's still a net positive for the
| educational content, but even those are on the chopping block for
| me. The whole Internet is being capitalized into junk food,
| people just push out sensationalized low calorie garbage because
| they get paid per view. It's sad to see.
| sirbutters wrote:
| How the hell is this comment shadowed? It's 100% true.
| loeg wrote:
| You're keeping _Reddit_ of all places? If you want a net win
| for attention and value, Reddit ain 't it.
| orwin wrote:
| Reddit is a lot of different things and places. Some
| subreddit are basically PhpBB forums of old. Though now that
| discord seemingly took over, most of the closed communities i
| was part of went there, i don't think i connect more than
| once a month on average.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Reddit has been decreasing in quality for years, and
| especially since 2023. But it's compartmentalized by
| subreddit, and some subreddits have degraded more slowly than
| the rest of the site. You can still follow these subreddits
| through RSS, and old.reddit can still be navigated without
| JavaScript.
|
| AFAIK Reddit is the last mainstream social media site with
| such niceities, even mbasic.facebook.com is gone as of 2024.
| an0malous wrote:
| I don't follow any of the main subs, just niche interest ones
| that don't have an alternative. I might try building up a
| community on Lemming, but there's just very little activity
| there right now.
| latexr wrote:
| Regarding YouTube, I can't recommend enough turning off your
| history (even the front page is gone, it's glorious) and
| subscribing only to select creators via RSS. I only see what I
| want to see, from creators I care about. Recommendations on the
| right side are always relevant to the video I just watched.
| an0malous wrote:
| Oh thanks, I didn't know you could do that. I do like the
| front page recommendations sometimes but maybe I'll try this
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I left EFF last year. I was a top-tier donor for 20 years, but
| EFF has changed from neutral rights-focused activism into
| questionable political activism. Leaving X is just another
| example of it. Would EFF be leaving X if Elon had not taken over?
| Does EFF actually believe that there's more free speech on
| Facebook?
| kevincrane wrote:
| Just to clarify, until recently you were under the impression
| that the political advocacy organization you donated to had no
| political opinions of their own?
| loeg wrote:
| GP is complaining about a shift from one set of positions to
| a different set.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| GP (me) is not complaining about shifting positions. EFF
| was fairly neutral for the prior two decades, and even
| though I did not agree with everything they did, I thought
| they were worthy of support. Last year, they began filing
| some lawsuits without much research or diligence, and
| without much of a legal basis. I waited a while and
| watched, and I saw them becoming more and more partisan.
|
| I liked it when they were more about defending rights and
| less about attacking the "right."
| ethanrutherford wrote:
| the EFF didn't move from political neutral. The right
| just moved more right.
| loeg wrote:
| > not complaining about shifting positions
|
| > EFF has changed
|
| > EFF was fairly neutral ... Last year, they began ... I
| saw them becoming more and more partisan
|
| I mean, I read that as a shift.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Read it as you wish. I would have been just as displeased
| if they had swung "right" instead of "left."
| mghackerlady wrote:
| They're leaving because the platform because of a combination
| of not enough real people and elon turning it into a nazi
| hellscape. The visibility isn't worth the hit to brand
| reputation which makes sense if you recognise liberty as
| intersectional
| dbingham wrote:
| In a two party world where one of those parties has been
| captured by a fascist movement, there is no "political
| neutrality". You're either pro-fascist or anti-fascist. And if
| you care about rights at all, including free speech, then the
| correct alignment is anti-fascist.
|
| And yes, this is a US centric comment. The EFF is a US based
| organization and the center of gravity of the tech world they
| deal with is in the US.
| bitwize wrote:
| People who fight for individual rights kinda have a problem
| with Nazis. Big freaking surprise.
| quaverquaver wrote:
| X is a rare platform where an _individual_ manipulates the
| algorithm per his own _personal_ political whims. And, yes he
| is explicitly racist and anti-democratic. No org that cares
| about freedom should contribute to what is really a personal
| effort to commandeer the information environment.
| summa_tech wrote:
| Well, consider that the alternative is a _corporation_
| manipulating the algorithm per their own _corporate_
| political needs. That's really not much of an improvement.
| Unless you also think that corporations should have more
| rights to political speech than individuals, which goes even
| further than the usual representation of Citizens United.
| benlivengood wrote:
| The EFF has always been against a large political segment,
| namely the status quo of "long-term intellectual property good,
| DRM good, businesses have the right to do whatever they want
| with data they collect, businesses have the right to
| arbitrarily use de-facto monopolies on computing platforms"
| which make no mistake were never neutral positions about
| rights.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| I can't believe such a nonpolitical organization would do
| this!!! Come on, you either have to be lying or you were never
| paying attention.
|
| https://www.eff.org/press/releases/activists-sue-san-francis...
| https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-activists-demonstrate...
| https://www.eff.org/press/releases/media-alert-eff-argues-ag...
| https://www.eff.org/press/releases/law-enforcement-use-face-...
| https://www.eff.org/press/releases/trumps-blocking-people-hi...
| https://www.eff.org/press/releases/comprehensive-legal-refor...
| latexr wrote:
| > changed from neutral rights-focused activism into
| questionable political activism.
|
| What exactly are "neutral rights"? Every right is political,
| and none of them are neutral, you'll always find someone who
| supports them and someone who opposes them. Remember when
| Nestle's CEO said that calling water a human right was an
| "extreme" opinion? And there used to be a time when people
| claimed owning slaves was their right.
|
| What you are calling "questionable" right now is just something
| you don't agree with. I have a feeling history will support
| EFF's position over yours.
|
| > Would EFF be leaving X if Elon had not taken over?
|
| That's like asking "would activists fight for your rights if no
| one was violating them". I mean, no, but that doesn't say
| anything. Had Twitter not have been sold but they eventually
| did the same things Elon did, then the EFF would probably have
| left just the same. Had Elon taken over but not done what he
| did, they probably wouldn't have. The EFF is not on a personal
| vendetta, this is about the service as it is right now.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| >What exactly are "neutral rights"?
|
| Rights that apply to people even if you disagree with them,
| like free speech. Something both the left and the right seem
| to hate.
| latexr wrote:
| > Rights that apply to people even if you disagree with
| them
|
| That is true of every right. A right that doesn't apply
| when you disagree isn't a right.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| It is hard to someone has been giving EFF >=$1000 a year, every
| year, for the past 20 years, who also did not consider EFF to
| be engaging in political activism for 19 of those years.
| stale2002 wrote:
| C'mon. You know what they meant. They are clearly saying that
| the EFF used to to focus on pretty specific, arguably more
| bipartisan ideas and initiatives and now it has switched to a
| much more broad strategy that has strayed from its original
| mission. Surely, you should be able to understand this pretty
| basic point.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| I do not agree that your statements are implied by GP, I do
| not agree with the suggestion that the reason for that is
| my incapacity to understand, and I do not agree with the
| new statements that you are introducing here either.
| runako wrote:
| > bipartisan ideas
|
| An interesting thing about this era is that things which
| were bipartisan in the 2000s are now seen as partisan. Some
| examples of things that I remember as bipartisan in the
| 2000s which are now seen as left-leaning ideas: NATO
| membership, suffrage for women, freedom from state
| religion, the Forestry Service, national parks.
|
| Things are changing.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| This seems completely unnecessary and performative. I have a hard
| time understanding how reducing their reach could possibly be
| helpful to the goals of the organization. I'm definitely going to
| keep donating to them, but I'm concerned.
| ruszki wrote:
| How do you know that they reduce their reach to their target
| audience in any considerable way? According to their article
| their reach on X is about 3% of what was 7 years ago, and god
| knows how much is bot from those 3%.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| Here's my simple criteria.
|
| I'm on Twitter/X, but none of the other social media sites
| they list (I mean, I'm on LinkedIn, but not in any sort of
| regular way). So their reach to me personally is diminished.
| Obviously I'll still go on their website if I want to keep up
| with their activities and I'll probably still hear relevant
| news about them though.
| ruszki wrote:
| It seems to me that you realized at the end that "their
| reach to [you] personally is [absolutely not] diminished".
| crims0n wrote:
| I don't understand, does it cost them something to copy/paste
| their posts to X?
| busterarm wrote:
| No, they even would get money for the engagement they get. This
| is purely moral grandstanding disguised as something else.
| thevillagechief wrote:
| Not sure this is true anymore. X is now just pay to play.
| Organic engagement is completely dead there. It's all a
| virality game now.
| watwut wrote:
| Moral grandstanding is much better then vice grandstanding.
| Moral grandstandings are good, especially in a world that
| think being moral makes you a looser.
|
| That being said, there is no disguise.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Brand reputation. Every brand that chooses to use X implicitly
| supports X, even if they're not verified & paying X money.
| crims0n wrote:
| Going against the network effect out of principal doesn't
| seem to be a winning strategy when the goal is to raise
| awareness about issues.
| loeg wrote:
| Does anyone seriously think EFF posting to X yesterday
| tarnished their brand? Be real.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Yes, people do in fact judge others for their associations.
|
| If you don't that is fine but I imagine you would also hold
| the view that not posting on X shouldn't be controversial
| then either.
| diath wrote:
| Not really, this is the kind of argument you only ever see
| on Reddit/HN, normal people don't care.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| Who is "normal" in this context? Because people who
| support the EFF's mission are pretty clued into what is
| happening and do care.
| loeg wrote:
| All dozen bloosky users have been sure to chime in as
| well.
| horacemorace wrote:
| My neighbor blares Fox in their kitchen every day. I view
| them with the same flavor of suspicion as someone who posts
| there.
| jdashg wrote:
| I do, yeah. Hope that helps!
| AlexAplin wrote:
| The advertisers that evaporated and left behind a lot of no
| label dropshipping scams seem to think so. Did a lot of
| them eventually come back because there is some audience to
| squeeze numbers from? Sure, but I also wouldn't negate that
| many didn't and aren't coming back because it is Elon's
| playground now.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah, I do. People & brands having a link to an X account
| is a huge red flag. It's a public statement that you
| support child pornography and the end of democracy in the
| US. That's going to tarnish a brand pretty majorly.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I applaud the move and only wish they would have done it
| sooner.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Yes, absolutely. The CEO of X did Nazi salutes and promotes
| white genocide narratives, Grok has created posts praising
| Hitler, and when people used Grok to publicly generate CSAM
| for free, they fixed it by putting it behind a subscription
| platform. The only people I know and respect who are still
| on X are sex workers, because X is still the most porn-
| friendly social media site.
|
| When you say "Be real", you're pleading with people to take
| your statement more seriously. But it's simply the case
| that people have very strong and negative opinions about
| nazis and child pornography.
| episode404 wrote:
| some of the things you believe aren't true, no matter how
| strongly you believe them
| rockemsockem wrote:
| That is idiotic.
| orwin wrote:
| I've coded a 3rd party tool that could post to mastodon/twitter
| at the same time around 2020 (plenty of idle time during
| covid). I lost twitter API access, never bothered to try to
| make it work again (i hate working with interface clickers). to
| be clear, i don't really post on social media, it was just an
| experiment because i had faaar too much time and thought at the
| time that this kind of product could be interesting.
|
| But i would bet social media managers use similar tools, and
| the fact that no one can access twitter API might add just the
| little bit of friction you want to avoid.
| 6thbit wrote:
| Any chance they keep an RSS?
| crims0n wrote:
| Yes: https://www.eff.org/rss/updates.xml
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Their logic for why they're on TikTok and Facebook seems sound to
| me, but doesn't that same logic apply to X? I kept waiting for
| the explanation but it never came...
| mghackerlady wrote:
| there isn't enough people left there to be worth the tradeoff
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| 13 million impressions a year isn't enough to be worth copy-
| pasting a few posts from Facebook?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Not if enough folks think your posting there is a sign
| you're an ass.
|
| If you hang out in a bar with KKK memorabilia everywhere -
| and open the replies of any reasonably popular news story
| on X before complaining that's not a fair comparison -
| people make conclusions off your presence, even if you're
| personally there for the tasty beer.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Those people would have long left X though so I'm not
| sure why the existing people would think that. If you're
| talking about external people judging them about posting
| there, no one thinks that, like the sibling comment
| mentions. People will just think at worst that they might
| need the reach of X so they begrudgingly post there.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I have never seen KKK posts on X. Either you're
| commenting from personal experience, in which case, wow,
| who were you following, or you're going off reporting
| which would seem to be a bit skewed.
| EricDeb wrote:
| X "impressions" are not worth very much
| rc_kas wrote:
| At least half of those are bots.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| I had that exact same thought. The argument they presented
| applies to any walled garden, they gave no reason why X would
| be the exception.
|
| It's clear this is about politics, and I'm not opposed to that,
| Elon is not awesome, but trying to justify it otherwise seems
| kind of shady.
| ethanrutherford wrote:
| It's pretty damn simple actually. Their target audience by
| and large doesn't use twitter anymore, either.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| They're a global issues advocacy organization. "Their
| target audience" is everyone, or at least it ought to be if
| they're doing their job right.
|
| Ignoring people of any demographic or political persuasion
| would be a serious strategic mistake in my opinion.
| trelane wrote:
| > "Their target audience" is everyone, or at least it
| ought to be if they're doing their job right
|
| Yes. _If._
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| The current electronic frontier is AI and X is _the_ place
| where high level AI researchers, developers, influencers
| and users converse. IDK where else has more of the
| intellectual discourse on AI. Definitely not the likes of
| instagram or TikTok. Sure, those platforms are more
| censored and kid friendly, but I don 't think that's really
| who the EFF should be focusing on as their audience.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| This is a great point and it makes we worried that EFF
| might be pivoting to be less about the technological
| frontier and more about social issues.
| cabirum wrote:
| So uh, could impressions decrease across the board, not only on
| X. Like, social platforms have peaked years ago and the downward
| trend is completely organic.
| AlexAplin wrote:
| We have probably crested over some peak, but you would not look
| at the broad numbers and say 3% of a peak is organic to that
| trend. That is a dying/dead website, at least from the position
| of someone running socials for EFF.
|
| https://flowingdata.com/2025/10/03/passed-peak-social-media-...
| mikaeluman wrote:
| I tend to almost only use X now. I really can't use Facebook or
| Instagram since the introduction of "ad breaks" because I haven't
| given them ability to give me "personalised ads".
|
| Don't get me started on tiktok...
| codeflo wrote:
| Nothing recent made me feel quite as old and out of the loop more
| as the slowness with which I realized that this is about x.com
| (Twitter), not x.org (the windowing system).
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| You're aging well
| kushalpandya wrote:
| That too would very likely be seen as deeply political.
| mindslight wrote:
| After reading about Wayland for 10 (?) years and thinking it
| was some huge deal, I finally took the leap as I was redoing
| my window manager anyway and it was quite easy (at least on
| NixOS). Heck virt-viewer (one of my main apps) is still
| running under Xwayland because the performance seems better.
| Gare wrote:
| 10 years ago Wayland was in much worse state. It started
| being good in the last few years, though some features are
| still lacking.
| mindslight wrote:
| Oh for sure. The point is the way I hear it talked about
| even today is as if it's going to be really great at some
| point in the future, but involves a lot of off-the-
| beaten-path tinkering if you want to use it right now.
| But there really wasn't much tinkering!
|
| Honestly with "AI" helping a lot of the boring
| configuration tedium, I feel like I might finally reach
| the stage where I _like_ my desktop environment config.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The only reason why I'm not running Wayland on my Framework
| laptop is that there's some really weird bug where it
| hardlocks the system, and after I force-reboot it, the
| audio chip doesn't come back up unless I drain or unplug
| the battery. X11 doesn't have this issue.
|
| Of course, this was also several years ago, and it's
| possible the bug has been fixed. Maybe I should try Wayland
| again.
| noosphr wrote:
| Probably more reasonable.
|
| I'm not sure why xorg exists if their sole purpose is to kill
| x. As per the many posts by their developers.
| raverbashing wrote:
| It would be ironic if Xorg launched a twitter competitor
| using a custom update protocol (an X extension) over the
| network and TCL
| mghackerlady wrote:
| knowing how xorg currently operates (it doesn't, it has a
| successor) it'd be a wayland protocol negotiated over dbus
| and mainly opposed by the GNOME people
| markkitti wrote:
| I had the exact same experience.
| hasley wrote:
| I was thinking of X11 as well, but did not feel old - until I
| read your text. ;)
| a_paddy wrote:
| My favourite microblogging platform is way.land
| jerlam wrote:
| Whenever I see X used, I wonder if the author will return to
| replace the variable with the actual name.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I get really really tired at the back and forth with Wayland
| and all that, but I would put up with reading rants about
| windowing systems everyday if it meant I never had to think
| about this X again.
| testfoobar wrote:
| I remember being dazzled by Xeyes.
| cobbaut wrote:
| My first thought was "so they go commandline now?". Because X
| for me is still "the graphical interface".
| ks2048 wrote:
| X11? What is that, one of Musk's children?
| davidw wrote:
| My grandparents were pretty WASPy, conservative people who lived
| in northern Idaho. And they _hated_ the white supremacist
| /neonazi groups up there with a burning passion. They were of an
| age to remember people going off to fight in Germany and Asia
| against that kind of ideology.
|
| They would have been absolutely appalled and ashamed to see a
| business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with
| talk of a "white homeland" and similar comments.
|
| I find it deeply dismaying that people consider that "just
| politics" or that opposing it is "ideological". We can argue all
| day about the proper rate of corporate taxation or debate the
| best way to implement environmental regulations, and I will not
| consider you a bad person if you disagree with me. But the kind
| of crap coming out of that guy? That's beyond politics.
| quantified wrote:
| Well, all of these are politics and ideology. It's OK to have
| an ideological bent of some sort or other. You can indeed be
| highly intolerant of those who are intolerant in certain ways.
| You can hate certain kinds of hate. And you can call out greedy
| callous bastards wherever you see them. It's basically being
| discerning.
| r-w wrote:
| GP is saying neo-Nazis are "not just politics, but also
| something worse". You're not really disagreeing with them,
| maybe just missing their point about some ideologies being
| worthy of planned exclusion from a civilized society. Aka the
| paradox of tolerance. That's what makes some political
| stances "not just politics".
| Terr_ wrote:
| I find a lot of the paradox-ness goes away when one look at
| such arrangements a peace-treaties. (Or at least, it gets
| subsumed into a broader set of respective and _respectable_
| dilemmas.)
|
| For example, just because Country A "wants peace" doesn't
| mean they do nothing as Country B gets taken over by a
| revanchists regime declaring the treaty evil and massing
| troops the borders. It would be ridiculous (and
| depressingly realistic) for some critics to say: "They
| don't really want peace, or else they would be a nation of
| pacifists who would let themselves get annexed right now
| without bloodshed.)
| sigmarule wrote:
| I view this paradox as just an effect of poor framing. We
| should not look at it as "I am against
| intolerance/hatred/XYZ", but "I want to minimize
| intolerance/hatred/XYZ." The first focuses on local,
| case-by-case contexts, the latter in aggregate. Some
| XYZs, in some contexts, have properties that make them
| effective local tools to mitigate themselves in an
| aggregate context, which is probably a better candidate
| paradox here.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| But since when did using a business's product come to require
| sharing (or not sharing) political views with the business's
| owner? Seems to me that this is what has changed.
|
| _PS. It 's amazing to me, and worrying, the anger and
| vituperation this position is provoking. It was once almost
| consensus. To take the obvious parallel, buying a newspaper did
| not imply agreement with the reactionary press baron who owned
| it._
| etchalon wrote:
| No one would say they used "David Duke's Whites Only Car
| Wash" but "didn't support the owner's politics."
| habinero wrote:
| It's always amazing how much that kind of person will
| pretend not to get it, and whine about being a pariah.
| iwontberude wrote:
| The conflict seems as old as ever. Labor vs union-busting
| robber baron.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Most people hold a set of political views, while also
| admitting a spectrum of competing views into their personal,
| financial, etc. lives. For the average person, doing business
| with a neo-Nazi (or someone who is "merely" neo-Nazi
| adjacent) exceeds that spectrum. This is eminently
| reasonable, and has not changed significantly in a long time.
| pavlov wrote:
| In the case of X, the business owner is aggressively pushing
| his political views on users by heavy-handed methods like
| prioritizing his own posts in algorithmic feeds and
| overriding the context of his AI bot to parrot his pet ideas.
|
| If you went to a restaurant and it had Confederate flags and
| pro-slavery memorabilia on the walls, would you think: "Well,
| that's just their political view, I don't have to share it to
| eat here?"
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > pushing his political views on users by heavy-handed
| methods like prioritizing his own posts in algorithmic
| feeds
|
| He's also using his fame and fortune to much more directly
| fund and promote political change in places like the UK. It
| goes beyond this one service, but moving away from this
| service weakens his position more broadly as well.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo%27s
|
| It was real, and even as a kid I knew it was wrong.
| kstrauser wrote:
| For a long time I thought that was a fever dream from my
| childhood. Nope. I still can't quite believe that was
| real, but I personally remember it.
| giardini wrote:
| I will always remember fondly the story of "Little Black
| Sambo". I was at that point in childhood where judgement
| was not yet developed but I _could_ appreciate a good
| story, especially if fantastic things happened. After
| all, _I_ was a little boy like Sambo.
|
| So I feared for Sambo when he encountered the tigers. I
| was elated when he eluded them by first racing around the
| tree and then climbing it. I was mystified how tigers
| running round and round a tree could turn to butter (but
| set that aside so I could continue the story and reduce
| my fearful suspense). I was relieved to see that Sambo
| was safe. I identified with Sambo (although I am neither
| black or brown).
|
| Hoorah for the fantastic tales from many lands that
| filled my childhood and those of my brothers and sisters
| with wonder!
|
| I am still a child when I read fairy tales and fables.
| davidw wrote:
| It's not the plot/story that are racist. It was the slurs
| and illustrations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Little_Black_S
| amb...
| Ms-J wrote:
| People have absolute freedom of expression.
|
| "If you went to a restaurant and it had Confederate flags
| and pro-slavery memorabilia on the walls, would you think:
| "Well, that's just their political view, I don't have to
| share it to eat here?"
|
| Yes? If you go to the southern part of the United States,
| there are many restaurants with Confederate memorabilia and
| Confederate flags on the back of truck windows.
|
| Some trucks even have hairy testicles hanging off the hitch
| haha!
| davidw wrote:
| If people get gender-affirming care for their trucks,
| that's their own business, but no, no I will not eat in a
| place with a Confederate flag.
|
| I find the idea of venerating an ideology that held that
| it was ok to hold human beings in bondage from the moment
| of their birth to their death to be abhorrent.
| Ms-J wrote:
| It is absolutely your right to express your self by not
| going to these places.
|
| That is the beauty of freedom. You make the choice.
| watwut wrote:
| > People have absolute freedom of expression.
|
| And that icludes not using x. And it includes
| criticising, mocking or talking about what x owner does.
| Ms-J wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
| notahacker wrote:
| > If you went to a restaurant and it had Confederate flags
| and pro-slavery memorabilia on the walls, would you think:
| "Well, that's just their political view, I don't have to
| share it to eat here?"
|
| Even more so if it's not just a personal decision to get a
| bite to eat, but one taken by a lobbying organization about
| where to host events promoting speech rights, and the new
| owner is _co-opting their language of speech rights_ to
| justify his policy of putting Conferedate flags behind the
| bar (whilst actually barring more people he doesn 't like
| than the old owner as well as scaring off most of the
| people who supported the organizations mission and pasting
| KKK event ads flyers over the top of theirs). At some point
| continuing to hang out there and host events for ever
| diminishing numbers of people who mostly seem to
| reinterpret everything you say as screeds against 'woke'
| ceases to be a "politically neutral, pro-free speech"
| stance.
| abustamam wrote:
| Last year my sister visited me and she wanted to go a
| nearby karaoke bar because she loves karaoke. I'd never
| been to this place before.
|
| We get there and it's all white people, and there was an
| older gentleman singing a country song. We take a seat at
| an empty booth underneath a confederate flag and a sign
| about the 2A. We joke about how rednecky the vibes were.
|
| For context, my wife is Chinese and wears a hijab, my
| sister and I are southeast Asian, and my sister's boyfriend
| is Indian. Couldn't have a more non-white group if you'd
| asked for one.
|
| Despite feeling deeply out of place, but not unsafe, we got
| some songs in, ate some meh bar food, and had an all-around
| good time. My sister's boyfriend chatted with some people
| in the smoke room. Everyone was friendly.
|
| A lot of people really don't care about the politics of the
| establishments they visit. They just want to have a good
| time.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > the business owner is aggressively pushing his political
| views
|
| That's always been the case with Twitter - Dorsey was just
| as bad, but just with a different set of political views.
| (Views that, I presume, the EFF is aligned with).
| davidw wrote:
| In the past, most business owners would perhaps quietly
| donate to a party or candidates, but probably wouldn't hang
| their ideology out in front of people all day, every day.
| Think about someone like Warren Buffett. He has political
| views, but they are not something he's out there loudly
| airing on a huge platform.
|
| And like I pointed out, these are not just any old "political
| views". It's extremist stuff that in the past would have
| gotten you ostracized. I'm old enough to remember Trent Lott
| losing his Senate leadership position, for instance.
|
| Also, because of "network effects", simply providing content
| to Twitter makes the site more valuable.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| This stuff sold well in the 20s and 30s and contributed to
| the initial wishy washy US response to the start of WW2.
| Imagine a priest way more influential than Rush Limbaugh
| rooting for the 3rd reich. Now imagine a rich Afrikaner who
| doesn't begrudge their precarious social standing.
| gedy wrote:
| Yes, but also much of this was due to Stalin/USSR having
| alliance/agreement with Germany on attacking Poland.
| Many/most? US leftists were pacifists until Hitler
| attacked the USSR.
| bluGill wrote:
| There have always been business owners who shouted their
| ideology, and others who were quiet. You might remember
| some cases more than others, and some have had a louder
| voice than others, but both go way back.
| __loam wrote:
| Have there been any so brazen as Musk, who used his
| influence to infiltrate our government and usurp the
| congressional power of the purse directly and illegally?
| bluGill wrote:
| Details are different, but there have been lots of
| examples over the years. Andrew Jackson had his "kitchen
| cabinet". There was
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal,
| Watergate. There are plenty of other examples. In large
| part if something is an example or not depends on your
| politics - people tend to overlook the mistakes of
| someone they support.
| duxup wrote:
| I expect people to be different.
|
| I don't expect them to provide a platform for people who make
| it a point to hate others and advocate for removal of their /
| my rights and so on.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It didn't used to be nearly as common for owners of midsize
| to large businesses to be loudly outspoken politically,
| especially those holding more extreme views. It used to be
| common sense to keep that sort of thing to oneself, if only
| to avert PR disaster. Not knowing when to shut up was more of
| a hallmark of the stereotypical two-bit owner of a crappy
| local business that perpetually struggled to grow.
|
| This helped keep a neutral or at worst ambivalent image of
| these owners in the minds of the larger public and thus for
| the most part didn't factor into purchase decisions.
|
| It's now easier than ever to see the true character of a
| business owner and so it's only natural that customers have
| begun to factor in this information in purchase/usage
| decisions.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Not really. People have boycotted products for political and
| ideological motivations for a very long time. The change
| recently is that people stopped caring as much. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boycotts
| munk-a wrote:
| There are plenty of business' products that I use where I'm
| unaware of if I share or don't share the owner's political
| views and I'm totally fine using them. Elon Musk has made it
| impossible to not be aware of his political views by
| constantly shoving it down our throats.
| archagon wrote:
| Musk's account is the most engaged and followed account on
| Twitter. So Twitter is de facto his global soapbox.
|
| (And most of the other top-engaged accounts are MAGA
| accounts: https://www.natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-
| become-a-freak...)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is the way they express those views.
|
| I mean, there are a lot of conservatives I respect including
| Mitt Romney, Robert Nisbett, George Will, and Thomas Sowell.
| Then there are the jerks like William F. Buckley and David
| Horowitz. [1]
|
| Then there is Musk who's below even them -- but I am not
| particularly offended by Hobby Lobby or Chicken-Fil-A.
|
| [1] if you want to know the criteria I use take a look at
| this book https://www.amazon.com/Watch-Right-Conservative-
| Intellectual...
| maxbond wrote:
| It isn't strictly required and it hasn't changed; it's always
| been complicated and it's always been a balance. This isn't
| speculation or a hot take. Consumer boycotts are as old as
| the hills, so it's an observable fact that our relationship
| with firms and their politics has been complicated and
| negotiated for a very long time.
|
| Regarding your later edit:
|
| > PS. It's amazing to me, and worrying, the anger and
| vituperation this position is provoking. It was once almost
| consensus. To take the obvious parallel, buying a newspaper
| did not imply agreement with the reactionary press baron who
| owned it.
|
| It really shouldn't surprise you that if you express
| something that's a bit of a hot take that you'll get a
| reaction to it. You shouldn't draw any more of an inference
| from it then "people are passionate about this and some of
| them disagree with me." Whether people do so amicably or not
| has at least as much to do with the problems with the
| Internet as a means of communication as the issue itself.
|
| Regardless, this status quo you refer to was mostly imagined.
| How much pressure people exert to boycott some platform or
| another waxes and wanes, because the underlying disagreements
| wax and wane in relevance. That doesn't really make it a new
| thing, just a new phase in the same unfolding history.
|
| That's why you refer to the press barons in the era of yellow
| journalism - the past is not an undifferentiated mass where
| everyone held some set of values that have fallen from favor.
| To the people who were alive at the time, things were
| contentious and in flux and the future was uncertain.
|
| We have a tendency to flatten the past and imagine it as a
| straightforward narrative where we necessarily arrived at
| where we are today because of the inevitable interaction of
| historical forces, and similarly to flatten the people who
| lived at the time as being caricatures who reliably held a
| certain set of values. But they disagreed with each other,
| viewed the future as up for grabs like we do, and they
| changed their minds as history unfolded.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Do you believe that boycotting is a new behavior?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| They know nothing changed. They want to pretend otherwise.
| huxley wrote:
| A long and storied history, the abolitionists used it
| pretty extensively well before it was named:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott
| notatoad wrote:
| X/twitter is a media company. choosing which media products
| to purchase based on political values is how it has _always_
| worked.
| xigoi wrote:
| Choosing media _producers_ based on their politics is how
| it always worked. Social networks are not producers of
| their content.
| some_furry wrote:
| No, but they decide the moderation policy that
| incentivizes the content produced (by nature of selecting
| which users feel comfortable using their product and
| which do not).
|
| For example, I do not feel comfortable using the same
| platform as people that post child sexual abuse material.
| X's Grok is infamous for generating such content on
| demand. I opt to use platforms that do not have this as a
| first-class feature. X has selected _against_ my
| participation and _for_ the participations of people who
| hold a contrary opinion to me. Even if Grok stops
| producing CSAM, that selection bias will persist.
| jounker wrote:
| And yet people struggle to get Elon Musk out of their
| feeds on Twitter.
| sixothree wrote:
| And yet we pretend he's the only person x pays to post
| content.
| sgnelson wrote:
| I've got a book for you to read...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
| InitialLastName wrote:
| If I have trillions of monkeys on typewriters generating
| every possible combination of characters, and then from
| what they "produce" I carefully select what I want to
| show everyone who comes to my website, how responsible am
| I for what my visitors see?
| notatoad wrote:
| they pay people to create content for their platform, and
| use their editorial control to determine what gets
| surfaced for you to see.
|
| how is that not "producing content"?
| habinero wrote:
| Social pressure has literally always existed. Nothing has
| changed lol.
|
| And I wouldn't call white nationalism a "political" view,
| like it's some ordinary kind of opinion. That's sanewashing
| something disgusting and disgraceful. That type needs to get
| shoved back under the rock they crawled out from.
| alterom wrote:
| _> But since when did using a business's product come to
| require sharing (or not sharing) political views with the
| business's owner?_
|
| Since 18th century at the very least; see: anti-slavery sugar
| boycott[1].
|
| That's if you absolutely ignore the parent's point that
| _political views_ are things like specifics of policy, not
| whether some people should be considered subhuman.
|
| _> Seems to me that this is what has changed._
|
| It seems so because you don't know history, and didn't do a
| one-minute Google search for history of successful boycotts.
|
| The article I'm linking is in the "bite-sized" category.
|
| Enjoy.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3rj7ty/revision/7
| pythonaut_16 wrote:
| This question is a deflection and I suspect is intentionally
| disingenuous since it literally ignores the main point of the
| parent's comment.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| In turn I would argue that this kind comment, i.e. an
| entirely unfalsifiable calumny, is a poisonous waste of
| space that would best be deleted by the moderator (along
| with the current one of course).
| ModernMech wrote:
| TWFKAT (the website formerly known as Twitter) is not a
| product, it's Elon Musk's safe space. He bought it to be his
| sandbox and to use it to soothe his constantly battered and
| fragile ego. His own personal clubhouse where he sets the
| rules, and he's the ultimate authority. You can join if you
| want to be a part of his cult of personality, but don't fool
| yourself that you're dealing with a "product" and a
| "business".
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's because they don't stay in their lane as business
| owner, but use the proceeds of that business (and a bunch of
| others) to influence world politics in a way that no single
| individual should ever be able to.
| mixdup wrote:
| Well, part of the product is Elon's posts and his editorial
| choices that go into the algorithm. Also your example of the
| newspaper is also odd, because newspapers were and are well
| known to be influenced by their publishers and people very
| often will trash them if they have a contrary ideological
| bent
| jounker wrote:
| Im not sure where your sense of history is coming from. One
| of the US's founding events was a boycott of British goods
| for political reasons.
| multjoy wrote:
| Aptly, given Elon's ancestry, did the whole anti-apartheid
| movement simply pass you by?
| pron wrote:
| First, as others have pointed out, it's always been like that
| up to a point. But that's not the problem with X.
|
| I didn't leave X when Musk acquired Twitter, and I'm not
| scandalised by people's political positions, even when
| they're extreme. But a position and behaviour are two very
| different things (e.g. being a racist vs making a Nazi salute
| on live television). I left when the atmosphere amplified by
| the site became... not for me. I won't go into a pub full of
| football hooligans not because I disagree with their club
| affiliation but because their _conduct_ creates an atmosphere
| that 's not for me.
|
| As for newspapers (even ignoring those with political party
| affiliations, something that was common in newspapers'
| heyday), most of them preserved some kind of civil decorum,
| and those that didn't weren't read by those who wanted some
| decorum. How civilised some environment is is not a matter of
| political position.
|
| Also, there were always some people of influence that held
| extreme views. But such people behaving in an uncivilised
| manner in public was less common (and certainly less
| accepted).
| caconym_ wrote:
| Personally I left Twitter less because Musk owns it now, and
| more because Musk's changes turned my previously tolerable
| feed into a deluge of far right drivel. Expecting me to keep
| using it is like expecting me to keep shopping at a grocery
| store that replaced its bread aisle with a swastika-festooned
| exhibit glorifying the conquests and exploits of Hitler and
| his Nazis---even if I am generally apolitical, I will have to
| start shopping somewhere that sells bread.
|
| Notwithstanding the above, given how powerful network effects
| are in social media, I think boycotting platforms operated by
| people like Musk (I struggle to find the words to fully
| encompass how repulsive he has become) is arguably one of the
| more effective forms of protest available to people, and I
| encourage them to exercise it.
| TZubiri wrote:
| It's not like they are separate at all, the owner is very
| active on the site as both a user and a god-moderator.
| superb_dev wrote:
| Probably around the same time as the Citizens United
| decision. Supporting a business with your money also means
| supporting the things they choose to spend that money on
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| Buying a newspaper has always been a political act
| UltraSane wrote:
| When the business owner is in control over the algorithm that
| determines what you see on the product he owns.
| stonogo wrote:
| You might investigate the origin of the term 'boycott.' It
| turns out that ostracizing someone's business for political
| reasons has a long and cherished history. Colt and S&W were
| targets because their owners cooperated with Clinton's gun
| control efforts. And to your point, there are plenty of
| examples of that:
| https://www.unz.com/print/SocialJustice-1939may22-00001/
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| The Body Shop was fairly vocal about animal testing and Ben
| and Jerrys was famous for their political messages on their
| products and that was in the 80s. And Levi Strauss and their
| LGBTQ+ support.
|
| If you were not aware of it, it is not because it wasn't
| happening. Historically, excepting media companies, left
| leaning companies have always been outspoken about this while
| right leaning ones believed in the idea of focusing on
| business and avoiding overt political messaging.
|
| So companies like Exxon were not broadcasting their views but
| were still lobbying government directly to change the laws in
| a way that benefit them (see deregulation).
| LightBug1 wrote:
| There's "outspoken" and "political messaging" ... and then
| there's supporting Nazi-adjacent characters.
|
| Elon Musk will always be just a Giant, Nazi-aligned, Dildo
| on my scorecard.
|
| Obviously that doesn't matter to anyone. But it matters to
| me.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| Why should I contribute to the wealth of a man who wants
| people like me dead? Why should I tolerate others who happily
| contribute to my own oppression?
| xorcist wrote:
| > To take the obvious parallel, buying a newspaper did not
| imply agreement
|
| That ... does not hold at all. You wouldn't buy or subscribe
| to an openly Nazi paper unless you are a full blown white
| supremacist.
| yongjik wrote:
| I keep saying this, but do you remember a single political
| remark made by owners of Toyota or BMW? Do you even know who
| owns these companies without looking it up?
|
| People aren't raking through Musk's obscure remarks to find
| something objectionable. Musk has been force-spraying his
| political opinions onto everyone for quite a while, and
| people have gotten tired of it.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Politics is all-encompassing. You don't get to declare your
| beliefs privileged and above contestation. We always have to
| fight these battles.
| slibhb wrote:
| > I find it deeply dismaying that people consider that "just
| politics" or that opposing it is "ideological". We can argue
| all day about the proper rate of corporate taxation or debate
| the best way to implement environmental regulations, and I will
| not consider you a bad person if you disagree with me. But the
| kind of crap coming out of that guy? That's beyond politics.
|
| Elon's behavior is truly disgraceful, but spouting dumb shit is
| not "beyond politics".
| threatofrain wrote:
| You wish to lead with "dumb shit" in framing why people have
| a problem with Elon Musk? Why not lead with the Nazi salute
| at the presidential podium? That would more quickly get to
| the point.
| slibhb wrote:
| Nazi salutes are protected speech and not "beyond
| politics". Yes it's disgraceful, and it's reasonable to
| leave his platform. But it qualifies as "dumb shit".
| kenjackson wrote:
| Protected speech can be beyond politics. Politics doesn't
| subsume all protected speech.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I think the point is to distinguish 'political opinions
| that I am comfortable disagreeing with people about, and
| can still be friendly with people who strongly disagree
| with me' and 'morally unacceptable opinions that I will
| neither listen to nor associate with anyone who hold
| them'.
|
| There are many political opinions that I strongly believe
| in that I am comfortable disagreeing with people on. I
| believe everyone has a right to health care, and that
| society should guarantee basic necessities for everyone.
| I even feel that belief is a morality based belief.
| However, I can accept people disagreeing with me, and can
| accept that there are some strong arguments against my
| belief, and that good people can disagree with my
| position.
|
| On the other hand, if someone believes that certain races
| should not have the same rights, or that women should be
| given less agency than men, I will not entertain that
| argument or accept that it is just a political dispute.
| That is a fundamental moral issue, and is beyond JUST
| politics.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| That is a good example of "dumb shit". No one believes Musk
| is a Nazi, but they try to make hay with it anyway.
| ssully wrote:
| You do not have to look beyond Elon's own Twitter
| accounts posts, retweets, and likes, to see that he is a
| full fledged white supremacist. Calling him a Nazi is
| appropriate.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| Ok, I went and looked at his last 50 or so tweets. I
| didn't see anything that supports what you are saying.
| LastTrain wrote:
| I live in Idaho I know loads of people and family who I would
| have bet would reject what is happening in today's Republican
| Party but man was I wrong. With very few exceptions they gobble
| it up.
| romanhn wrote:
| North Idaho specifically has been a hub for white power
| movements for a while:
| https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/mar/27/north-idaho-
| an...
| LastTrain wrote:
| Yes. In the 90's in particular. I'm old and I was in Idaho
| at the time. What I remember, and I try in vain to remind
| my conservative family and friends, is that both parties
| wanted that shit rode out of town on a rail back then. It
| is now the dominant world view in Idaho conservative
| politics. I will point to the "accomplishments" of our last
| legislative session as evidence.
| davidw wrote:
| This is exactly what I'm talking about. My grandparents
| were no paragon of 'racial justice' but did they ever
| hate those Nazis. Back then, the Nazis were excluded from
| 'polite society' and had no hope of gaining power through
| normal democratic channels. That has changed.
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > That has changed.
|
| That was changed.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Sure, so did my dad, and Idaho politicians who are still
| in office to this day. Guess what? They don't hate Nazis
| any more. Well, they don't hate Republicans acting like
| Nazis. If a Democrat were to throw a Nazi salute they'd
| be upset about that.
| junon wrote:
| Well. Treasure Valley felt remarkably more WS-ey to me this
| last time visiting home. The time before that was right
| before the election, so it feels like it's gotten even
| worse over time.
| davidw wrote:
| That timeline leaves out the bombs around Coeur d'Alene.
|
| https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/10/01/Coeur-dAlene-
| bombing...
|
| I specifically remember my dad talking to his parents about
| that one on the phone and being scared for them.
|
| Like my other comment below though, part of the reason they
| resorted to violence is because at that time, they had no
| hope of participating in mainstream, electoral politics.
| scoofy wrote:
| If you read _Anti-Semite and Jew_ , one of Sartre's main
| points about the rise of anti-semitism is the intentional
| adoption of a "nothing matters, lol" attitude of its
| adopters.
|
| The entire point is to invite/allow otherwise "good" people
| to be able to think it's not entirely serious, and that
| caring is pearl-clutching and is lame.
|
| That way they can vote for their tax cuts, wear their "team"
| colors, and keep voting for "their" party.
|
| It happens with successful sports teams all the time. Tiger
| Woods just got in his fourth (likely under the influence) car
| wreck, and sports media is already making excuses or talking
| about how hard he must have it. It's the same process.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew
| imiric wrote:
| This is a controversial opinion, but I do think that there are
| objectively right and wrong sides of political ideologies.
|
| At its core, there's nothing wrong with conservatism. Wanting
| to preserve traditional cultural and social values; the nuclear
| family with a father and mother figure; theology as the moral
| backbone--all of these are reasonable ideas. But somewhere
| along the way this got associated with xenophobia, racism,
| bigotry, intolerance, hatred, and all kinds of evil shit, which
| goes against even the teachings of their holy scriptures. How
| people can hold these conflicting viewpoints is beyond me.
| Either they're using this ideology as an excuse for their
| heinous thoughts and behavior, or they're intellectually
| incapable of introspection and critical thinking. Maybe both.
|
| I'm moderately left leaning, and the extreme left has also
| undoubtedly lost the plot, but at least that side espouses
| tolerance, humanism, and some ideas that I find appealing but
| don't consider essential to humanity, such as secularism,
| skepticism, liberalism, etc. There are objectionable ideas on
| the left as well, but these are often a reaction to the
| intolerance of the other side, and rarely a product of the
| ideology itself. I do think this is needed to a certain extent,
| as complete tolerance is a weakness that opportunistic people
| will exploit (paradox of tolerance).
|
| So to me it's clear that one side is on the right side of
| history, and the other one isn't. One is trying to move us
| towards a better future and well-being for everyone, while the
| other is sabotaging this to destroy and hoard riches for a few.
|
| I'm still unable to process that people like Trump, Putin,
| Orban, et al, are able to not only be successful, but to
| accumulate unimaginable wealth and power. It's not only that I
| disagree with their politics. It's that I'm baffled by the fact
| that we put people like this in power, and that the majority
| are unable to see the harm they're doing to the world, only so
| that they can enrich themselves and their very close inner
| circle. These are signs that humanity is still held back by
| some deeply rooted social traits which I'm not sure we'll be
| able to overcome before it's too late. Part of me is also
| disturbed by the negative role technology is playing in all of
| this, yet we're all entranced by its appeal to do anything
| about it.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| One of the five fundamental pillars of conservative thought,
| as phrased by wikipedia (which is itself merely paraphrasing
| Russel Kirk, a foundational of post-war American
| conservativatism), is:
|
| > A conviction that society requires orders and classes that
| emphasize natural distinctions.
|
| Racism and bigotry are not errant additions to conservatism,
| they're a logical extension of one of its foundational
| pillars. (Though that is not to say that the left is not
| without its racism and bigotry as well, it's just less of a
| natural fit)
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| > I'm still unable to process that people like Trump, Putin,
| Orban, et al
|
| I am sure you put these people in the same basket by no
| logical reason, as they are very different and the reason
| behind each of them is very different. As an Eastern European
| I understand a bit more Orban and Putin, I don't have to
| agree with them to understand how things work, and they the 3
| have almost nothing in common but being targeted by the
| political left as the enemy.
| lentil_soup wrote:
| > the 3 have almost nothing in common
|
| Come on, you know what they mean. They're authoritarian
| populist leaders with a disregard for the rule of law.
| Cruel men that rejoice in the "destruction" of their
| political enemies both figuratively and literally. Men with
| little emotional control that suffer from severe anxiety at
| anything that doesn't fit their very narrow view of the
| world.
| gzread wrote:
| Political ideas don't come in isolation. You cited some
| relatively benign aspects of conservatism. But those are
| symptoms of a deeper process, and that same process brings
| both the benign aspects and the malignant aspects. People's
| stances on these issues aren't independent. They are
| correlated by some common factor that causes all of them, and
| we're not quite sure what that is and it may have
| evolutionary underpinnings. We call the common factor
| conservatism (or progressivism, when it's flipped the
| opposite way).
| tehjoker wrote:
| A lot of it is based in social position / class. People
| that benefit from the existing ways unsurprisingly want
| them to continue. People that do not benefit, would like to
| see it changed.
|
| Conservatives are a minority because we live in an unequal
| society, so necessarily the people benefiting and wanting
| that to continue are that same minority. There are a
| relatively small number of people that are confused about
| their class position or are aspirational and confuse their
| current position with actually achieving a social leap.
|
| Of course, then there are personality types that metabolize
| this in different ways, but the basis of politics is
| materialism. A lot of money and words are deployed to
| obscure this, which has been known for over a hundred
| years. I was reading Thucydides (440 BCE) and in the first
| few pages he grounds significant political events in
| materialist forces.
| paufernandez wrote:
| I could put my signature on your comment as if it was mine,
| wouldn't change even a comma.
| slantedview wrote:
| > I find it deeply dismaying that people consider that "just
| politics" or that opposing it is "ideological"
|
| It depends: if you support far right viewpoints, like wanting
| to deport minorities, the MSM will cover it as just politics.
| If you support far left (for America) viewpoints, like, wanting
| free healthcare, the MSM will cover it as if you're a radical
| communist.
| nostrebored wrote:
| This is entirely framing.
|
| To most people "I want to deport minorities" would imply
| nothing about citizenship status.
|
| Someone with the opposite opinion would frame it as "open
| borders", which is an extremist viewpoint globally and also
| not what people on the left in the US are advocating for.
|
| Media coverage in the US is partisan. This is not an
| insightful viewpoint or nearly as incendiary as you're making
| it out to be.
| throwthro0954 wrote:
| >throwing those salutes
|
| It was an awkward gesture that he did once in the moment, you
| are making it sound like he is going around doing it all the
| time. He's a bit of an eccentric, I genuinely believe he wasn't
| intending on it coming off like that.
|
| > "white homeland"
|
| Where is this quote available?
| ngetchell wrote:
| He did it twice and knew exactly what he was doing. The crowd
| he was in front of ate it right up.
| culi wrote:
| > It was an awkward gesture that he did once in the moment
|
| He was quite self aware of what he did. He immediately
| followed it up by visiting a rally for the far right in
| Germany.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Good. Now leave TikTok and Facebook as well. People who care will
| find out what you are up to, and people who don't won't see you
| on social media anyway.
|
| I left Twitter, Facebook, et al about a decade ago. And I can
| assure you: You will _never_ miss any important development.
|
| The notion that we need to plugged into Twitter, X, whatever, to
| stay up to date is simply false.
| lxgr wrote:
| Personally I don't use it for anything I can find pretty much
| everywhere else as well, but there are still a few people whose
| posts I consider interesting that only post on X.
| jesse_dot_id wrote:
| Astounds me that anyone is still using that platform after seeing
| how Musk treated the engineers when he took over.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| You'd be surprised how easy it is for people to
| compartmentalize their principles. Many do it day to day every
| time they purchase something online that was probably made
| using less than ideal labour practices.
|
| Still, I'd advocate to leave social media in general. And
| certainly to get off twitter.
| reg_dunlop wrote:
| Hmm, I'd argue what you call "compartmentalize their
| principles" is in fact, NOT having principles.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong: I'm asserting that having a
| principle is an inalienable belief that actually guides
| behavior, not selectively applies to behavior.
|
| Though generally: yes, I agree: get off twitter, and I'd go a
| step further and say..minimize all social media involvement.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment. But if we go this rigid with
| it, we might find that the majority of humanity does not
| have principles.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Lots of good discussion there still if you follow the right
| people and block certain categories of discussion. If you use
| lists then you'll see no suggested content beyond who you
| follow.
|
| I'm more astounded that people think every single part of it is
| a cesspool when in reality there are gems to be found that
| aren't in any other X alternative like Bluesky or Mastodon or
| (lol) Threads.
| Lord_Zero wrote:
| This is a poor take. "You can make this mismanaged steaming
| pile of bot-infested garbage better if you just filter
| everything!"
| satvikpendem wrote:
| How is it a poor take? Yes that's exactly what I said to
| do. It's the same as Reddit, I don't read whatever garbage
| is on r/all, I follow specific subreddits. Honestly people
| should curate no matter what social media they're on and
| find ways to stop seeing suggested content; my Instagram
| shows me only people I follow too, via a third party
| app/mod.
| btown wrote:
| This would be true if the algorithm changes were limited
| to for-you feeds. But the larger problem is that the set
| of people willing to pay for X are boosted in replies. So
| if that set of people, which tends towards a certain
| political bias, is hostile towards a poster, that poster
| will be driven away from posting on X.
|
| The net result is that X shows breaking news, in the same
| way that the (infamous) meme of bullet holes marked on
| the WWII plane only shows part of the story - the people
| who have departed the platform aren't posting, and thus X
| is only breaking news from a subset of people.
|
| This might be fine for certain types of topics. For
| understanding the zeitgeist on culture and politics,
| though, you can't filter your way towards hearing from
| voices that are no longer posting at all.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I don't care about culture and politics on X, in fact it
| is something I actively block. By discussion I mean tech
| news and trends, ie how is someone using the latest AI
| model or what new project was created, that sort of
| stuff. The people I follow provide me that, not politics.
| If you're there for politics then I agree with your
| point, look elsewhere.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| On this Instagram is far worse than X. Yeah, their
| suggested content rarely is the sort of thing that
| offends delicate sensibilities, but it is generally
| irrelevant slop and Meta always seems to be conspiring to
| trap you in it, giving you few options to remove it from
| your feed.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Yep, thankfully there are mods to remove it all.
| nkohari wrote:
| The problem is that there isn't really an alternative. The
| discussion is still happening there and nowhere else.
| (Trust me, I've looked.)
| poisonarena wrote:
| OSINT, retrogaming, fantasy art, simpsons memes, music tech
| news, celebrities, bizzare art projects.. I love my
| experience on X. I dont make any lists or anything.
| ghshephard wrote:
| I was recently at a brown bag at work - regarding enablement of
| AI in the workplace (it was awesome - all over the roadmap) -
| and one of the audience asked the speakers (a very diverse
| group of people) how on earth they keep up with all the
| developments in AI?
|
| All six of the speakers immediately said Twitter was
| realistically the only place you can keep up with the
| conversation. Having an extensively curated list means that
| anytime anything breaks (and often a few hours before) you are
| going to hear about it on X/Twitter.
|
| I would love to know if there is anything even close to the
| reach of X. It has a _lot_ of problems - but if you want to
| track breaking news, I can 't think of anything else close to
| it.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Well, Twitter has a lot of separate spheres. It's pretty easy
| to curate just tpot (the part that concerns itself with the
| Bay area, venture capital, and so forth) by following the
| right people and then engaging with posts that are on-topic.
| alex1138 wrote:
| bsky is meant to hold the promise of control your algorithm,
| I don't see why that can't be the model going forward
| supern0va wrote:
| The problem is largely one of community. The folks talking
| about AI are still primarily on X and haven't moved over.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| The tech seems great, the people don't
| threetonesun wrote:
| Even when it was Twitter drinking from the firehose didn't
| really make your life better. I don't need a two sentence
| breaking update from a Miyazaki baby to stay on top of this
| stuff, and quite frankly if they can't bother to make a blog
| post or press release it's probably just noise any way.
| theahura wrote:
| The big issue with this approach is that it will destroy your
| sanity for things that are often a big bag of hype with
| nothing underneath. I often find HN to be better because
| things that get on the front page are vetted beyond 'someone
| on twitter hyped up a thing'
| lucb1e wrote:
| > things that get on the [HN] front page are vetted beyond
| 'someone on twitter hyped up a thing'
|
| Interesting take. I'm not aware that anyone is doing vote
| rings or vote buying very successfully (considering that my
| own blog also makes it at an expected rate, and I know
| there isn't a group of friends voting that up) but I kinda
| assume that this is a thing for some of the bigger launches
| where they are hoping for conversions. Beyond a defined
| group coordinating their posts or votes, though, surely
| HN's front page can't be seen as vetted beyond "oh this
| looks trendy/hype"? People don't vote only after trying out
| the product or reading the full article. In many cases that
| would mean voting after it has already disappeared off of
| the front page for good
| klueinc wrote:
| I had to reluctuntaly create an account on twitter after
| years because of the exact same reason. AI research
| discussion is more active there than anywhere else. I've
| tried to use nitter's rss feed to stave off of the platform
| but it was limiting.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| My goodness, the only branch of work that I can think of
| where knowing something a few hours earlier is probably day
| trading also.
|
| Seriously, if you're working on anything worthwhile, you can
| wait for the weekly digest. Everything else just seems like
| hyperiding.
| Zetaphor wrote:
| You can still stay pretty up to date (at least in AI)
| without even being on X, since everything distills out to
| every other platform anyway. Between /r/LocalLlama and the
| ThursdAI and Latent Space newsletters, I'm at most only a
| few days away from whatever the latest hype is.
| ghshephard wrote:
| I absolutely agree with your sentiment - but it is often
| the case where you will get into the office at 9:00 AM -
| and everyone is talking about the biggest
| release/development that morning - and by lunch it's kind
| of old news and people have moved on to new thing - and so
| by the time you are interesting in talking about the thing
| that happened last week - implications, use, whether it's
| legit or just hype - people have all moved onto the new
| thing.
|
| HN is a nice _consolidated_ view - and I pull up the home
| page 2-3 times a day (and have done so for 10+ years every
| day) - but, there is a firehose of information coming in on
| X - particularly if you have a very highly curated list -
| and some people are _insanely_ high signal - Karpathy for
| instances always seems to zoom in on important things.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| He banned me after I replied to his tweet with my display name
| set as "Elon's Musk".
|
| I think I lasted <1 week after this takeover.
| sixothree wrote:
| Almost as bad as saying vaccines are safe and effective.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's cheaper to try to extort more out of a sucker than setting
| up a proper decentralized alternative. That's how I personally
| see what's going on, that nobody is moving out but everyone
| focus on gaming the system.
| xigoi wrote:
| Astounds me that anyone was using the platform even before Musk
| took over it.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Of all the things he did or said, this is pretty benign
| mindslight wrote:
| While I agree with where the EFF is generally coming from, it
| would make much more sense to just syndicate posts from a libre
| solution. They could even do adversarial interoperability things.
| Imagine something akin to a Matrix bridge such that replies on
| Xitter show up on Masto or some other libre protocol solution, so
| they (and others) can engage with replies right in the libre
| ecosystem. Or perhaps every nth of their xits not being the
| original post verbatim, but rather a link directing people to a
| web implementation of the libre solution with links to go deeper
| into that ecosystem. This type of thing would be perfectly in
| line with the EFF's goals. And not being able to get it together
| to do even this much is quite sad.
| oulipo2 wrote:
| At long last. It should be the case with everybody.
|
| Those who stay there because "it's practical", or worse they like
| it, or worse they support Musk, should be ashamed
| jaronilan wrote:
| Everything old is new again...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tSOTQPUQoU
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| I just wanna remind people that this website is full of elon's
| drones and bots who mob flagged any criticism of DOGE for months
| on end. A lot of the "outrage" expressed in this discussion is
| likely faux.
| bakugo wrote:
| Posts about US politics that have nothing to do with technology
| and are otherwise uninteresting get flagged because HN is not
| the place for that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
|
| If you just want to talk about how much you hate the current US
| administration with other people who also spend all their time
| talking about how much they hate the current US administration,
| there are much better places for that, such as r/politics.
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| DOGE posts had everything to do with technology and silicon
| valley
| bakugo wrote:
| DOGE itself is related to technology, but the posts about
| it often aren't. The ones that at least pretend to invite
| some sort of tech-related discussion in the comments
| generally do well.
| jeltz wrote:
| Even the posts which had to do with technology were
| flagged so it definitely felt more like Elon bots or Elon
| fanboys than something organic.
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technofeudalism
| ModernMech wrote:
| Elon Musk posts about self driving car technology coming in
| the next 3 years (for 10 years): very technology related,
| super cool, straight to the front page! Take my money!
|
| Elon Musk takes effective control of government functions by
| bribing incoming President, uses power to close
| investigations into his driverless car technology that is
| currently running amok on city streets causing death and
| destruction: not technology related, off topic and
| uninteresting. Downvote and flag.
| BoggleOhYeah wrote:
| I imagine that a good chunk of the HN user base looks and acts
| like those two dweebs that were deposed for their involvement
| in DOGE.
|
| Nothing but arrogance and avarice.
| vardump wrote:
| I don't use social media at all, unless you count HN as such.
|
| I think the only practical consequence is that EFF loses some
| fraction of audience.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| Ahh, eff it, I'm also leaving :-p
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| So they are chasing engagement, and X isn't giving them the
| attention they think they deserve.
|
| The golden days of the sentinels driving traffic without you
| paying for it are over, and they won't come back.
| Lord_Zero wrote:
| Yeah, pretty sad to try and package it around morals. There
| were 2 dozen cataclysmic events on X since Elon walked in with
| the kitchen sink but THIS is the final straw. "Not my views!"
| rapax wrote:
| "Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and
| organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day."
|
| What was wrong with just saying people instead of this nonsense?
| EFF has been a joke for a while now so has every organization
| that does something for people. It's just a box that can be
| ticked when someone asks something stupid like "who protects some
| imaginary rights".
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Are they leaving because of low views? This means they are more
| concerned about views than anything else? I thought any sane
| company wants as much exposure anywhere no matter the political
| stance or other views.
| cragfar wrote:
| It's pretty obvious nobody here uses social media because EFFs
| pages on Facebook, Bluesky, and TikTok get like tens of
| impressions per post if that.
| pino83 wrote:
| If we would talk about my local pizza restaurant here: Very nice
| move.
|
| For EFF: That's ~15 years too late, and way too specific. Their
| job (without them ever having realized in fact) was to generate
| some force against these centralized commercial walled gardens,
| where we have our public discourse, with some opaque algorithms
| deciding what goes up and what goes down.
| proee wrote:
| Leading out with "The numbers aren't working out" is a bit
| disingenuous. If they were "working out", would you continue to
| stay? If the answer is "no", then just remove the numbers talking
| point in your justification altogether.
| sepisoad wrote:
| bye!
| tamimio wrote:
| I feel I am grateful that I never used social media even when
| they were cool and fun, I always thought it's vanity "farming",
| except now it's some people's full time jobs in grifting and
| being edgy just to farm impressions aka money. Social media is
| ruined because of monetization, it tapped onto the oldest
| vulnerability in humanity: greed.
| pmdr wrote:
| > We'll Keep Fighting. Just Not on X
|
| Yeah, somewhere where regular people that aren't terminally
| online won't ever have the chance to see it. This is a dumb
| decision. I'd very much like for open, distributed social
| networks to win, but that's not a reality we'll be living in
| anytime soon. X, for better or worse, gets you eyes, more so than
| any other alternative social media.
| supern0va wrote:
| >X, for better or worse, gets you eyes, more so than any other
| alternative social media.
|
| But that is actually what they called out: they're not getting
| eyes anymore. Views at X have cratered so hard that it's barely
| worth the time.
| takoid wrote:
| But it's worth their time to stay on platforms like Bluesky
| and Mastodon? Something isn't adding up.
| VHRanger wrote:
| There's presumably engagement on those two.
|
| It's better to have a smaller core of highly engaged people
| than a mass of disengaged eyeballs glazing over.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| Does it have to be either/or?
| philistine wrote:
| Volunteer your time to do a dual strategy with content
| that fits both. Comms takes time, the EFF is adapting its
| comm strategy.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Retreating into smaller and smaller echo chambers where
| they get their way?
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| They're also still posting on LinkedIn, Instagram,
| TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube (in addition to BlueSky and
| Mastodon). It's silly to suggest that anything outside of
| X is an echo chamber, or that one must communicate on a
| platform dominated by white supremacists to expose your
| ideas to a diverse audience.
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| On average, they're getting <9,000 views per post on X.
| With 100 - 150K followers on both Bluesky and Mastodon, I'd
| expect their impressions to beat those X numbers.
|
| But as they say in the article, their reason for leaving
| isn't solely the low impressions. It's the low impressions,
| plus "Musk fired the entire human rights team and laid off
| staffers in countries where the company previously fought
| off censorship demands from repressive regimes," plus X's
| unwillingness to give users more control, consider end-to-
| end DM encryption, or offer transparent moderation.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| You can just look at the numbers. They're seeing 15x more
| engagement on BlueSky, and even more engagement on Mastodon
| compared to X:
|
| X post: 124 comments, 79 reblogs, and 337 likes
|
| BlueSky post: 245 comments, 1400 reblogs, and 6.2K likes
|
| Mastodon post: 403 reposts, 458 likes
|
| There's more ROI posting on BlueSky or Mastodon, even
| ignoring the fact that BlueSky and Mastodon are projects
| clearly more aligned with internet freedom than X is.
|
| (edited for clarity)
| philistine wrote:
| And the EFF is also looking at conversion rates for those
| views. Are you convinced that the Elon-pilled still on X
| are interested in donations to the EFF compared with the
| weirdos on Mastodon?
| poisonarena wrote:
| cant they just copy an paste the same messages? like are
| they trying to manage critical 'seconds' and the eff?
| archagon wrote:
| Well, perhaps it's time to reconsider your perception of
| Bluesky and Mastodon.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > Something isn't adding up.
|
| Yes, it's your inability to do even the most basic
| verification of the data underlying your understanding
| before making claims.
| SirMaster wrote:
| Worth the time? Can you not just use some automation or tool
| to post your stuff to multiple platforms including X?
|
| I find it really hard to believe that even with lower views
| on X than the past, that it's literally not worth the tiny
| about of effort to get their messages posted there.
| rconti wrote:
| Nobody who's not terminally online ever used Twitter.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I was about to say, Twitter has long been one of the largest
| collections of terminally online people and that's only
| gotten worse as various groups have abandoned the platform
| and social media as a whole has seen a decline. Most people
| who have a life spend their time elsewhere on the web or
| don't participate in social media at all.
| bigyabai wrote:
| I don't know any X user that I wouldn't describe as "terminally
| online" and the same goes for the Twitter days too.
| ethersteeds wrote:
| Do regular people that aren't terminally online use X? I don't
| know any.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| not anymore. People are acting like they're leaving
| everything and moving to bluesky or fedi when in reality they
| already exist there and many other places and are simply
| leaving the braindead one
| empath75 wrote:
| > Yeah, somewhere where regular people that aren't terminally
| online won't ever have the chance to see it.
|
| You think those people are on X?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Based on what they are seeing, nobody is seeing their posts on
| X either. That's the point. Did you miss it?
| jeltz wrote:
| The few people who were not terminally online left Twitter
| around the time it was renamed.
| throwawaypath wrote:
| The most terminally online people left Twitter for BlueSky.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| > X, for better or worse, gets you eyes, more so than any other
| alternative social media.
|
| This is not true at all, and it's a silly statement. X isn't
| mainstream anymore, and the people who think it is are simply
| stuck in a bubble. I suspect you might be one of the
| "terminally online people" you're denigrating as not "regular
| people".
|
| X's MAU is in the ballpark as Quora or Pinterest. "Pinterest
| gets you more eyes than any alternative social media" is a more
| defensible statement.
|
| It's not even in the top 10. It's not 2010 any more, people are
| on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
|
| If you read the rest of the post, they cite Facebook,
| Instagram, and TikTok (which have 6x to 3x as many users), and
| they cite that their posts on X are getting only 3% the
| engagement they saw in 2018.
|
| By their numbers, they are not getting "eyes" on X. Just to
| compare, their X post has 124 comments, 79 reblogs, and 337
| likes, while their BlueSky post has 245 comments, 1400 reblogs,
| and 6.2K likes. Even their Mastodon post is getting more
| engagement than on X.
|
| That's over 15x better ROI posting to BlueSky than on X.
| stephen_g wrote:
| I stoped using Twitter (around when it was changing to be X)
| because 60-70% of the accounts I cared about left the platform.
| More and more people will look elsewhere as more organisations
| and people who aren't into Musk's politics leave.
| FireInsight wrote:
| > Yeah, somewhere where regular people that aren't terminally
| online won't ever have the chance to see it.
|
| Honestly the first time I read this I thought you meant to say
| "will have the chance", because I don't know of any normal
| people that used Xitter in years. Most are now just on
| Instagram. Then again, my generation and geographical locatin
| might have something to do with that.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Not if you're shadowbanned
| mayneack wrote:
| Half this post is about how few people they're reaching on X.
| warbaker wrote:
| I wish this announcement weren't infused with intersectionality.
|
| "Your abortion fund uses TikTok to spread crucial information" is
| listed as one of three sample reasons you might use social media.
|
| I support reproductive rights! But I don't want EFF to do that,
| and I don't want EFF to push conservatives out of the movement. I
| want EFF to appeal to everyone who cares about digital civil
| liberties, including people who disagree with me on other issues.
| warbaker wrote:
| And downvoted to pieces. HN is such a cool place for dialogue!
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| I applaud the move. It's also a little disingenuous to talk about
| moral standings when the third opening sentence is "The math
| hasn't worked out for a while now." If the numbers were working
| out, would they continue to turn a blind eye on the privacy
| tracking?
| moralestapia wrote:
| >"But You're Still on Facebook and TikTok?"
|
| >Yes. And we understand why that looks contradictory. Let us
| explain.
|
| Lol, rubbish.
| helaoban wrote:
| >Our presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok is not
| an endorsement [...] We stay because the people on those
| platforms deserve access to information, too. We stay because
| some of our most-read posts are the ones criticizing the very
| platform we're posting on. We stay because the fewer steps
| between you and the resources you need to protect yourself, the
| better.
|
| Does this not apply to X users?
| traderj0e wrote:
| It does, but what I'm reading from this is Twitter users are
| too right-wing for EFF to want to be around them. "Young
| people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers
| use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day."
| koshergweilo wrote:
| You clearly didn't read the article closely enough. The first
| header is "The Numbers Aren't Working Out." If it was about
| the audience, they would have switched stopped earlier.
| traderj0e wrote:
| I read it, so don't talk down to me. The numbers are worse
| on other platforms that they use. And if it were just about
| the numbers, the article would just be about that.
| dominicq wrote:
| I agree with you. It's clear that they're leaving X
| because "X bad", but they don't want to say it that way.
| I don't know if X is or isn't bad, but it seems pretty
| mainstream and a good representation of a lot of society,
| both US and international, so for an org that apparently
| cares for the online rights of people, it feels silly to
| leave a platform where there are - people. (and this is
| coming from someone who doesn't use X or social media in
| general)
| basisword wrote:
| It is a poor representation of society internationally.
| Twitter has never been a big platform outside the US (and
| Japan I believe). It's irrelevant most other places.
| TiredGuy wrote:
| when posts like this get flagged, but posts on the opposite
| side of the political spectrum don't, it really discourages
| people from posting. This seems like a valid critique of the
| content of the article that was posted whether you agree with
| it or not.
| traderj0e wrote:
| Well, I'm not discouraged at least. The entire article
| probably shouldn't even be on HN so whatever
| phillipcarter wrote:
| The problem they're not talking about is that for all the X
| users they could potentially help, their messages will be
| actively suppressed by the platform owner.
|
| Nate Silver, famously popular (...lol) with the online left,
| made a post about this recently:
| https://www.natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-become-a-freak...
|
| EFF is, politically, left wing.
| dpedu wrote:
| Their decision to leave X seems mostly centered around engagement
| numbers. Or at least, that's the reason they led with. And I'm
| not sure that I believe the numbers they're throwing out.
|
| > To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the
| views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
|
| Okay. View counts are public now, but not available on older
| tweets. But replies, like, and retweet counts are, and shouldn't
| they scale similarly?
|
| I'm just eyeballing it, but when I look through the EFF's twitter
| feed now, I see 20-100 likes as typical, with the occasional
| popular tweet that hits a couple hundred. When I look at their
| 2018 tweets - you can use the `from:EFF until:2018-04-01` filter
| on twitter search - the numbers are... The same. Aside from the
| occasional popular tweet, most other tweets are in the
| neighborhood of 20-100 likes. Similar for replies and retweets.
|
| I don't understand how this could be if the tweets are being seen
| 30x less.
| KevinMS wrote:
| I follow lots of accounts that have low views, thanks for
| considering me not worth a simple cut and paste once in a while.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Community notes has done so much to help obvious and blatantly
| false information on X. I can't believe that instagram and other
| platforms haven't implanted it yet.
| bcantrill wrote:
| I was recently asked about our (Oxide's) disposition to Twitter
| on the Peterman Pod[0], and the rationale for why we're no longer
| active there is pretty simple: the platform has become a cesspool
| of hate -- and it's antithetical to promoting a business (or any
| message, really). Aside from the morality of it (which is
| significant!), the hate itself is repugnant; it's not something
| that normal people want to be a part of in the long term.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhSL-5GtmQM#t=1h9m57s
| paulbjensen wrote:
| There does seem to be evidence that X (formerly Twitter) is a
| dying platform, but what surprised me here is that longtime
| platforms like Snapchat, Reddit and even Pinterest get more MAUs
| than X - and this is more October 2025:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
|
| It would be really interesting to learn if brands and advertisers
| are seeing the same thing?
| paulbjensen wrote:
| Why is this downvoted? -\\_(tsu)_/-
| cbmuser wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram
| have almost the exact same number of users. This seems to be
| skewed data.
| paulnpace wrote:
| Reddit is on the first page or at the top for well over half of
| my searches. Sometimes I find myself in complete physical-
| memory typing -site:reddit.com.
| evolve2k wrote:
| I honestly enjoyed the article and agree with their move but I
| did have a chuckle reading all the way through and then see g
| right there under the article the X social media sharing icon.
|
| I'm sure it's on its way out, but I did quietly laugh to myself
| from the irony.
| schoen wrote:
| I worked at EFF from 2001 to 2019.
|
| When I started, EFF was a very effective coalition between
| (primarily) progressives and libertarians. This had largely been
| the case since EFF was founded in 1990 by both progressives and
| libertarians. When people would call EFF a "left-wing"
| organization, I would correct them. It wasn't a left-wing
| organization, it was a big tent and had consistently had very
| significant non-left-wing representation in its membership,
| board, and staff.
|
| This was perhaps comparatively easy to achieve because EFF was
| mainly working on free speech and privacy, and both progressives
| and libertarians were happy to unite around those things and try
| to get more of them for everybody, even without necessarily
| agreeing on other issues.
|
| Maybe "both progressives and libertarians" doesn't feel like that
| big a tent in the overall scheme of things, but it was a good
| portion of people who were online by choice early on and who were
| feeling idealistic about technology.
|
| I'm sure everyone reading this is aware that, as American society
| has become more polarized, there are fewer and fewer institutions
| that are successfully operating as big tents in this sense.
| Somewhat famously ACLU is not. EFF is also not.
|
| EFF is still doing a lot of good work in a non-partisan sense.
| However, the way that they _think and talk about_ that work, in
| terms of what motivates it or what it is meant to achieve, is now
| a predominantly left-wing framing. If you don 't have a left-wing
| worldview, you're at least not going to be culturally aligned
| with EFF's take on things, even if you agree with many of their
| positions and projects.
|
| This should _not_ be taken to mean that they never take on non-
| leftist causes or clients or never successfully work in coalition
| with non-leftist organizations. It 's most about how they see
| what they are trying to do.
|
| I again want to be clear for people who are saying "it's no
| surprise that a political organization is political" that EFF's
| politics and rhetoric are not what they were in earlier decades.
| There are many interpretations of that that you might take if you
| agree with some of the changes (you might feel that they became
| more politically aware or more sophisticated or something), but
| the organization's coalition and positioning is really very
| different from what it was in earlier eras.
|
| It's very apparent to me that EFF was more skillful at staying
| neutral on a wider range of questions in the past than it is now.
| I remember hearing the phrase "that's not an EFF issue" spoken
| much more frequently in the earlier part of my time at the
| organization.
|
| (Another more neutral interpretation is that the Internet
| successfully became a part of everyday life, with the result that
| more and more historically-offline political issues now have some
| kind of online component: so maybe it's more of a challenge to
| deliberately not have a position on a range of "non-tech"
| politics because people are regularly pointing out how tech and
| non-tech issues interact more.)
|
| I experienced these changes as an enormous personal tragedy, and
| it's deeply frustrating for me if people would like to pretend
| that they didn't happen.
|
| I'm still rooting for them to win most of their court cases.
| baggachipz wrote:
| > the way that they think and talk about that work, in terms of
| what motivates it or what it is meant to achieve, is now a
| predominantly left-wing framing. If you don't have a left-wing
| worldview, you're at least not going to be culturally aligned
| with EFF's take on things, even if you agree with many of their
| positions and projects.
|
| Is this due to them literally changing their mission and tack,
| or is this a shifting of the overton window? I would argue the
| latter, but you have direct experience there so I'm curious to
| hear more.
| vetrom wrote:
| My impression is that as EFF's executive leadership has
| evolved over time, the driving motivations and attitudes of
| that leadership has changed EFFs style of execution.
|
| It has probably helped increase their raw numbers, but it has
| also induced "mission drift".
| schoen wrote:
| I'd say both of those.
|
| There is a conscious effort to focus more directly and
| consistently on helping groups that are seen as oppressed.
|
| There was an associated mission statement change sometime
| around 2015
|
| > The Electronic Frontier Foundation is dedicated to ensuring
| that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for
| all the people of the world.
|
| (The "for all the people of the world" part is doing a lot of
| work there.)
| contagiousflow wrote:
| > I remember hearing the phrase "that's not an EFF issue"
| spoken much more frequently in the earlier part of my time at
| the organization.
|
| I'm not saying that isn't a valid critique, but from 2001 to
| 2019 so much more of out culture, politics, and protest have
| shifted to online spaces (for better or worse). Do you think
| that the EFF just has _more_ to do now because of the shifting
| needs of our online spaces and the increased governance on
| them?
| schoen wrote:
| I mentioned that interpretation very briefly in my post.
|
| If EFF had continued to be better at political neutrality,
| I'm sure many observers would have been surprised at times
| that it declined to take positions on some of the hot issues
| of the day. That hypothetical reticence could have been
| interpreted as cowardice or irrelevance, or as saving up
| political capital to really focus on a smaller number of more
| fundamental issues.
|
| For example, I have an ill-formed notion that EFF might be
| more effective in fighting against age verification mandates
| right now if the organization were seen as less leftist.
| Among other things, this is because there's one narrative
| where age verification is something the right wants and the
| left doesn't. I say "ill-formed" because I haven't been close
| to this issue and haven't seen exactly how various audiences
| have parsed it in practice.
|
| The culture war part of this question is how good or bad it
| is when it's easy for young people to talk to strangers in
| spaces that aren't overseen by adults (or approved by their
| parents). I guess forms of this issue are possibly among the
| most divisive questions in the world.
|
| However, you could also look at questions like online
| anonymity, privacy, data breaches, competition, ad targeting,
| decentralization, FOSS, and user control of technology, which
| are all being impacted by these measures. EFF cares about
| these things a lot and has cared about them for a long time.
| I would hypothesize that some of those concerns are now
| getting dismissed by audiences that think EFF's "true
| objection" is anti-parental-control and that the other issues
| are just noise. Again, I haven't been close to this and I'm
| not positive that this is how it's actually playing out.
| smoovb wrote:
| >The math hasn't worked out for a while now.
|
| Have the costs to post to X grown too high? The salary of someone
| with the technical know-how to work the social media platform is
| too expensive? How does the math compare with Mastodon? Do you
| know about buffer.com?
|
| I started giving to EFF about 10 years ago. It's pretty much the
| first and only organization I have regularly given to. It always
| felt like a non-political organization focused squarely on the
| right to access. Especially with its support of the Tor project.
| But this news has me confused and other commenters seem to be
| seeing virtue signaling or politically motivation.
| dbgrman wrote:
| But isn't this capitulation? If you're not there raising your
| voice, who will? I know it sounds like a hopeless situation, but
| with consistent activism, I believe things can and will change.
| scrapy_coco wrote:
| wtf bro
| shevy-java wrote:
| > an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single
| tweet delivered seven years ago
|
| Well - Musk ruined Twitter. As to why ... that is hard to say. I
| would claim he did so on purpose, but the guy also has some
| mental problems. And with this I really mean problems aside from
| his antics. Everyone sees that when he mass-fired people at DOGE
| or did a certain greeting twice with his right arm (everyone
| understands his mentality), on top of being a billionaire which
| already means he is fighting the Average Joe. But irrelevant of
| the reasons, I think we can safely conclude: Musk ruined Twitter.
| X does not work and I don't think he can turn this around, even
| if he'd want to. People don't want oligarchs in the front row;
| I'd even claim they don't want them in the back row either, but
| it is clear that Musk's ego causes a TON of damage everywhere he
| is involved. Tesla sinking is also attributable to Musk; only
| SpaceX hasn't sunk yet, but Musk has a talent to sink stuff, so
| who knows.
|
| Even before Musk, Twitter had problems. I noticed this when I
| tried to make statements and Twitter tried to censor me, claiming
| the content I wrote is not good aka harmful. This kind of
| censorship is similar to reddit; I retired from reddit a while
| ago, the reason was excessive censorship by crazy moderators. In
| two years I had about 76k karma on reddit, so what I wrote is,
| for the most part, appreciated by a majority, give or take.
| Evidently you can't write interesting content all of the time,
| but in two years +70k karma is not bad. Then some moderator comes
| in, claims I broke a rule, locks me out of 3 days - I can not
| accept censorship, sorry. I don't want moderators acting as
| gatekeepers. Musk with X kind of made this even worse. Now you
| have to log in to read stuff? Old twitter did not require this,
| right? They clearly want to sniff people's activity. With age
| sniffing (age verification) coming up and infiltrating (some)
| linux distributions, I am really getting mighty tired of
| billionaires paying homage to crazy dictators who killed a
| gazillion of people. Musk is like Scrooge McDuck, but much more
| evil and selfish.
|
| EFF should have quit when Musk bought Twitter. But I think we
| need to get rid of corporations who keep on selling out the users
| to some other, bigger corporation. That thing is clearly not
| working at all.
| quantummagic wrote:
| I still can't get used to Twitter being called X. What horrible
| branding.
| nxtbl wrote:
| My first thought was that 5-10 posts a day is just too much.
| Can't expect everyone to read everything and also react to each
| one.
| suttontom wrote:
| What is with the constant use of "folks" in "queer folks"? Is it
| offensive to call them "queer people" now?
| alterom wrote:
| As one of them queer folks, it just rolls of the tongue easier.
| spinningarrow wrote:
| It's just another word for a group, same as people.
| ggdG wrote:
| Woke folks use this word to signal their allegiance to the in-
| group.
|
| https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-folks/
| poszlem wrote:
| You are getting down voted even though you are correct. It is
| part of the progressive dictionary because in that worldview
| "people" is tainted by whiteness etc. This explanation will
| obviously get flagged too, which does not make it untrue.
| hananova wrote:
| It's just a word. People is fine too. Folks just sounds better.
| poszlem wrote:
| If that were true then they would have written:
|
| "Young folks, folks of color, queer folks". This is not the
| case.
| Beestie wrote:
| Interesting timing - just days after the announcement that Nicole
| Ozer will be taking over for Cindy Cohn as the Executive Director
| of EFF.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| That's really useful context, thanks for sharing!
| charcircuit wrote:
| The EFF is getting less engagement because they do not make
| engaging posts. They make a generic and boring summary and then
| link off platform. This just is not how X works if you want to go
| viral. For example:
|
| >A nonprofit web host got a copyright demand--for a photo it
| didn't post. They removed it anyway. The law firm still demanded
| money. EFF pushed back, and the claim fell apart. <link to
| article>
|
| I can't see how anyone could see this as engaging.
|
| >And we understand why that looks contradictory. Let us explain.
|
| They do not explain why it's contradictory. "We stay because the
| people on those platforms deserve access to information, too."
| can just as well apply to X.
| mattbillenstein wrote:
| Pretty interesting to see the drop off in impressions - Twitter/X
| really is just a megaphone for Musk to deliver his "probably next
| year" wrt various product releases for the Elon-gelicals who bid
| up Tesla stock to meme levels.
|
| I really can't imagine the data is even good for training Grok
| anymore - like if it's such a small subset of neo-nazi supporting
| folks - how is it even useful?
| mnls wrote:
| So the nazi salute wasn't enough to make them drop X, but the
| view count is?
| episode404 wrote:
| "my heart goes out to you" followed by a nazi salute. are you
| for real?
| TZubiri wrote:
| Very nice, Twitter/X feels like one of those things we keep doing
| out of inertia, like using Axios to download in javascript.
|
| We used to use it back then because it was a pretty open system,
| you could famously do analysis on Hashtags, it was even a fad in
| the scientific community to do sentiment analysis on some topics,
| twitter was like the Drosophila Melanogaster. The tech stack was
| very public as well and it had that startup vibe to it. Even
| presidents were registering on the platform due to its
| neutrality, which made sense back then.
|
| Nowadays the company was acquired, and acquired not by a nameless
| penny pinching fund, but by a personalist company who might have
| bought it for personal, not economic reasons. They were involved
| in the executive power and did a similar kind of personnel cut
| and regime change. The presidents now use it, but now people use
| Twitter because presidents are on it, rather than the other way
| around.
|
| It still has some professionals in it, and it's relaxed and
| addictive nature allows me to interact with professionals I
| wouldn't have a chance to on uptight Linkedin. But meh, it's not
| like sharing a shitpost with a CEO of a cool startup is going to
| be my ticket to stardom anyway, if anything it's a bad signal
| "Hey, remember me? I responded to your tweet about AI with a cool
| factoid while you wiped your ass on the toilet!" who gives a
| shit.
|
| Hopefully I too will leave twitter some day, some day.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| What's eff?
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| no one cares
| WolfeReader wrote:
| Weird thing to say about an article with over 600 comments.
| fareesh wrote:
| bizarre activist babble - if you want to reach the maximum number
| of people people, post on all major platforms
|
| if you want to be an activist, take these weird positions
|
| the guy on gab is also a human being with the same number of
| rights and deserving of the same empathy, freedoms,
| representation, etc. as the trendy oppressed group on instagram
| but is generally treated as dirty
|
| obviously i am not suggesting that they post on low traffic
| platforms, but everything substantial and important happens on x,
| believing otherwise is delusional
|
| just shows that these groups are not as egalitarian as they
| purport to be
| lynndotpy wrote:
| > but everything substantial and important happens on x,
|
| This is not true, and you are stuck in a bubble if you believe
| this. X is not even in the top 10 most used social media
| platforms.
|
| EFF needs to be on X (550M MAU) about as much as they need to
| be on Pinterest (570M MAU) or Quora (400M MAU).
|
| Despite having fewer users than X, EFF gets more engagement on
| BlueSky and Mastodon, probably owing to EFF's mission being
| antithetical to the political project that is X.
|
| EFF should prioritize the larger platforms, like Pinterest,
| Reddit (760M MAU), Snapchat (900M MAU), or the various larger
| Chinese social media platforms before they think about EFF. EFF
| doesn't even have a WeChat (1343M MAU).
| jug wrote:
| How is X even still a thing. I left a few years ago and didn't
| even think I was early. Baffling how EFF has supported a person
| like Elon Musk for this long and not went all in on Mastodon.
| "The math isn't working out"? Such a cold message. Is this just
| about an equation? The last I expected to hear from EFF. Maybe
| from an influencer, but EFF?
|
| This is an organization with such a clear orientation that they
| belong at @eff@mastodon.social and neither X nor Facebook to me
| (where they're apparently staying). Why not mind your brand and
| presence and avoid those slop networks where few F/OSS oriented
| folks are present anyway.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I cancelled my X subscription this month, despite them trying to
| offer me a lower price. The platform is a mixture of bots and
| people fighting over how many followers they are getting. I tried
| to find interesting groups actually making things and sharing
| with each other, but they don't exist IMO. Most said groups are
| ran by a few "elites" and then the strategy for anyone else is to
| do the "engagement bro" garbage - posting for the sake of posting
| - and overall the platform seems dead I'm the ways that matter to
| me.
|
| For what it's worth most social media is in a doom spiral right
| now. It's a mixture of technical issues surged by LLMs and social
| reasons related to the highly polarizing landscape we are in
| today. I don't have good solutions and I personally am perfectly
| fine not being involved in this chapter of the book of the
| Internet, even if it is the final chapter.
| sgnelson wrote:
| So many Fascists now on Hacker News. I'd ask how this came to be,
| but I'm pretty sure I have a good idea.
| foobiekr wrote:
| It is completely obvious that a lot of tech workers are
| basically evil. They get paid to work on evil things that hurt
| society and want to not feel like terrible people. See the
| thread on Musk and the cone head on self reflection.
| episode404 wrote:
| I'm sure we humans can do better than "everyone who disagrees
| with me politically is evil"
| hananova wrote:
| Perhaps, but it's a good starting point, especially
| nowadays.
| eezing wrote:
| Elon is a grumpy old bastard now. That's all he is, really.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| >"But You're Still on Facebook and TikTok?" >Yes. And we
| understand why that looks contradictory. Let us explain.
|
| But then there's no explanation really.
| riffic wrote:
| Coming soon, _on a long enough timeline_ :
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_network...
| throw7 wrote:
| Well, at least they realize they're hypocrites.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The world that hackers grew up in just doesn't exist anymore.
|
| The EFF is leaving a platform _voluntarily_? Because they
| disagree with the politics of the platform? What?
|
| I don't know man that seems pretty lame. Stick around and argue
| with people if you think twitter is so bad now.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| On the topic of _leaving X but not TikTok and Facebook_ : I think
| being _principled but pragmatic_ is necessary more so than ever.
| If you always pick absolutes, you 'll quickly find yourself
| helping nobody. It requires a right balance, otherwise you end up
| justifying the means to an end. Certain principles cannot be
| comrpromised, others are a bit of a luxury. It's a moving target.
| It's a fuzzy target. You'll never quite get it right but you just
| keep trying. I think I'm most wary of those who think too rigidly
| and would see this as an intolerable contradiction.
| avazhi wrote:
| Pretty asinine considering posting to Twitter costs... $0.
|
| Also a surefire way to get people to take you less seriously when
| as an ostensible public benefactor and sometimes-whistleblower in
| a particular sector you make said asinine move for purely
| political virtue signalling purposes.
|
| 'Stay in your lane' comes to mind.
| yalogin wrote:
| I wonder if the message of eff doesn't resonate with the younger
| generation who did not see the OS wars first hand and instead
| always saw Microsoft as a cloud provider and Apple and Google as
| the OS providers.
| joshfraser wrote:
| We're staying on IG because that's where the queers hang out.
| What.
|
| I used to be a regular donor to EFF but stopped when it became
| clear they had lost sight of their mission.
| timedude wrote:
| "But You're Still on X?" Yes. And we understand why that looks
| contradictory. Let us explain.
|
| EFF exists to protect people's digital rights. Not just the
| people who already value our work, have opted out of
| surveillance, or have already migrated to the fediverse. The
| people who need us most are often the ones most embedded in the
| walled gardens of the mainstream platforms and subjected to their
| corporate surveillance.
|
| Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and
| organizers use X every day. This platform hosts mutual aid
| networks and serves as hubs for political organizing, cultural
| expression, and community care. Just deleting the app isn't
| always a realistic or accessible option, and neither is pushing
| every user to the fediverse when there are circumstances like:
|
| You own a small business that depends on X for customers. Your
| abortion fund uses X to spread crucial information. You're
| isolated and rely on online spaces to connect with your
| community. Our presence on X is not an endorsement. We've spent
| years exposing how this platform suppresses marginalized voices,
| enables invasive behavioral advertising, and flags posts. We've
| also taken action in court, in legislatures, and through direct
| engagement with their staff to push them to change poor policies
| and practices.
|
| We stay because the people on this platform deserve access to
| information, too. We stay because some of our most-read posts are
| the ones criticizing the very platform we're posting on. We stay
| because the fewer steps between you and the resources you need to
| protect yourself, the better.
| jl6 wrote:
| Seems like any activist org should have two audiences:
|
| 1) Supporters who may become donors
|
| 2) Neutrals/opponents who may become supporters.
|
| If you only ever communicate in forums where people already agree
| with you, you'll probably have optimized your fundraising, but
| will probably never achieve your actual purpose.
|
| Activist orgs have to reach and turn the non-supporters somehow,
| and the absolute best way to achieve the opposite is to brand
| them as The Enemy and cut yourself off from them. Joining the
| omnicause is the icing on the cake, signalling the end of focused
| goal-oriented activism in favor of the dilute, general grievance
| mire.
|
| The left are always looking for someone to expel, and the right
| are always looking for someone to recruit. Guess how this ends.
| michaelhoney wrote:
| yeah, but twitter is 90% assholes these days
| infotainment wrote:
| _Always has been_
| tts626 wrote:
| sadly, all social media is 90% a-holes these days
|
| exactly why so many are turning it off, trying to get
| healthy, not just looking for another echo chamber to feed
| their egos
| phyzome wrote:
| Not all of it. But I'm not about to advertise the
| exceptions to a general audience. :-P
| jfengel wrote:
| In this case, dealing with The Enemy is not only funding them,
| but lending your credibility.
|
| Maybe it would be worth it if, as you say, they are finding
| ways to reach non-supporters, but Twitter has been X for almost
| four years. If the EFF finds that they're not recruiting people
| from among their opponents, then they can reasonably say that
| they've spent enough time trying.
| rapatel0 wrote:
| Credibility with who? We're so polarized that a single binary
| label will shift all credibility.
|
| Experience, success, credentials none of it matters anymore.
| The left thinks everything on the right is stupid and evil,
| the right does the same, and everyone drinks their own kool
| aid.
|
| We've all stopped listening.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| If we all spent more time listening the guy who called
| someone a pedophile because he suggested the guy's plan to
| save people was ridiculous, would that improve discourse? I
| am skeptical.
| fredgrott wrote:
| I do not see how being on a platform literally chasing away
| people with hate, sexism and outright CSAM is somehow making a
| wrong decision about audiences to attract...can you drop your
| political bias red colored shades and address this?
| cbeach wrote:
| You could literally be describing any modern day social
| network with those slurs.
| hitekker wrote:
| > signalling the end of focused goal-oriented activism in favor
| of the dilute, general grievance mire
|
| An earlier signal was when the EFF ejected one of their
| founders from the board for disagreeing with their mission
| creep
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/25/john_gilmore_removed_...
| See http://www.toad.com/gnu/ and also the HN thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28992462
| carodgers wrote:
| They ejected the man responsible for "The Net interprets
| censorship as damage and routes around it." Sweet mother
| earth.
| cbsmith wrote:
| You might want to read their post before commenting. They seem
| very much aware of the need to reach people who aren't
| supporters and have always actively engaged with the platforms
| they are critical of. It's just that X isn't really an
| effective use of their time anymore.
| cbeach wrote:
| Their posts on X are getting multiple millions of views. Yes,
| that has declined, but I need to see whether their viewership
| on Facebook has declined similarly before I can pass
| judgement on X.
|
| People don't use social media in the same way they did ten
| years ago.
|
| And in any case, they're still getting massive viewership on
| X by most people's standards, surely?
|
| I'm not convinced "X is declining" is a good faith argument
| here.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Agreed, I'm dismayed that the parent comment is currently the
| top comment, because it seems to be completely clueless as to
| what was actually in the blog post. EFF highlights that an X
| post gets less than 3% of the viewership of a tweet from 7
| years ago. They also highlight that they _are_ staying on
| platforms that they have strong disagreements with like
| Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
|
| I personally don't understand how anyone can use X anymore. I
| mean, even before the Musk takeover, there were _plenty_ of
| loud (or, IMO, extremely obnoxious) voices from all sides,
| and I was generally not a fan because it just seemed designed
| to amplify the extremes and petty disagreements. Now, though,
| whenever I go there it is just a steaming pile of useless
| shit. Like I would look at a tweet or two from people whose
| perspectives I find insightful (even for folks I sometimes
| strongly disagree with), and the top comments under any of
| these people 's posts is now the equivalent of "But your
| daddy is a giant poopie head!!" It doesn't even have any
| entertainment value, it's just pointless drivel where I can
| feel myself losing brain cells for every post I read.
| acdha wrote:
| Not having an official account doesn't mean that people are
| blocked from talking about EFF, only that it'll happen by
| directing attention towards their website. URLs still work
| great for letting people talk, but there is a real question
| about whether you encourage people to look for you first on
| someone else's property-effectively supporting their business
| by giving them your content and audience.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| X, the non-consensual nudes app, surfaces the dumbest comments
| in any discussion by design. It is not a serious site, having a
| presence there is not meaningful.
|
| It's like saying organizations should have a branded presence
| on 4chan otherwise they might not reach the very online and
| meme-poisoned demographics.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I have to say the reason EFF gives for completely avoiding any
| posts on X seems somewhat disingenuous. If they don't see their
| presence as endorsement, then - it isn't a dichotomy between
| "incessant tweeting all day every day" and "never tweet
| anything". In this post they said:
|
| > _Last year, our 1,500 posts earned roughly 13 million
| impressions_
|
| Who said they need to tweet 5 times a day on average? For
| important announcements, tweet. Make it, I don't know, a tweet
| every few days. Even with somewhat reduced exposure, it's still
| wide exposure; and if you count heads rather than impressions,
| it's even more significant to be on different platforms.
|
| I have a(n unfounded) suspicion that this may be about the
| cultural signaling of staying or not staying on twitter.
| episode404 wrote:
| This looks like a last-ditch attempt by the EFF to thrust itself
| into the spotlight. EFF hasn't been relevant for some time now.
|
| It's quite sad to see an organization go down this path; they
| became so strongly engaged in the culture war during the last 10
| years that they lost sight of their core mission.
|
| I even used to be a donor but ever since people like ev**de rose
| to prominence within the organization, it went downhill fast and
| I do not feel like they are doing something worthwhile with donor
| funds.
| ilyin wrote:
| They will accomplish nothing and be happy, like so many.
|
| I used to respect the exodus, but these days my mental heuristics
| go off with red alert at the sight of a Bluesky icon replacing
| Twitter in a website footer.
| aaa_aaa wrote:
| Understandable on ideology standpoint. But my take is that
| numbers are indicating that people stop caring about EFF.
| abalaji wrote:
| Honestly, tbh it just looks like a skill issue when looking
| through their feed:
|
| https://x.com/EFF
|
| Making content platform "native" and garner attention is hard
| work and while their first party content might be great, it isn't
| great "X" content which is part of the problem. There are many
| examples of legacy organizations optimizing for the platform and
| garner a lot of attention:
|
| https://x.com/JohnCarreyrou/status/2041737922458599477?s=20
|
| Also, people want to hear from individuals or a distinct voice,
| not an organization:
|
| https://x.com/FFmpeg
| runako wrote:
| Some context.
|
| Worth keeping in mind that Twitter/X is something like the 8th
| largest US-based social media site. Like it's ~1/6 the size of
| Facebook.
|
| It's in all probability smaller than Pinterest (we cannot get
| trustworthy numbers from Twitter/X). LinkedIn is 2x its size, and
| real people across a swath of society use it. Knocking Threads
| for the Instagram distribution is silly because part of the point
| of posting is to get distribution. This is a PLUS for Threads,
| which organically is still close to Twitter/X's size.
|
| Nobody is saying it's urgent for brands to be on Quora, a close
| size mate.
|
| Of these sites, Twitter/X is the only one that (effectively)
| requires brands to pay to post.
| throwawaypath wrote:
| BlueSky and Mastodon are much smaller than Twitter/X, and
| they're staying on the platforms, so this is a moot point.
| runako wrote:
| Smaller platforms with more engagement? Entirely possible
| they reach more people on those platforms.
|
| In any case, my point was more about the silly idea that it's
| imperative for any organization to be on the 8th-largest US
| site.
| cbsmith wrote:
| The "de minimis" at the end is a pretty sick burn.
| johnsimer wrote:
| EFF doesn't allow most people to reply to their X posts. Scroll
| on their profile right now and you'll see you likely don't have
| the ability to reply to their posts.
|
| This will damage their view count according to the algorithm bc
| this limits their engagement
| tts626 wrote:
| "Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and
| organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day."
|
| EFF knows its audience. No doubt that's why "X" isn't working so
| well for them.
|
| Most tech professionals do not fit these categories, however much
| powers that be have tried to change that.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| closed my Twitter/X account when Elon bought it. I was an early
| adopter of Twitter and a heavy user prior to that (in consuming
| if not posting). But it turns out I don't miss it. Freed up time
| (to read HN, LOL).
| nullc wrote:
| Gross and performative, and I say this as someone who detests X
| and has never used it... when they were writing this crap they
| could have instead been writing about the ridiculous operating
| system user age validation laws.
| defrost wrote:
| _EFF Launches Age Verification Hub as Resource Against
| Misguided Laws_ (December 10, 2025)
|
| ~ https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-launches-age-
| verifica...
| cbeach wrote:
| Disappointed with this blatantly partisan manoeuvre by a
| foundation like EFF.
|
| I like what they do.
|
| I think they'd be better off avoiding publicly declaring their
| anti-Musk credentials. I mean I know it's like a rite of passage
| for all virtue signalling tribal leftwingers out there, but I
| always imagined EFF represented everyone. Not just the green
| haired nose-ringed "modern audience" who think they're a majority
| (but actually aren't)
| 0ckpuppet wrote:
| Godwin
| ghshephard wrote:
| "Last year, our 1,500 posts earned roughly 13 million impressions
| for the entire year."
|
| 13 million impressions? And how much did they pay to reach their
| audience? I'm absolutely gobsmacked that any organization is
| willing to walk away from 13 million impressions a year and
| _very_ interested in know how many impressions /year they get on
| their top-ten outreach platforms if 13 million impressions/year
| (presumably for free ???) is something not worth the effort of
| dropping onto X.
| ijk wrote:
| > We posted to Twitter (now known as X) five to ten times a day
| in 2018. Those tweets garnered somewhere between 50 and 100
| million impressions per month. By 2024, our 2,500 X posts
| generated around 2 million impressions each month. Last year,
| our 1,500 posts earned roughly 13 million impressions for the
| entire year. To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less
| than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
|
| Given that social media posts are _not_ free, in the sense that
| someone or something has to put some effort in to format the
| message for that particular site, I can see how a simple cost
| calculation would show that it is no longer worth it.
| minantom wrote:
| you could just post less or use it for major updates.
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