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EFF is leaving X

eff.org

101–110 of 1001 posts

Re: EFF is leaving X

#101

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.

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…

[flagged]

Re: EFF is leaving X

#102

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.

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

Re: EFF is leaving X

#105

[flagged]

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

Re: EFF is leaving X

#106
post #58

I don't understand, does it cost them something to copy/paste their posts to X?

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#107

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.

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#108
post #16

> 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.

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#109
post #28
post #21

[flagged]

> you could just post less or use it for major updates Why?

If you think something like "open source is good" or "patent trolling is bad" and you want to advocate for those things, you should want to maximize your reach and do what you can to demonstrate that these are not inherently partisan issues, because if people start to perceive that the things that the EFF cares about are bound up with partisan ideology, then it will be dismissed as such.

(It's also buying into the narrative that X is a ideological monolith. It, of course, is not. But it does lean a different way than other major social media platforms, which means there's a unique opportunity to speak to a different kind of audience!)

Re: EFF is leaving X

#110
post #22

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.

[deleted]
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