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EFF is leaving X

eff.org

641–650 of 1001 posts

Re: EFF is leaving X

#641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Twitter never cared about users rights. Read Matt Taibbi's congresional testimony on Twitter's censorship machine.

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

Re: EFF is leaving X

#642
post #625

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…

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fre…

Which internet freedoms is X strongly aligned against?

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...

Re: EFF is leaving X

#645
post #625

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…

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?

Re: EFF is leaving X

#647

>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?

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#648

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.

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

One of the biggest accounts on X hosts one of the most listened to podcasts on Spotify/Apple and has a huge following that's grown exponentially since 2023. He's an active Holocaust denier, proud antisemite, and dined with the president and members of his cabinet on more than one occasion. To say there's no growing movement towards Nazi and anti-Jewish ideologies is to be willfully ignorant of the world around you.

Who are you talking about?

Re: EFF is leaving X

#650

>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?

[flagged]

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