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.
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EFF is leaving X
651–660 of 1001 posts
Re: EFF is leaving X
#652If 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 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!)
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.
Re: EFF is leaving X
#653Re: EFF is leaving X
#654Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is your comment getting shadowed. The F is wrong with HN crowd.
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What was drive-by about my comment? I understand that to mean “uninterested in discussion, just want to take a shot and run away” but i’m here and i’m happy to discuss opposing viewpoints.
Re: EFF is leaving X
#655Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Ok, you know what, I'm tired of this.
Elon is a narcissistic man-child with too much influence. But he's not a Nazi, and I'm really sick of Americans throwing that word around without a modicum of thought.
Nazis are why my great-grandfather fled Poland at 17 after losing his brother and both parents. He evaded the Germans across Europe, joined the Polish government in exile in Scotland, and never returned. He married a Scottish woman while he had no fixed address in 1947, found some kind of peace working as a coal miner for 37 years in the worst conditions imaginable, and didn't see his sisters again for decades. He didn't even know if they were alive.
Millions were displaced like this, millions more had their family lines ended entirely. You trivialise that when you slap "Nazi" on every arsehole with a platform.
Money and power are not the same thing. You just make it true by believing it. The boss of IKEA's political opinions don't matter here in Sweden because he can't actually do anything (He’s an actual documented Nazi sympathiser btw). The institutions won't let him. If yours will, that's a problem with your institutions, not a reason to call someone a Nazi.
How much of your headspace is Musk renting? He does not matter as much as you think. And if he did, you'd be better off explaining why what he says is dangerous rather than screaming "Nazi" into the void.
Dismissing someone isn't the same as defeating them. You want bad ideas to not take root? Dispel them. Make the argument. Show why it's wrong. That changes minds, or at least puts enough out there that the ideas don't land with someone else (which is why the rise of the right is happening). Shouting "Nazi" and walking off doesn't make the problem go away. It just moves it somewhere you can't see it, and it'll come back for you, probably wearing a stupid red hat when it does.
Re: EFF is leaving X
#656Re: EFF is leaving X
#657[flagged]
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.
Re: EFF is leaving X
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EFF is and has always been a political activist organization. Of course they care about ideological concerns.
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.
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
Re: EFF is leaving X
#659Re: EFF is leaving X
#660Seems 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.
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.