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EFF is leaving X

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Re: EFF is leaving X

#701

Post by ghshephard »

black_puppydog wrote: post #515
ghshephard wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mea…

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.

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#702

Post by cbeach »

cbsmith wrote: post #673
jl6 wrote: 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…

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.

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#704

Post by ghshephard »

"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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#705

Post by carodgers »

hitekker wrote: post #669
jl6 wrote: 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…

> 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

They ejected the man responsible for "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Sweet mother earth.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#706

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

cbsmith wrote: post #673
jl6 wrote: 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…

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.

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#707

Post by poisonarena »

satvikpendem wrote: post #179
jesse_dot_id wrote: post #135

Astounds me that anyone is still using that platform after seeing how Musk treated the engineers when he took over.

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.

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#709

Post by nailer »

latexr wrote: post #438
nailer wrote: post #139

[flagged]

> Community Notes wouldn’t have happened without X. Community Notes did happen without X. It was a feature introduced in January 2021 under the name Birdwatch. https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-bir... Twitter’s acquisition only started over a year later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon...

It wasn’t released as the main disinfo tool until after leadership changed.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#710

Post by cbeach »

fredgrott wrote: post #645
jl6 wrote: 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?

You could literally be describing any modern day social network with those slurs.
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