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EFF is leaving X

eff.org

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Re: EFF is leaving X

#711

Post by heavyset_go »

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…

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#713

Post by phyzome »

tts626 wrote: post #667
michaelhoney wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, but twitter is 90% assholes these days

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

Not all of it. But I'm not about to advertise the exceptions to a general audience. :-P

Re: EFF is leaving X

#714

Post by ijk »

ghshephard wrote: post #704

"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…

> 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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#716

Post by dpkirchner »

rapatel0 wrote: post #660
jfengel wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#717

Post by mcintyre1994 »

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…

It sounds like they don’t really get meaningful engagement/views on X anyway though. It sounds like it’s not a useful platform to reach any audience for them.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#718

Post by rdl »

schoen wrote: post #340

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-w…

It's depressing now, but also was genuinely amazing how great EFF was early on. I think a lot of that had to do with the board, membership, and staff (such as yourself) intentionally trying to keep things balanced and focused. Thank you for all the great stuff you and the rest of the org did back then.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#720

Post by mcintyre1994 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #595
madeofpalk wrote: post #23

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…

> 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.

They’re not trying to stop anyone else being on X or saying anything there or anywhere else.
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