EFF is leaving X • Hacker News Board

Re: EFF is leaving X

#741

Post by j2kun » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:48 PM UTC

mememememememo wrote: post #728

ijk wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I hope they ran the numbers and did some cold surveying/analysis/postmortem before deciding that. What is worse is those aren't shitty ad impressions. Interested people will be following maybe even expecting to see them. In addition and ironically also other interested people will be algorithmed in to their orbit. E.g. I read more of a blogger I like because I follow him on LinkedIn over following RSS feed.

X suppresses posts from people you follow in favor of algorithmically boosted posts, so at scale the follow counts don't matter as much.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#742

Post by kbelder » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:49 PM UTC

indoordin0saur wrote: post #337

Legend2440 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EFF is and has always been a political activist organization. Of course they care about ideological concerns.

Those concerns have evolved away from their original mission. Not an unusual situation for organizations like this as a they shrink and lose relevance.

It reminds me a bit of the ACLU. If nothing else, they were always respectable in their vociferous defense of the 1st amendment and free speech. But they got caught up in other ideological battles, and transitioned to a more partisan organization... defending speech they politically agreed with, not worrying about others. Generally, becoming more small-minded.

The ACLU was always considered a leftist organization, and I'm sure that in general most of it's staff was so; but their mission was scoped to certain issues, and anybody who agreed with that mission, despite their other politics, could support them. Once partisanship takes over, though, it isolates them.

If the EFF isn't careful, it is going to be an organization not for those who support certain digital freedoms, but for Leftists who support certain digital freedoms. That'll do nothing but make it more difficult to accomplish their original goals.

I expect it'll also come with a loss of focus, similar to what happened at Mozilla.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#743

Post by youknownothing » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:49 PM UTC

I must confess this is an odd decision. It's true that the drop in engagement is abismal (97% reduction is ouch). However, given that they're still posting in other sites, what's the marginal cost of keeping X in the equation? Presumably they're using some aggregator where you compose the post once and it gets automatically posted to BlueSky, Mastodon, Thread, etc., what's the cost of keeping X?

Re: EFF is leaving X

#744

Post by thallium205 » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:52 PM UTC

youknownothing wrote: post #743

I must confess this is an odd decision. It's true that the drop in engagement is abismal (97% reduction is ouch). However, given that they're still posting in other sites, what's the marginal cost of keeping X in the equation? Presumably they're using some aggregator where you compose the post once and it gets automatically posted to BlueSky, Mastodon, Thread, etc., what's the cost of keeping X?

Virtue signaling is priceless.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#745

Post by elsonrodriguez » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:54 PM UTC

episode404 wrote: post #646

mnls wrote: post #440

[flagged]

[flagged]

There is a video of Elon performing a gesture in which he forms a heart shape with his hands, and then mimes giving it out to the crowd.

It is quite distinct from the multiple Nazi salutes he gave at the Trump rally.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#746

Post by schoen » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:54 PM UTC

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…

Too late to edit, but I realized that the correct dates for my time at EFF are actually 2001 to 2020 (I was thinking about how I left during the COVID-19 pandemic, but that was in 2020).

Re: EFF is leaving X

#747

Post by tailscaler2026 » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:55 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #736

phillipcarter wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

EFF used to stand for a cause that was neither left nor right.

EFF still does.

MAGA is the one who decided ideas like freedom of expression, an expectation of privacy, and holding governments accountable were woke liberal concepts.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#748

Post by plorg » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:55 PM UTC

declan_roberts wrote: post #325

Community notes has done so much to help obvious and blatantly false information on X. I can't believe that instagram and other platforms haven't implanted it yet.

Instagram has a community notes function.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#749

Post by bluescrn » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:56 PM UTC

quaverquaver wrote: post #171

anonymousiam wrote: post #55

[flagged]

X is a rare platform where an individual manipulates the algorithm per his own personal political whims. And, yes he is explicitly racist and anti-democratic. No org that cares about freedom should contribute to what is really a personal effort to commandeer the information environment.

The only difference with X is that you know exactly who is manipulating the algorithm (and deciding what's acceptable and what's ban-worthy). And he makes his personal views extremely clear.

With every other platform, it's hidden away behind the scenes, but there's surely powerful individuals making the big decisions about what to promote and what to suppress.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#750

Post by vvpan » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 11:56 PM UTC

ilyin wrote: post #639

They will accomplish nothing and be happy, like so many. I used to respect the exodus, but these days my mental heuristics go off with red alert at the sight of a Bluesky icon replacing Twitter in a website footer.

Why does that trigger a red alert?