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EFF is leaving X

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Re: EFF is leaving X

#811

Post by nandomrumber »

spopejoy wrote: post #782
helaoban wrote: post #259

>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 story behind the numbers they present clearly demonstrates that X is censoring/shadowbanning them. Going from 600MM to 13MM impressions/yr -- losing 98% of their impressions! -- is no accident but clearly Musk's thumb on the scale. Imagine what this means if you are trying to gauge impact of a post. Remember, X is giving them zero information about who they're preventing from seeing it. Impressions is the main da…

[flagged]

Re: EFF is leaving X

#812

Post by wyclif »

busterarm wrote: post #753
smoovb wrote: post #344

>The math hasn’t worked out for a while now. Have the costs to post to X grown too high? The salary of someone with the technical know-how to work the social media platform is too expensive? How does the math compare with Mastodon? Do you know about buffer.com? I started giving to EFF about 10 years ago. It's pretty much the first and only organization I have regularly given to. It always felt like a non-political or…

Most people don't look at the Board of Directors. And while I respect everyone on it for their achievements, from their own bios and other political work they're involved in you can clearly tell which stated goal is in service of another. I've met and spoken to at least half of them and...yeah. John Gilmore is gone. Brad Templeton is gone. John Perry Barlow is dead. The civil libertarian bent that the organization be…

Your first sentence is key. Most people don't look behind the green curtain, but it's often where you find who the really important people in the org are.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#813

Post by solid_fuel »

reg_dunlop wrote: post #253
SecretDreams wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised how easy it is for people to compartmentalize their principles. Many do it day to day every time they purchase something online that was probably made using less than ideal labour practices. Still, I'd advocate to leave social media in general. And certainly to get off twitter.

Hmm, I'd argue what you call "compartmentalize their principles" is in fact, NOT having principles. Correct me if I'm wrong: I'm asserting that having a principle is an inalienable belief that actually guides behavior, not selectively applies to behavior. Though generally: yes, I agree: get off twitter, and I'd go a step further and say..minimize all social media involvement.

I would assert that a principle is a belief which guides behavior, yes, but with the understanding that the weight of the guidance and the weight of the conviction varies.

I don't mean that in a fully negative way, since belief and choices are rarely atomic.

Take, for example, someone who believes animals shouldn't suffer unnecessarily. That can manifest anywhere from veganism to just avoiding factory farmed meat. I wouldn't point at any one position on that spectrum and say they don't believe their own stated principle, but I would say that some have weaker convictions than others.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#814

Post by libertarianinpa »

lta wrote: post #776
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…

I hear what you're saying and it's very insightful. But I'm under the impression the libertarians have moved a lot closer to fascism I'm the recent years so it's hard to keep them in any tent. The "society has become more polarized" is an euphemism to describe an important rise of fascism across the world and in the US (that I'm not a citizen of). Yes it's polarized, because there's a side that's trying to create a p…

This is part of the political polarization narrative. People are far more quick to throw around the word “fascist” for coalitions that support things like effective policing of crime or immigration controls that would result in a similar level of immigration as the recent past.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#815

Post by squigz »

smoovb wrote: post #344

>The math hasn’t worked out for a while now. Have the costs to post to X grown too high? The salary of someone with the technical know-how to work the social media platform is too expensive? How does the math compare with Mastodon? Do you know about buffer.com? I started giving to EFF about 10 years ago. It's pretty much the first and only organization I have regularly given to. It always felt like a non-political or…

Since when was the EFF "non-political"?

Re: EFF is leaving X

#816

Post by libertarianinpa »

traderj0e wrote: post #284
Brendinooo wrote: post #20

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.

[flagged]

There are a lot of right wing people who support the (classical) EFF mission. I’m one of them! I’ve donated to them in the past, but probably not if they are turning hard left

Re: EFF is leaving X

#817

Post by libertarianinpa »

redox99 wrote: post #318
nickdothutton wrote: post #3

These are interesting numbers for engagement but don't mean as much without equivalent stats for the other platforms. It's a little like when a news story quotes only a percentage (but not the absolute figure in $) or vice versa.

Also if you tweet a link to the content instead of tweeting the actual content, you get penalized by the algorithm. They do this in almost every tweet.

This has changed recently. Links no longer appear to be penalized.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#818

Post by teej »

mghackerlady wrote: post #85
Ajedi32 wrote: post #71

Their logic for why they're on TikTok and Facebook seems sound to me, but doesn't that same logic apply to X? I kept waiting for the explanation but it never came...

there isn't enough people left there to be worth the tradeoff

X has more active users than it ever has in its history

Re: EFF is leaving X

#819

Post by solid_fuel »

roncinephile wrote: post #810

if you're a political action group then voluntarily choosing to limit the eyeballs on the ideas you're trying to espouse seems so counterproductive and antithetical for your raison d'être that it's hard not to look at this as shooting oneself in the foot. The PR person who thought this up is doing more harm than good. There's no way the metrics will improve because of this decision.

So should they make a Truth Social account too? Should they be posting on 4chan? Do they need to take out AM radio ads to really make sure they're reaching everyone?

Or maybe they can just use their limited resources on places where their efforts are working.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#820

Post by conception »

scarab92 wrote: post #808
spopejoy wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story behind the numbers they present clearly demonstrates that X is censoring/shadowbanning them. Going from 600MM to 13MM impressions/yr -- losing 98% of their impressions! -- is no accident but clearly Musk's thumb on the scale. Imagine what this means if you are trying to gauge impact of a post. Remember, X is giving them zero information about who they're preventing from seeing it. Impressions is the main da…

They still get more engagement on X than on Bluesky. Also, cross positing the same content on multiple platforms isn’t time consuming. This is clearly EFF violating their stated commitment to political neutrality, and providing only a superficial and easily discredited rationale for cover.

Do we have to be politically neutral to the abhorrent?
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