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EFF is leaving X

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Re: EFF is leaving X

#831

Post by WatchDog »

ijk wrote: post #714
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…

They are posting the same content in virtually identical format to other twitter clones. The whole process can be automated, the marginal cost is nothing.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#832

Post by WatchDog »

lynndotpy wrote: post #441
mellosouls wrote: post #19

If 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.

Yes, EFF is a civil liberties group and always has been, which makes it a purely ideological movement. Let's be honest and look at the engagement numbers of the post announcing this: X post: 124 comments, 79 reblogs, and 337 likes BlueSky post: 245 comments, 1400 reblogs, and 6.2K likes Mastodon post: 403 reposts, 458 likes These numbers, combined with the facts that Mastodon and BlueSky are aligned with internet fre…

At the present moment, the X post made it to 898 comments, before they locked replies. The bluesky post has 426 comments.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#833

Post by hn_user82179 »

peyton wrote: post #805
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…

[flagged]

> I don’t think Elon Musk personally has to put his finger on any scale. I thought EFF would be his thing too, no?

Not sure why you would say that, I know he’s branded himself as a tech guy but beyond that nothing about the EFF seems to match his values.

The EFF tried to sue him last year too: https://www.eff.org/press/releases/judge-rejects-governments...

Re: EFF is leaving X

#834

Post by empressplay »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #795
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 is, politically, left wing. EFF is more like classical liberal. They generally oppose regulation of speech/tech and oppressive laws like DMCA 1201 (anti-circumvention) but promote things in the nature of antitrust like right-to-repair. Everything is required to be crammed into a box now so that often gets called "left" because the tech companies (also called "left") have found it more effective to pay off the i…

> EFF is more like classical liberal.

I mean, they were, but that no longer appears to be the case.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#835

Post by solid_fuel »

bcantrill wrote: post #331

I was recently asked about our (Oxide's) disposition to Twitter on the Peterman Pod[0], and the rationale for why we're no longer active there is pretty simple: the platform has become a cesspool of hate -- and it's antithetical to promoting a business (or any message, really). Aside from the morality of it (which is significant!), the hate itself is repugnant; it's not something that normal people want to be a part…

I appreciate you and other industry professionals taking a stand. The silence from so many of our colleagues is deafening.

Especially now, with the republican party fully embracing fascism, the impact of the digital world is surfacing in our own. Technology is enabling mass surveillance, suppression, and propaganda to an extent we have never seen before, and many in our own industry who should know better are standing by or worse - contributing.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#836

Post by positron26 »

Doing short form updates on BlueSky, but that is the worst algorithmic feed I have ever experienced in my life. I gave it some data. I indicated I didn't want to see some posts. The self-selection of the overall audience is overwhelmingly strong. No matter what I do to shape my engagement, all I get is Rachel Maddow in my feed.

The reason I'm not on X is because I just won't use a platform owned by someone who thinks Nazi salutes are just free expression (of desire to censor political opposition into utter powerlessness before purging them), so I'm not complaining about the Blue in Bluesky.

Nonetheless what it's abundantly clear that whatever audience I need to connect with, I cannot effectively do it on BlueSky. They need desperate overhaul to fix the self-selection bias that is likely making the platform appealing to only a very certain kind of ant.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#837

Post by claytongulick »

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.

That's when I would donate to them, annually. I still have two t-shirts.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#838

Post by mlindner »

Weird. I've shifted more and more of my social media use to X. Especially the last few weeks have been great with Artemis and an algorithmic accident that X's auto translation feature has been enabling tons of positive cross cultural communication with people from Japan. It's more fun than I've ever had on social media. Reddit on the other hand has been completely dying.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#839

Post by KingMob »

peyton wrote: post #805
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…

[flagged]

The thing is, unless their posts have only gotten bad recently, it's reasonable to assume that the drop in traffic is unrelated to post quality. Algorithms, changing audiences, etc. become better explanations.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#840

Post by WatchDog »

bcantrill wrote: post #331

I was recently asked about our (Oxide's) disposition to Twitter on the Peterman Pod[0], and the rationale for why we're no longer active there is pretty simple: the platform has become a cesspool of hate -- and it's antithetical to promoting a business (or any message, really). Aside from the morality of it (which is significant!), the hate itself is repugnant; it's not something that normal people want to be a part…

Twitter does have a significant amount of racist content, the antisemitism comment is interesting, because while it does exist, at least in my experience twitter seems to be the most supportive platform on Jewish and Israeli issues at the moment.

> [video] It's not free speech

It is though.

Of course it's your choice if you want to post your content there or not, but objectionable speech, _is_ free speech, and if you believe in free speech, then you should protect the speech that you don't like, because one day someone might decide they don't like your speech, and you won't be able to object to it without being admonished for the obvious hypocrisy.

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