While I'm not against people not-using Twitter/X (or any other platform): would it have been better to keep the account as a 'placeholder' so no one else can grab it? Have a post saying "We do not monitor this account." or some such?
You only need a placeholder if you think the platform matters enough to hold space for. For example: they don't have a placeholder on MySpace.
But if your goal is to prevent other people from having the name altogether, the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked. That forces them to hold your account only to prevent anyone from using it, lest you might sneak back in and say something "harmful" like "stonetoss is hans kristian graebener".
No, I described a way of getting blocked that I personally enjoyed. Haters (me) gonna hate, after all.
I think the FSF should not be on Twitter at all. Sorry if I was unclear about that in my previous comment, but the first paragraph was meant to contradict OP's suggestion.
Stonetoss is a well known comic by an alt-Right Neo-Nazi. He kept his identity secret for years (for obvious reasons), but was outed a few years back. He received a lot of hate over this, and got fired from his tech job over it.
The comic was antitrans, antisemitic (with full-on Holocaust denial), racist, and sexist... but Graebener himself is a Latino, so he gets hated on by both the Left and the Right.
Websites that cater to the alt-Right ban users for saying his real name and ban people who make Stonetoss memes that shit on Graebener for being a Nazi.
And you know why HN is actually a great place? dang isn't going to ban me for repeating verifiable facts.
> People argue and disagree here but somehow in pleasant way I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Turn on `showdead` in your settings (or don’t, probably for the best) and be prepared to read some nasty comments. No substance, only hate. There are a few on this very submission.
> I think it's a mistake to imply that just because a comment is dead because it was flagged that it is hateful.
I wish people would stop inventing arguments and “reading between the lines” when interpreting comments from people they don’t know. There was no implication. Whatever you think you read is only in your head.
Of course not every flagged and dead comment is hateful. But hateful comments do get flagged so that’s where you’ll find them.
That was the thing that got me blocked enough for it to stick. But it was right during the height of that meme, so I doubt it would go far now. Unless a bunch of people all started doing it or something.
If you're looking for something that might actually work right now, though, I think there's still some weird libertarian-ish "principle" they're pretending makes it wrong to post elon's (or others') flight information. At least that would be where I would start, because I don't like to bother people that don't deserve it, so general abusiveness is out, and it's funny to throw their free speech bullshit back in their face.
Also, Twitter, bafflingly, allows reuse of usernames. After I deleted my (very old; original id was <1 million) Twitter account, I think it was briefly grabbed by a spammer; the username now shows as 'suspended'.
So yeah, a dead placeholder is probably the safest choice.
I agree. Park the handle with a polite "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" note and a suggested list of other places for more fruitful discussion.
Back when I still had an account, after never seeing his content in the previous ~15 years I had been using Twitter, he was suddenly all over my feed. I had to mute him, and then, when that didn't work, block him, within months of his takeover.
I made and follow my own "lists" and that blocks just about anything (including most ads). Also, having just under 10,000 block and mute words helps a bit.
To be fair, that's what it shows by default. I recently created an account just for a short-term purpose, after years of not using it, and the starting algorithmic TL was just right-wing rage-bait about either my country or the US; nothing else. I chose to experiment, and it took days of active curation and follows for the algorithmic TL to stop trying and just show me game/anime stuff for example.
I can see people which open an account without a specific purpose just letting themselves fall into the first rabbit hole Twitter shows them.
it is naive to think that twitter/x is a neutral platform when the owner of the site created a bot that called itself "mecha hitler". do you really think he isn't affecting everyone's feed as well?
Liberals, Fascists, and Communists always like to throw mud at each other as if they're not all cut from the same collectivist cloth (and all responsible for the deaths of millions). Best to pay them no mind.
Personally I'm not much a fan of Reddit or Twitter though, simply because the algorithmic nonsense is clearly there just to drive ad views and not to provide me with the interactions I'm there to have. Nostr is a much more pleasant experience.
Everything gets flagged? I don't think so. Moderation here is nice, but it could be more strict. I encounter comments I'd like to see flagged literally every day.
I don't even know what this means today. What things are "non-political"? Saying "there are no politics" seems like the same thing as "the status quo is the only possibility" - exactly the stagnation from which I want to move away on socials.
> the art or science of government: as [that] concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy, ... [or] winning and holding control over a government; political actions, practices, policies, ... affairs or business
Broad sense:
> the total complex of relations between people living in society
In my experience, the question is almost always disingenuous. Topics being "political" is clearly the exception rather than the norm. The subtext of asking is something like "you are a bad person for objecting to my political statements (but I will still reserve the right to object to yours, should you decide that turnabout is fair play)".
> Saying "there are no politics" seems like the same thing as "the status quo is the only possibility" - exactly the stagnation from which I want to move away on socials.
There are all kinds of projects and activities that can be discussed without touching upon the relations between people in society, let alone matters of governmental policy or the quest for power.
There is nothing at all "stagnant" about a community focused on such things. OP is about the Free Software Foundation; focusing on discussion of the software has nothing to do with politics, and is generally improved by consciously avoiding politics.
The mere fact of existence of other political possibilities does not necessitate discussing those possibilities at every opportunity.
The usual hodgepodge of policy and constituent packages that evolve election to election, pasted onto semi-tribal partisan affiliations. Politics (in democracies) is rarely ideologically coherent because the data pull the model, not vice versa.
Like, we can describe the illiberal wings of the right and left, MAGA and academic progressivism, respectively, and it will get readership in the New Yorker and Atlantic, but it’s not going to tell you much about who’s in power and why.
More specifically, complaining about “liberals who typically hate Musk” misses that most of Musk’s antagonism in the last 1 year has come from a different cohort than that which has soured on him since he bought Twitter which is again quite different from the crowd that never liked him at all. There is no “typical” Musk hater, even if we just focus on those who vote blue.
Putting "MAGA" and "academic progressivism" on equal footings is pure bothsideism. What do you mean by "illiberal" exactly, and why would that apply to progressives?
> Putting "MAGA" and "academic progressivism" on equal footings is pure bothsideism
One is a political movement that controls the Presidency and several states. The other has a seat at the table in a few cities. If you’re seeing equal footing, you’re squinting hard.
> What do you mean by "illiberal" exactly, and why would that apply to progressives?
I’m specifically referring to the policing of speech. Brendan Carr telling broadcasters what they can and cannot say is illiberal. Same goes for the euphemism escalators that regulated the form, but not content, of classic political correctness. More broadly, liberalism triumphs tolerance while conservativism purity.
But to the point, LatinX and the Gulf of America being similarly dumb is an academic exercise. They’re functionally dumb and dangerous for entirely separate reasons. Compressing them into illiberalism is interesting, but not usefully descriptive.
Going back to OP, treating the world as pro- or anti-Musk is similarly uselessly reductive.
Make a new X account, open the front page. Within a few tweets, you can see neonazis casually discussing the jewish question or lunatics fantasizing about a coming race war. Reddit feels very, very milquetoast in comparison.
For that matter, if I check any random tweet link in an incognito tab and look over at the "What's happening" panel, it's all sports and celebrity nonsense, nothing "culture war" or political at all.
It happens A/B style even with old accounts. Crazy conspiracy stuffs and fake repost accounts pop up out of nowhere, and goes away after I've blocked few of them. It's as if a hatch on the floor comes popping up and back down.
Otherwise the site is at most, "egg prices had tripled" bad. Far from cash on wheelbarrows bad.
I dont use reddit much anymore, but even I noticed that between the gloating about Charlie Kirk's assassination, disinformation that the shooter was far-right regularly hit the front page to the tune of 100K upvotes. Is that acceptable?
Disinformation that the shooter was far-left was all over reddit as well. People constructed all sorts of explanations because officially nothing much was known.
Take a look at /r/conservative when they often suddenly completely change their shared opinion.
> Content glorifying terrorist groups such as the Al Qassam brigades can stay up for many days on Reddit, for example. I had to personally fill the special form for content illegal in the EU, and even then it took a long time to be removed.
I remember reporting open calls to violence in various socialist subreddits with no action ever taken as far as I could tell. That was about a decade ago.
There was also a comment (I still have the link saved and it was never deleted) from more than a decade ago, from a moderator at the time (account since deleted) of the main transgender subreddit, openly accusing transgender members of the sub of being drug addicts and prostitutes based on absolutely nothing beyond disagreeing with the moderation team's hard-line woke (it was called "SJW" back then, of course) posture.
I never visit twitter/X “for you” or homepage, but instead just use the timeline and see only people I follow. This is mostly interesting people in tech or hobbies. It is great for that!
Every platform has their extremists and if you let the algorithm suggest content to you it will be stuff designed to fester hated and rage. However twitter is one of the few platforms that let you curate your feed, and I couldn’t use it without that.
Why does everybody I see complaining about modern Twitter say the exact phrase "Nobody should be on that platform."? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your point, just curious if there was some manifesto going around or if everybody suddenly started using the same phrase.
Is it just me or have people started using the same phrases more often and faster than before? Reminds me of when everybody started saying "God forbid" a few months ago.
I don't know about the phrase, but I share the sentiment. The owner is a racist promoting racist things. It's not a 'public square' because he controls the algorithm, so it'll never be a 'fair fight' for those who disagree with him.
Paying users are also explicitly given priority in the reply section, which naturally hands a megaphone to the type of user that is more willing to give money to Elon Musk and wear the "I gave money to Elon Musk" badge.
I did some searches for “nobody should be on that platform” and found:
- one hit on a Lana del Rey message board
- one bluesky post from 8 months ago with no likes, reposts, or replies.
If you widen the search to “should be on that platform” then you get more hits, but many are references to Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, TikTok etc. It seems that people are reaching for a noun that can refer to these social media properties that are not just “sites” and not just “apps.” It would appear that ”platform” is the word we’ve landed on.
The groupthink is real, and it's coming for a skull near you.
But in all seriousness I think it's a mix of bots on the dead internet leading the monkey see monkey do paradigm. If you see 80 out of 100 people doing a thing then you get swept up in the flood. Even if 50 of those 80 are bots.
Like pareidolia humans are great at seeing patterns that don't exist. Nobody should on that platform is an extremely common phrase. So you'll probably hear it more than once. However that doesn't mean there is a conspiracy.
It's mostly been on comments on various Reddit posts over the last few months. I unfortunately don't have any examples saved. I'm not accusing anybody of anything, just personally curious and remarking on a pattern I've perceived and was wondering if it was just a "me" thing.
It's a good idea to leave X, considering the values of the Free Software Foundation and how they don't exactly align with X's profit-driven model, and the spread of internet garbage.
I think either leaving a hostile platform or staying to promote ideas which run against it are reasonable choices. But what the article doesn't say is why they (as an organisation whose mission is to protect and promote free software) should choose to leave now, when from what I know, Twitter has always been a non-free, profit-driven network.
Good on them. It always feels like " But other than that, Mrs Lincoln enjoyed the play" watching people rationalize why they are still on Twitter or use Grok
why would anyone need to rationalize it? they're still two of the best platforms in their respective silos. most people don't care about drama and virtue signaling
Only one rationalization is need- Musk is evil. If you are still using Twitter, as far as I am concerned, you in league with him. You might as well just put on a MAGA hat.
I don’t really like the political nature of these decisions. It feels like political people often take over groups and institutions to implement their own political agendas through such policies.
On the other hand, Twitter/X has a problem of spam. I don’t even think it’s bots but actual humans. You see low effort and racist comments all over the place, poisoning the conversations. And it’s not just on political posts. If you’re Chinese or African or Indian, there will be vile comments spamming your posts.
Such a space isn’t welcoming to many people and I think groups like FSFE have legitimate reasons to want to avoid exposing their members to this stuff. It’s a hostile environment.
> In the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation in which Richard Stallman has a leading position
These guys are entitled to use or avoid any social media platform they want. I'm entitled, as well, to judge them for putting purity tests in unrelated domains above their commitment to free software and thereby rendering themselves ineffective in their primary mission.
Irrelevance is their choice.
That said, there's a transparency consideration. Doesn't Europe have laws about charities having to use donor funds to advance the ostensible purpose of the charity?
Matthias Kirschner is FSFE president and a full time employee. Do FSFE's donors know the FSFE is making itself less effective towards its mission of promoting free software by avoiding people who the FSFE leadership team dislike for reasons unrelated to free software? If they want to do this stuff, they should put it in their charter.
If you ever run a large organization you will quickly find there are lots of people you are unable to cooperate with for reasons unrelated to your organization's primary mission. Especially in a nonprofit, the primary thing for being effective in your mission is having people who want to work together, if you have people who can't stand each other you're not going to be effective.
That is not true. The libertarian free-speech FSF(E) was way more effective in 2000 than it is now.
All these organizations have been infiltrated by career bureaucrats who have their pet political wedge issues and bite away everyone else. Of course they are silent on the really big issues. They would ban Stallman but not go after Epstein's real friends.
And that is in a nutshell how these political pseudo movements differ from the real political movements at the end of the sixties. At that time they were not afraid of going after the big guys.
"the current platform direction and climate combined with an algorithm that prioritises hatred, polarisation, and sensationalism, alongside growing privacy and data protection concerns"
While I agree that this platform has a lot of hateful people, it's definitely possible after some basic internet hygiene end up with nice recommendations feed especially after forming solid following list with good people, no hatred no politics only coolest people doing cool things. I like it there. It's the place where things happen that you read about on other cites only weeks later in some twisted form
* A web-of-trust social media, where I can instantly see, about any account, all of the chains of separation between us, in order to verify and validate the humanity and social connection of another person.
Presently, twitter (and even moreso, reddit) are just so overrun by bots whose job seems to be to muddy all waters with short-shrift, low-effort takes, but expressed in way more words than are necessary.
I don't mind (in fact, I love) long-form posts like were common in the old reddit, but that are thoughtful and perhaps radical (in the same of addressing the root of the subject). Today's reddit is almost as bad as twitter. I'm kinda ready to get off both of them, but I'd like to still have daily engagement on topics that challenge me / my worldviews.
That's a lot of words with not a lot of substance. I suppose their whole identity is announcing that they're superior to other people and branching off, while asking for money for what looks like mostly sending people to talk at events (which are probably mostly more fundraising).
> "In the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation[sic] in which Richard Stallman has a leading position."
I do wish more people would try to fix things from the inside, and I get there's a point where it's no longer possible, but in this case it sounds like they didn't like people calling them out on X and had no way to control the narrative. What other gain would there be for a group trying to spread information in as many channels as possible?
Who knew that an ideologically-oriented organization would have morals and values, and that they wouldn't be aligned with Leon? Maybe they should've just sold out to AI, then they'd get a ticker tape parade.
How would it not be open and transparent on twitter? It's a site where everyone can see what they are talking about. It's only when they try to limit to whom and where they talk to people that they are not open and transparent.
What do these have to do with open and transparent communication?
> I don't need to talk to you or use your favored public platform for my published material to be open and transparent on some other public platform.
Very true, but limiting the platforms limits the openness and transparency. With some simple software you can post to all with almost no effort. Seems weird to disclude one just to write a blog post about it for attention.
it's the town square- it's not about the two people talking but for everyone reading what they said instead of controlling the narrative by only speaking to people you want in places you want. They don't even have to answer to everyone, so the only benefit of losing access to thousands/millions of people is to make an article like this for Pride.
I just mean that in the way that this site is a town square, or all of the rfc's, in that anyone can (for free) see all of the discussions and participate. Just like a town square, not every comment has to be addressed or promoted equally, but I don't know of a better way to release information and allow for anyone to discuss it with others.
The best time to leave Twitter was when Elon made it a yahtzee pron site. The next best time is now. Kudos to the FSFE, it's never too late to do the right thing.
certain words get filtered out by the algorithms. "yahtzee" translates to "Those snappily dressed German fascists during WWII". "pron" translates to "sexually explicit material". So if you don't want your posts flagged, you have to use code words.
> In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition.
Love it or hate it, Twitter (yeah, I choose to be stubborn here) is still probably overwhelmingly the most impactful platform in this way.
While I respect the idea of the "boycott" in the abstract, perhaps the most wrong thing people think about it is "Because it's controlled by so-and-so, everyone who uses it is brainwashed and it's impossible to do good there."
Nope. Look, a lot of good people are still there. I personally also wish they would all leave and we all go elsewhere -- but that's not the present reality.
As such, people who insist that you must leave and no good can happen through staying ring the same to me as "IF SO AND SO GETS ELECTED IM LEAVING THE COUNTRY."
I don’t think leaving a platform you don’t enjoy has much, if anything, in common with physically relocating. I left X, but I have an account i use to log in about once a week to see if there’s anything worth while. I haven’t really found an alternative to X, things are fragmented now. Where I used to be able to follow most people I were interested in on Twitter, i now have some on bluesky, some on mastodon, some still on X, a bunch at instagram and YouTube… it’s a mess
The parallel I'm drawing here is that a lot of people threaten that when they don't really mean it, and more specifically, don't seem to think about why others don't.
I still have people there, so I will stick around.
I don't understand people who have the opinion that twitter is indispensable for them. I never had a twitter account and I only see tweets if they are posted on some news site or whatever. I don't feel uninformed. I don't feel like I am missing any critical information. I don't see any value in it.
Thank you. Hey, I 100% respect anyones individual decision about the place FOR THEMSELVES.
But a lot of people become absolutely insufferable when they try to dictate why this should be the case for someone else, I absolutely hate the framing of "indispensable" which I never said.
You don't find value, fine! I do. Let's actually talk about why I do if you like.
Nah, fuck that. If Stormfront had half a billion daily users that doesn't somehow compel you to participate; anyone willing to stay on Twitter isn't worth talking to even if they are personally nice to you.
Stormfront users wouldn't have really been relevant for the FSF. But on a platform like Twitter, which isn't mono-subject like the Stormfront forums, would have been relevant for an organization like FSF.
And personally the few people I follow there (mostly game devs) are totally worth talking to.
> Nope. Look, a lot of good people are still there. I personally also wish they would all leave and we all go elsewhere -- but that's not the present reality.
pointing out patterns in scientific statistics / the real world, not agreeing to label something as something which it scientifically isn't and not changing the meaning of well established words for ideological reasons.
I don't have an opinion of Elon Musk. What would you say to those who think he's a value-add to the world, or are completely neutral about them (as I am)?
Do you really think your values are that pervasive, even here in HN (which tends towards an echo chamber)?
Yes. We all know that he is an untrustworthy, spoiled man-child with daddy issues so deep, that even the whole world is not enough. He is a fascist and an anchor around the neck of the entire world. In a more just world, he would be loaded onto one of his rockets and launched into the Phantom Zone.
The only one's who can't see this are so hopelessly deluded, they cannot be reasoned with.
He did a nazi salute in front of the whole world. Does he really need to goose-step down the National Mall before you believe your own eyes? He is the very definition of a super villain
Generally speaking, both using and not using X seem like reasonable choices for the FSFE, in my opinion. But deciding to leave it right now over changes in 'direction and climate' seems… odd.
The FSFE's mission, as I understand it, is to support and promote free software. But as far as I know, Twitter has never been a friend of free software, nor has it been supportive of other related values the article mentions, like 'privacy', 'transparency', 'autonomy', 'data protection', etc. It has always been a non-free, centralised network which cared about profit more than user rights, and engagement more than fostering civil discourse.
I don't see FSFE's presence on a platform as endorsement of its values, but rather as a way to leverage its popularity to better promote their mission. That hasn't changed; X is still a popular platform. It's attitude to Free Software and related ideas doesn't seem to have changed, either. So why leave now? I get 'misinformation, harassment, and hate speech' are never a good thing, but I don't recall the FSFE opposing them so vehemently before (more like just ignoring them), so why now, out of the blue? Unless there's been a change in their internal priorities, which they don't communicate, it doesn't really add up for me.
In the end, this just reads like them taking a political stance and trying to rationalise it in more neutral language. And I can understand and respect that decision, but the fuzzy phrasing still rubs me the wrong way.
> The FSFE's mission, as I understand it, is to support and promote free software. But as far as I know, Twitter has never been a friend of free software, nor has it been supportive of other related values the article mentions, like 'privacy', 'transparency', 'autonomy', 'data protection', etc. It has always been a non-free, centralised network which cared about profit more than user rights, and engagement more than fostering civil discourse.
Indeed, and FSFE writes:
> The platform never aligned with our values
> a space we were never comfortable joining, yet one that was once important for reaching members of society who were not active in our preferred spaces for interaction
And then says in no unclear terms what changed:
> Since Elon Musk acquired the social network [...] the FSFE has been closely monitoring the developments of this proprietary platform
> Over time, it has become increasingly hostile, with misinformation, harassment, and hate speech more visible than ever.
> an algorithm that prioritises hatred, polarisation, and sensationalism, alongside growing privacy and data protection concerns, has led us to the decision to part ways with this platform.
You cherry-picked two words "direction and climate" from the article and criticised them for taking an ambiguous political stance, but there is nothing ambiguous about the actual announcement and they clarify their exact motivation for leaving multiple times.
The problem is that 'what changed' is hardly related to why they joined Twitter in the first place. Becoming 'increasingly hostile' and prioritising 'hatred, polarisation, and sensationalism' (more than before) doesn't really contradict or prevent you from 'reaching members of society who were not active in [y]our preferred spaces for interaction'. Like I wrote, X is still popular, there are still people you can communicate with about your mission. The original logical (and given) reason for being on X is still just as valid.
And I didn't criticise them for taking an ambiguous stance. On the contrary, I remarked they seem to be taking a rather unambiguous political stance (one opposed to that of X's new leadership). What I criticised was their not being upfront about this and instead giving explanations which don't really add up for me (for reasons restated above).
I quoted only short parts to avoid making my comment appear twice as long, but please let me know if you found the way I did so to be misleading in some way.
> The problem is that 'what changed' is hardly related to why they joined Twitter in the first place.
Does it have to be? The original calculus was "unpleasantness of using unfree software vs. benefit of reaching more people". The calculus has changed to "unpleasantness of using unfree software + unpleasantness of encountering hate speech vs. benefit of reaching more people". In other words, what used to be "1 + -1 = 0" has become "1 + -2 = -1" for the FSFE. As humans, they are free to consider other reasons than their primary mission alone when determining whether the platform is still one they find to be worthwhile to use.
> What I criticised was their not being upfront about this
I really don't get how your impression is that they are not upfront about this, and yes, I found your comment to have been quite misleading, having skimmed the comments before reading the article. The very first sentence in the article starts with "Since Elon Musk...". What part of this would you have liked them to be more upfront about?
Sort of? For an individual, there's obviously a ton of personal factors that play a role in decision-making. For an organisation with a stated mission, though, I should expect them to make their decisions based on what best aligns with said mission, or another set of priorities they're bound to follow. This is important for knowing if one should support the organisation and if their values are aligned. How can one trust an organisation which only ever claims to fight for Y, but then in practice randomly throws Z, W, and U into the mix, as they feel like it?
As I wrote, the content they criticise X for is the kind of content I recall them being much more indifferent about in the past, so seeing this come up as their main reason for leaving this platform, with no indication of any internal re-evaluation of priorities having happened, is rather out of the blue.
> The very first sentence in the article starts with "Since Elon Musk..."
… and goes on to tell us they have been monitoring it; found it increasingly hostile; that they originally joined to interact with people, promote free software and alternative networks; that the platform feeds hatred, polarisation and sensationalism and grows privacy concerns; and finally that they're leaving.
> What part of this would you have liked them to be more upfront about?
What they suddenly have a problem with and why. As I said, what they actually wrote doesn't add up to this for me. Hostile environment, misinformation, harassment? They didn't seem to care much or see it as hindering their mission before. Hatred, polarisation, sensationalism? Same thing, and it doesn't necessarily hinder their activity on the network. Data protection, privacy concerns? The network has always been non-free, for-profit and centralised. Interacting with people and promoting free software? You literally can still do that.
They say why they originally came, but those reasons are still valid today. They say what they dislike about their platform, but it's either irrelevant to their mission or they haven't disliked it so much before. So what they say does not explain their decision. It doesn't explain the logic behind it. Trying to use it as an explanation doesn't really make sense with their supposed mission.
I can only guess the actual logic is more like 'we have other values we care about more now, which the platform now goes against, and in our current political climate we want to more noticeably stand at the "right side" and gain favour with our primary audience over there'. This, for example, could be a sensible explanation. But they chose not to give one.
Apparently, controlling what people are allowed to say "in the name of good" aligns with the FSFE's values. I know enough history to know what that means.
Except now the just have less reach? I didn't follow them, so perhaps they had 10 followers and no reach to begin with, but this seems foolish if you have a mission you care about.
I found myself wondering the same thing. Do they genuinely expect people who have never heard about FSFE to be using a decentralized social platform? That sounds scary. Normal people don't use scary sounding things.
They're certainly welcome to do whatever they think is right, and it sounds more "on brand" for them, but it seems ridiculous to say something like "[Using Twitter was] important for reaching members of society who were not active in our preferred spaces for interaction." but then end with "Follow the FSFE on Mastodon and Peertube!" I am very tech literate and I've never even heard of Peertube. There is very little chance they are ever going to reach even a single set of ears this way.
At that point, they might as well just send random fliers in the mail to strangers.
I would say that I hate this, but I actually don't know what good it does to be a political organization actively engaging on social media anymore. There are too many paid mercenaries with expensive automation who will disrupt whatever you do.
But what are they going to do instead, nothing? Killing yourself in protest makes it really easy on your enemies (and aren't the only enemies of Free Software the people who want to sell closed devices?). Do what you do, don't feel like you have to control all the responses to what you do, or that they are hurting you. Your engagement with the public is independent of any reaction to you. You have total control over it. In this case, it looks like you're choosing to withdraw into a closet and only speak to your friends.
All that being said, twitter/X, both pre-Musk and post-Musk, sabotaged and sabotages reach based on opinionated, political, and profit-driven algorithms. People don't even see you. If your reach numbers were crap, you might as well not waste the effort. But I actually don't know what the effort is to fire and forget links to your press releases and current campaigns that you've doubtlessly posted other places. Seems almost zero.
My fear is that this is being pushed by people who are simply taking advantage of their power in an organization to push their own personal grievances. Free Software should only care about Elon Musk and Twitter to the extent that it is not Free Software. If you've moved into the "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" place, you've lost the plot.
I'm also getting a bit sick of Europeans stepping out of conversations because they aren't censored enough, even if the algorithm is definitely promoting the worst for engagement. It's scary. Europe has a comically bad history with this.
edit: and even the mention of "misinformation" is a red flag. I don't want a FSF that is a "misinformation" and hate speech monitor. I want a FSF that neonazis and climate skeptics feel free to join if they think that software should be Free.
I see more hate and misinformation on Mastodon than I see on X. Here is a very mild one:
[edit: link removed; I don't want to promote that guy but to give the gist he was saying that people who believe in free speech are trash, targeting X users with hate. Mastodon is absolutely saturated with this.]
Most of the criticism I see of X seems completely made up out of malice or is regurgitation of things other poorly informed or resentful people have said.
The supposed FSF in Europe should post links to the sections of the open source algorithm they claim to be criticizing, and show us their PR.
My criticism of X is primarily rooted in 2 things: the massive degradation of my experience using the platform and a distrust that Musk wouldn't use the platform to manipulate public opinion to achieve political goals.
On the first point the simplest thing is I used to report people who use overt slurs or anti-semitic language. When Musk took over it started taking months for them to follow up and the response was simply to lock the account until they deleted the offending tweet. Eventually when I would report those people X just switched to saying they weren't breaking the rules. Now the replies of tons of seemingly normal posts that get lots of visibility are full of vile people trying to derail conversation with racism or anti-semitism.
Another big problem is the way that blue-check accounts are boosted has incentivized every account to act like click-bait all the time. Whenever a post gets semi-viral the blue-check replies are artificially lifted to the top and most of them are totally worthless because the commenters are just trying to 'grab space' so people click their profile and follow them. It used to be that if big accounts posted something interesting you might see a bunch of interesting follow up replies. Now it's spammers at the top and then racists / crazies mixed in with more thoughtful replies if you scroll down a few pages past the blue-checks. It used to be that the algorithmic feed would surface me all sorts of interesting and novel work from people across the tech world but now there's a whole category of people trying to make every single Tweet viral enough to get payouts.
And then there's Musk himself. He's ordered the algorithm to be manipulated to boost himself more. He's clearly expressed discontent when the algorithm doesn't work the way he wants, he's meddled heavily in the platform's AI bot to make it say things Musk prefers, and he's been rather unscrupulous chasing his political goals. I think it's not unlikely he'd use the platform to guide public opinion, perhaps even using AI to do it discretely and intelligently. I view that as a significant risk.
So the platform has gone from something that's highly useful to me, and a place I greatly enjoyed, to something that more often than not wastes my time and exposes me to people that disturb me. And on top of all that I think contributing to the platform may empower someone who I deeply distrust to manipulate public opinion towards their political goals.
> What initially intended to be a place for dialogue and information exchange has turned into a centralised arena of hostility, misinformation, and profit-driven control, far removed from the ideals of freedom we stand for.
The issue is the new algorithm I think. It's the same on thread. You're more likely to get a view by responding to outrage bait than by promoting your own work, while before it was 50/50: responding to bait was great to reach a new audience, but for people who already followed you, you could still reach them by posting 'normally'.
Do you follow any content creator anywhere? Before 2019, you basically _had_ to be on Twitter to follow updates. Then the media diversified, but by 2023, even people still on X will rather use discord to have update on content creator they follow (or, weirdly, Instagram it seems? At least my favourite vulgarisation content creator seems to think so)
Thread is less political overall and have exactly the same issue, it not about political side imho, it's about engagement and the new algorithms.
I follow someone who used to use Twitter to update on his projects, 2 years ago he received a few hundred times more engagement for dunking on flat earthers than for pushing his video on Maxwell. He decided to stop. More engagement for controversy was always the algorithm, but it was two orders of magnitude lower a decade ago.
There are plenty of people who love FOSS and terminally on X. Yes they are crazy, paranoid and racist but thats cutting off one of your key markets lol
Perhaps, but of all people, FOSS devotees should know why Twitter needs to die. The fact that so many people remain on the platform is disheartening to say the least. How bad does it have to get before you refuse to take part?
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