My grandparents were pretty WASPy, conservative people who lived in northern Idaho. And they hated the white supremacist/neonazi groups up there with a burning passion. They were of an age to remember people going off to fight in Germany and Asia against that kind of ideology.
They would have been absolutely appalled and ashamed to see a business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white homeland" and similar comments.
I find it deeply dismaying that people consider that "just politics" or that opposing it is "ideological". We can argue all day about the proper rate of corporate taxation or debate the best way to implement environmental regulations, and I will not consider you a bad person if you disagree with me. But the kind of crap coming out of that guy? That's beyond politics.
bluebarbet 16 minutes ago [-]
But since when did using a business's product come to require sharing (or not sharing) political views with the business's owner? Seems to me that this is what has changed.
davidw 10 minutes ago [-]
In the past, most business owners would perhaps quietly donate to a party or candidates, but probably wouldn't hang their ideology out in front of people all day, every day. Think about someone like Warren Buffett. He has political views, but they are not something he's out there loudly airing on a huge platform.
And like I pointed out, these are not just any old "political views". It's extremist stuff that in the past would have gotten you ostracized. I'm old enough to remember Trent Lott losing his Senate leadership position, for instance.
Also, because of "network effects", simply providing content to Twitter makes the site more valuable.
pavlov 10 minutes ago [-]
In the case of X, the business owner is aggressively pushing his political views on users by heavy-handed methods like prioritizing his own posts in algorithmic feeds and overriding the context of his AI bot to parrot his pet ideas.
If you went to a restaurant and it had Confederate flags and pro-slavery memorabilia on the walls, would you think: “Well, that’s just their political view, I don’t have to share it to eat here?”
AlecSchueler 5 minutes ago [-]
> pushing his political views on users by heavy-handed methods like prioritizing his own posts in algorithmic feeds
He's also using his fame and fortune to much more directly fund and promote political change in places like the UK. It goes beyond this one service, but moving away from this service weakens his position more broadly as well.
cosmic_cheese 9 minutes ago [-]
It didn't used to be nearly as common for owners of midsize to large businesses to be loudly outspoken politically, especially those holding more extreme views. It used to be common sense to keep that sort of thing to oneself, if only to avert PR disaster.
This helped keep a neutral or at worst ambivalent image of these owners in the minds of the larger public and thus for the most part didn't factor into purchase decisions.
It's now easier than ever to see the true character of a business owner and so it's only natural that customers have begun to factor in this information in purchase/usage decisions.
nitwit005 16 seconds ago [-]
Nothing changed. People have always had a problem funding people or groups they find objectionable.
duxup 10 minutes ago [-]
I expect people to be different.
I don’t expect them to provide a platform for people who make it a point to hate others and advocate for removal of their / my rights and so on.
notatoad 3 minutes ago [-]
X/twitter is a media company. choosing which media products to purchase based on political values is how it has always worked.
maxbond 6 minutes ago [-]
It isn't strictly required and it hasn't changed; it's always been complicated and it's always been a balance. This isn't speculation or a hot take. Consumer boycotts are as old as the hills, so it's an observable fact that our relationship with firms and their politics has complicated and negotiated for a very long time.
alterom 1 minutes ago [-]
>But since when did using a business's product come to require sharing (or not sharing) political views with the business's owner?
Since 18th century at the very least; see: anti-slavery sugar boycott[1].
That's if you absolutely ignore the parent's point that political views are things like specifics of policy, not whether some people should be considered subhuman.
>Seems to me that this is what has changed.
It seems so because you don't know history, and didn't do a one-minute Google search for history of successful boycotts.
The article I'm linking is in the "bite-sized" category.
Most people hold a set of political views, while also admitting a spectrum of competing views into their personal, financial, etc. lives. For the average person, doing business with a neo-Nazi (or someone who is "merely" neo-Nazi adjacent) exceeds that spectrum. This is eminently reasonable, and has not changed significantly in a long time.
cogman10 9 minutes ago [-]
Not really. People have boycotted products for political and ideological motivations for a very long time. The change recently is that people stopped caring as much. [1]
There are plenty of business' products that I use where I'm unaware of if I share or don't share the owner's political views and I'm totally fine using them. Elon Musk has made it impossible to not be aware of his political views by constantly shoving it down our throats.
iwontberude 11 minutes ago [-]
The conflict seems as old as ever. Labor vs union-busting robber baron.
etchalon 12 minutes ago [-]
No one would say they used "David Duke's Whites Only Car Wash" but "didn't support the owner's politics."
PaulHoule 7 minutes ago [-]
It is the way they express those views.
I mean, there are a lot of conservatives I respect including Mitt Romney, Robert Nisbett, George Will, and Thomas Sowell. Then there are the jerks like William F. Buckley and David Horowitz. [1]
Then there is Musk who's below even them -- but I am not particularly offended by Hobby Lobby or Chicken-Fil-A.
Social pressure has literally always existed. Nothing has changed lol.
And I wouldn't call white nationalism a "political" view, like it's some ordinary kind of opinion. That's sanewashing something disgusting and disgraceful. That type needs to get shoved back under the rock they crawled out from.
archagon 7 minutes ago [-]
Musk’s account is the most engaged and followed account on Twitter. De facto, Twitter is his global soapbox.
Amezarak 2 minutes ago [-]
Politics is all-encompassing. You don’t get to declare your beliefs privileged and above contestation. We always have to fight these battles.
31 minutes ago [-]
9 minutes ago [-]
cozyman 28 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
holmesworcester 35 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
ryandrake 34 minutes ago [-]
Anyone who doesn't think what Musk did was a Nazi salute, I encourage you to watch the video over and over, enough times so that you can memorize and replicate it, then go into work and do it in front of your manager, and see what happens.
fooey 27 minutes ago [-]
he literally paraphrased the 14 words after doing it
"It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured."
it's an absolute joke anyone disputes what he did
saltyoldman 7 minutes ago [-]
100% agree, for anyone that hasn't seen the clip, saved you some time googling:
"Oh, I must have missed seeing you at the corporate retreat! Put yourself on my calendar so we can talk about your promotion."
holmesworcester 25 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
hombre_fatal 26 minutes ago [-]
I think there are better things to focus on about Elon Musk, like his role in getting Trump elected, the misinfo tweets he reposts with "Exactly" and "Concerning" (where the top community note trivially debunks the tweet -- he doesn't care whether it's real), making a stink about the Epstein files until he was cool with Trump again, promoting right-wing slop like Gunther Eagleman, changing Twitter in general like how you can freely say the n-word now, how he went about DOGE, what he promotes vs what he's silent on.
But I've yet to see someone show video of a prominent democrat doing the same salute as Musk. Which is probably why it's left as an exercise for the reader to find.
That said, we don't need to speculate about his salute when you can look directly at the slop he posts on Twitter.
holmesworcester 18 minutes ago [-]
This is a video presented by a mainstream DC news source (The Hill) of Cory Booker doing the same motion:
If you normalize a bit for Musk being more physically awkward than Booker it's the same motion.
presbyterian 12 minutes ago [-]
“If you ignore the ways they’re different, they’re the same”
Those are different gestures. Musk is clearly forcefully throwing out his harm, mimicking the Nazi salute. Booker is moving his arm from his chest to a waving motion, using two hands instead of one at some points.
DonHopkins 6 minutes ago [-]
The depths boot lickers like you will go to defend something that is so obviously and intentionally Nazi. Please post a video of yourself doing exactly the same salute as Elon Musk did, with you real name. Oh you won't? Then shut the fuck up.
micromacrofoot 31 minutes ago [-]
I guess we're at "it's your fault for having eyes" part of the defense of the action.
It seemed pretty blatant to me if you watch the whole video, the chest pound and the clear arm/hand extension really makes it difficult to see as anything else.
It was distinctly different from the stills of other politicians waving that often get used as comparison by trolls trying to defend it... when you compare videos the difference is not even questionable.
holmesworcester 23 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
CamperBob2 16 minutes ago [-]
Booker is waving, not saluting.
But you knew that.
ryandrake 35 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
highmastdon 38 minutes ago [-]
What do you mean _exactly_? Covering your statement is a shroud of vagueness doesn’t help form an opinion, only infuse more polarisation
SimianSci 28 minutes ago [-]
Your comment on vagueness misses its mark.
> business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white homeland"
It is not every commenter's duty to cite their sources when you have the ability to easily infer the context and search the internet. These are very well documented actions that they refer to.
Your attempts to drive sentiment through casting doubt are noticed.
quantified 22 minutes ago [-]
Well, all of these are politics and ideology. It's OK to have an ideological bent of some sort or other. You can indeed be highly intolerant of those who are intolerant in certain ways. You can hate certain kinds of hate. And you can call out greedy callous bastards wherever you see them. It's basically being discerning.
r-w 13 minutes ago [-]
GP is saying neo-Nazis are "not just politics, but also something worse". You're not really disagreeing with them, maybe just missing their point about some ideologies being worthy of planned exclusion from a civilized society. Aka the paradox of tolerance. That's what makes some political stances "not just politics".
pirate787 5 minutes ago [-]
It's grossly unfair to conflate white nationalism and white supremacy. Your grandparents lived in a state that was close to 100% european descent, meanwhile in a couple generations there will only be a handful of small european majority countries left in the world. I don't think you have any idea how your grandparents would react in today's world of ethnic replacement.
malfist 31 seconds ago [-]
> It's grossly unfair to conflate white nationalism and white supremacy
No, it isn't. It's a distinction without significance.
stirfish 31 seconds ago [-]
This feels like the "technically it's hebephilia" argument in that drawing the distinction just makes your argument weaker for regular people.
CharlieDigital 1 minutes ago [-]
You can be racist and still hate fascism and Nazis.
Everyone should hate fascism and Nazis.
mullingitover 3 minutes ago [-]
It's grossly dishonest to conflate a complexion with an ethnicity. 'White' is a complexion, not a culture.
codeflo 43 minutes ago [-]
Nothing recent made me feel quite as old and out of the loop more as the slowness with which I realized that this is about x.com (Twitter), not x.org (the windowing system).
kushalpandya 38 minutes ago [-]
That too would very likely be seen as deeply political.
mindslight 34 minutes ago [-]
After reading about Wayland for 10 (?) years and thinking it was some huge deal, I finally took the leap as I was redoing my window manager anyway and it was quite easy (at least on NixOS). Heck virt-viewer (one of my main apps) is still running under Xwayland because the performance seems better.
Gare 19 minutes ago [-]
10 years ago Wayland was in much worse state. It started being good in the last few years, though some features are still lacking.
hasley 32 minutes ago [-]
I was thinking of X11 as well, but did not feel old - until I read your text. ;)
a_paddy 32 minutes ago [-]
My favourite microblogging platform is way.land
jerlam 18 minutes ago [-]
Whenever I see X used, I wonder if the author will return to replace the variable with the actual name.
noosphr 36 minutes ago [-]
Probably more reasonable.
I'm not sure why xorg exists if their sole purpose is to kill x. As per the many posts by their developers.
raverbashing 30 minutes ago [-]
It would be ironic if Xorg launched a twitter competitor using a custom update protocol (an X extension) over the network and TCL
mghackerlady 7 minutes ago [-]
knowing how xorg currently operates (it doesn't, it has a successor) it'd be a wayland protocol negotiated over dbus and mainly opposed by the GNOME people
blurbleblurble 42 minutes ago [-]
You're aging well
beepbooptheory 14 minutes ago [-]
I get really really tired at the back and forth with Wayland and all that, but I would put up with reading rants about windowing systems everyday if it meant I never had to think about this X again.
markkitti 35 minutes ago [-]
I had the exact same experience.
Brendinooo 1 hours ago [-]
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.
Legend2440 32 minutes ago [-]
The EFF is and has always been a political activist organization.
Of course they care about ideological concerns.
indoordin0saur 26 seconds ago [-]
Those concerns have evolved away from their original mission. Not an unusual situation for organizations like this as a they shrink and lose relevance.
Brendinooo 30 minutes ago [-]
Where in my comment did I claim otherwise?
slg 25 minutes ago [-]
You discussed two distinct groups: "certain ideological concerns" and "the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about". I think you're getting this type of response because many of us can't see any actual difference between those two groups besides your own politics and assumptions.
Brendinooo 20 minutes ago [-]
You might be right; I don't know what the broad populace thinks of what EFF does.
I'll ask you then: What are the three main areas of advocacy where you think the EFF has been the most visible and/or effective?
smaudet 5 minutes ago [-]
It's an association fallacy - Musk may be a radical extremist on the right, and a technology mogul, you may find yourself aligning with some of his world views (not all of them, remember he is an extremist relative to yourself).
So when people support EFF's technological goals (freedoms for users on technology platforms), if they are themselves possibly on the right, they project their own values onto the organization or system (which here is the EFF).
Never-mind if some of those values are incompatible with the values you think you hold (being authoritarian generally is incompatible with being not being authoritarian about technology). When someone points out the (otherwise obvious) contradiction to you, you're surprised that your set of values is incongruous.
Now this can happen to anyone coming from any political starting point, they agree with something but find it doesn't quite fit with their world views. If you are deeply religious about it, you tend to hold on for dear life and either decide to "pick" on set of values over another (suddenly you realize, actually, yes you would like to enslave everyone) or engage in some form of hypocrisy or another (authoritarians are good, but for some reason or the other I'm going to make an exception for technology).
slg 9 minutes ago [-]
I can't definitively give you a top three and honestly don't see any value in ranking them like that. I would simply describe them as the ACLU for technology and the Internet in that they fight for general civil liberties. X and more specifically Elon Musk have shown that they are on the opposite side when it comes to many of those civil liberties even if they all agree on some other issues. Online censorship (both explicit and through algorithmic bias) is the most obvious example that bridges your two distinct groups. Musk might claim he agrees with the EFF on that, but through his and X's actions, it's clear he doesn't.
jeffbee 12 minutes ago [-]
EFF has basically only succeeded in defending Section 230, which makes me wonder if the people who talk in this article and the people elsewhere on HN denouncing Section 230 know about each other.
r-w 10 minutes ago [-]
Why would you say "this statement shows XYZ" if you didn't believe XYZ was a new piece of information?
Brendinooo 7 minutes ago [-]
My original comment did not claim that they were not ideological and it did not claim that that they do not do political activism, so a reply of "[o]f course they care about ideological concerns" makes no sense to me.
gred 8 minutes ago [-]
He's saying that they have ideological concerns beyond the ideological concerns you would tend to associate with the EFF (digital privacy, open source, patent trolling, etc). I for one am sad to see that this is the case. There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.
lynndotpy 1 minutes ago [-]
That's what the comment is stating, but I disagree with the statement. This is perfectly in-line with the EFF's mission.
Keep in mind that X only has ~500 MAU, putting it in the same league as Pinterest or Quora.
mghackerlady 41 minutes ago [-]
freedom is intersectional. it's hard to fight for freedom while supporting those that actively limit the freedom of others, especially when the amount of impressions are no longer worth doing it for
tptacek 30 minutes ago [-]
That's explicitly not the logic EFF is using; they come close to outright rejecting it.
jasonlotito 19 minutes ago [-]
> ... when the amount of impressions are no longer worth doing it for
> The Numbers Aren't Working Out
I don't know. That's front and center. Can to share how that's an "outright rejection"?
tptacek 17 minutes ago [-]
They explicitly say they're staying on other platforms whose ideologies they don't agree with.
mghackerlady 12 minutes ago [-]
Because there's enough people there to be worth it
It's like how the Soviets and the Americans were allies in world war II, the pros outweighed the cons
Brendinooo 27 minutes ago [-]
> freedom is intersectional
What is your working definition of freedom? I'm interested in replying but I'd like to engage with you on your terms.
greenavocado 32 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
mghackerlady 29 minutes ago [-]
>"freedom is intersectional" is a fancy way of saying "I only support freedom for people I agree with."
That is the exact opposite of what that means. It means freedom should be supported for all, especially for the oppressed. Those who stand for oppression in one way serve to benefit other forms of oppression
greenavocado 27 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
miyoji 22 minutes ago [-]
What? Freedom of association implicitly means freedom not to associate. It is not at all incompatible with freedom to say, "I don't want to hang out with those guys because they suck."
I believe in freedom of speech for people that I don't want to talk to. There is no contradiction in that.
nailer 38 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
ceejayoz 34 minutes ago [-]
> You don’t have a freedom to make anyone else agree with or believe in your views…
No one has asserted this.
If your views suck, people have the freedom to say "ok, bye".
"if your views suck, people have the freedom to say ok bye" is literally just restating what the other person already believes, except you've framed it like you're winning an argument. no one said you can't leave. the point is don't pretend leaving is a moral stance when it's just a preference.
ceejayoz 30 minutes ago [-]
> the point is don't pretend leaving is a moral stance when it's just a preference
So I'm not free to assert moral reasons for my actions?
nailer 20 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
cycomanic 31 minutes ago [-]
I think that's the point. The owner of X as well as most of the remaining denizens are actively working on taking away the freedom of others to believe in their own views and make them adhere to their beliefs.
greenavocado 29 minutes ago [-]
actively working on taking away the freedom of others to believe in their own views is an unhinged thing to say about a social media platform you can simply not use. no one on x is reaching into your brain and rearranging your beliefs. you're describing a website with a vibe you don't like and acting like it's a reeducation camp.
mghackerlady 16 minutes ago [-]
That works until that person is influential enough to sway political and social conditions drastically
ceejayoz 25 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
geertj 28 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
MengerSponge 21 minutes ago [-]
Bro. He's still censoring viewpoints. He's also boosting his ideological viewpoints, which diminishes the reach of everything else.
The first article merely states that Elon has some fairly common concerns, which are amplified because he is popular. It's deceptively framed as if he has the finger on the scale.
nostrademons 26 minutes ago [-]
I had the opposite impression, that this decision was primarily economic in nature. People (or at least the sort of people interested in the EFF) simply aren't on X/Twitter anymore, and so it's not worth posting there.
8 minutes ago [-]
lynndotpy 3 minutes ago [-]
I didn't see that in the post. The thesis is pretty clear and aligned with EFF as a non-profit that has to allocate resources strategically:
> To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
and
> Our presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok is not an endorsement. We've spent years exposing how these platforms suppress marginalized voices, enable invasive behavioral advertising, and flag posts about abortion as dangerous. We’ve also taken action in court, in legislatures, and through direct engagement with their staff to push them to change poor policies and practices.
It's pretty clear that all these platforms have various problems within EFF's purview, but the difference with X is that they're not getting value from using it.
traderj0e 9 minutes ago [-]
It's not even ideological concerns about the platform but about the userbase. TikTok and Instagram have a lot of left-wing people on them, as they've alluded to, regardless of who owns those. Twitter users are too right-wing for them.
jimmar 7 minutes ago [-]
So just talk to the people who you think already agree with you?
traderj0e 1 minutes ago [-]
I guess? Washington Post was doing this for a while. As insane as it was for a "neutral" news source to officially endorse political candidates, it was earning them subscribers.
Maybe they were also getting flamed really hard on Twitter. Idk, haven't used that site in forever.
42 minutes ago [-]
panarky 34 minutes ago [-]
Where did you read that in their post?
Because what I read is that their X posts are getting only 3% of the engagement compared to pre-Musk Twitter.
The post insinuates that's because the platform intentionally down-ranks posts for ideological purposes.
onetimeusename 23 minutes ago [-]
> Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.
pirate787 2 minutes ago [-]
Clearly EFF is now more interested in virtue signaling than the privacy mission.
Brendinooo 24 minutes ago [-]
Where you do you see this insinuation being made? I don't see anything like that.
UncleMeat 32 minutes ago [-]
They also mention that tweets today get far less engagement than they once did.
r-w 7 minutes ago [-]
* _their_ tweets
nailer 36 minutes ago [-]
Check out the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, they support anonymity, privacy and free expression:
Ah yes, a non-profit reaching out to a broader audience for its activism is clearly a "certain ideological concern" separate from their core mission.
bradyd 2 minutes ago [-]
This is the exact opposite of reaching out to a broader audience.
bakugo 48 minutes ago [-]
Agreed. The fact that their Threads account[0] is still active (remember that site? yeah, me neither, I had forgotten it existed until I saw it linked on eff.org's socials page) makes it clear that the opening statement about "the numbers not working out" is deceptive.
You have to scroll down a bit further to find their real reason for preferring those sites:
> people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day
Threads has more daily active users than X and is growing quickly vs. the latter’s cratering usage rates. Demographics trend younger, too.
satvikpendem 16 minutes ago [-]
DAU for Threads is misleading, Meta seems to count impressions in Instagram where Threads sections sometimes show up. I personally know no one who uses Threads.
matt-attack 37 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
MidnightRider39 32 minutes ago [-]
I don’t even seem them using that phrase in the linked thread?
What’s wrong with it anyway?
satvikpendem 28 minutes ago [-]
I don't see it either, funny how people had a knee jerk reaction without even visiting the thread and validating that the phrase even exists. Maybe it's even further down but without logging in I can't see it.
throwawaypath 21 minutes ago [-]
That quote is in the linked EFF statement, which you clearly didn't read.
satvikpendem 15 minutes ago [-]
True, I was looking at the linked thread as mentioned not the article.
pixl97 32 minutes ago [-]
Remind me again what the Q in LGBTQ stands for?
oulipo2 37 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
eduction 14 minutes ago [-]
I completely agree. Calling X ineffective when they get 10k views per post there, but staying on BlueSky and Mastodon, where there is no way they see those numbers, is absurd on its face. Meanwhile they are happily on a platform hosted in China and legally answerable to the CCP, so they can’t admit it’s for ideological reasons because how would they explain how their ideology embraces that regime.
pmdr 22 minutes ago [-]
> We'll Keep Fighting. Just Not on X
Yeah, somewhere where regular people that aren't terminally online won't ever have the chance to see it. This is a dumb decision. I'd very much like for open, distributed social networks to win, but that's not a reality we'll be living in anytime soon. X, for better or worse, gets you eyes, more so than any other alternative social media.
supern0va 12 minutes ago [-]
>X, for better or worse, gets you eyes, more so than any other alternative social media.
But that is actually what they called out: they're not getting eyes anymore. Views at X have cratered so hard that it's barely worth the time.
takoid 5 minutes ago [-]
But it's worth their time to stay on platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon? Something isn't adding up.
rconti 11 minutes ago [-]
Nobody who's not terminally online ever used Twitter.
cosmic_cheese 3 minutes ago [-]
I was about to say, Twitter has long been one of the largest collections of terminally online people and that's only gotten worse as various groups have abandoned the platform and social media as a whole has seen a decline. Most people who have a life spend their time elsewhere on the web or don't participate in social media at all.
6 minutes ago [-]
ethersteeds 9 minutes ago [-]
Do regular people that aren't terminally online use X? I don't know any.
mghackerlady 5 minutes ago [-]
not anymore. People are acting like they're leaving everything and moving to bluesky or fedi when in reality they already exist there and many other places and are simply leaving the braindead one
dylan604 2 minutes ago [-]
Based on what they are seeing, nobody is seeing their posts on X either. That's the point. Did you miss it?
empath75 3 minutes ago [-]
> Yeah, somewhere where regular people that aren't terminally online won't ever have the chance to see it.
You think those people are on X?
bigyabai 9 minutes ago [-]
I don't know any X user that I wouldn't describe as "terminally online" and the same goes for the Twitter days too.
jasonmp85 12 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
mellosouls 1 hours ago [-]
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.
madeofpalk 1 hours ago [-]
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 where the company previously fought off censorship demands from repressive regimes. Many users left. Today we're joining them.
Yet they had no problem with the censorship of conservative opinions during the Biden era.
faefox 39 minutes ago [-]
You can tell conservative opinions are censored and suppressed by the way they're constantly shoved down our throats every hour of every day.
MSFT_Edging 40 minutes ago [-]
Those "conservative opinions" were usually violent hate speech. There was no shortage of "conservative opinions" pre-buyout.
I think people were just upset certain figures were held to the TOS.
throwawaypath 16 minutes ago [-]
>Those "conservative opinions" were usually violent hate speech.
No they weren't:
"There are only two genders."
"Men cannot become pregnant."
"Children should not be given sterilization drugs."
"Deporting illegal immigrants is a good thing."
Just because you disagree with them doesn't make it "violent hate speech".
chaosharmonic 6 minutes ago [-]
You're leaving out "gonna be wild!" and a tirade about personally being let down by Mike Pence.
mikeyouse 4 minutes ago [-]
Which of those did Twitter suppress?
fooey 32 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, the followup to that "censorship of conservative opinions" complaint is always "which opinions are those"
It's a perfect analogue for asking confederate fans, "state's rights to do what?"
lacy_tinpot 2 minutes ago [-]
"were usually violent hate speech"
The "were usually" is doing a lot of lifting.
A lot of the time it was as mundane as disagreeing with ANY democrat politician/their policies.
And this sometimes wasn't even from a right-winger, but from more Left leaning voices.
CodeWriter23 6 minutes ago [-]
"Hate speech" is an epithet employed by those with no substantial counterargument.
nosefurhairdo 11 minutes ago [-]
Hunter Biden laptop and covid lab leak were systematically censored on twitter and elsewhere, and twitter was actively working with federal government to censor speech that was neither illegal or against any TOS.
You should take a look at the twitter files. This has nothing to do with "violent hate speech."
bigyabai 7 minutes ago [-]
> twitter was actively working with federal government
That's your problem? Wait until you get around to the Snowden Files, you'll be floored.
fourseventy 28 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
triceratops 5 minutes ago [-]
Which ones?
ethanrutherford 13 minutes ago [-]
claiming there was rampant "censorship of conservative opinions" is about as honest as claiming that the Romans were being persecuted by first century christians.
They also banned NY Post for publishing that Hunter Biden laptop story. Which as much of a nothingburger as that story was, it's insane to get banned for that.
deathanatos 20 minutes ago [-]
They … did, though?
You're presumably referencing Missouri v. Biden, to which the EFF did file an amicus[1]. In it, they note,
> Many platforms have potentially problematic “trusted flagger” programs in which certain
groups and individuals enjoy “some degree of priority in the processing of notices
> Of course, governmental participation in content moderation processes raises First Amendment issues not present with non-governmental inputs
With their overall opinion being something like "content moderation is normal, the government flagging content is also normal, and there are instances where the government's flagging of content moderation can be fine & not run afoul of 1A, but there are instances where it can, and we urge the court to think"
Note in this case, the platform was removing the content. The government was, in one respect, merely asking. (There were assertions that in other instances, such as public statements, the case was less so.) The court eventually ruled, and the ruling I saw from the 5th circuit seemed reasonable. (I think that was a preliminary injunction. AIUI, the case as a whole was never ruled on, because the Trump administration took over.)
Yeah, I remember when the "Twitter Files" were being released and it turned out that Twitter was illegitimately censoring leaked nudes of Hunter Biden. Whyever would non-consensually posted nudes be taken down other than the suppression of conservatism?
mghackerlady 38 minutes ago [-]
Conservative opinions like "[group of people] are evil and don't deserve to be happy" and "we need a white homeland"
If you aren't kicking nazis out of your bar, it'll become a nazi bar. Twitter stopped kicking out the nazis
aeternum 30 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
causal 27 minutes ago [-]
What is the agenda? You're hinting at some conspiracy but I have no idea what it could even be
aeternum 9 minutes ago [-]
Bluesky numbers are much lower than X for example.
Their demands like "genuine end-to-end encryption for direct messages" are not met for many of the other platforms they are staying on.
Then you have lines like this that make the agenda far more clear: "Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day."
pjc50 1 hours ago [-]
The reach and impressions on Twitter are fake though, and posts containing links are suppressed.
(Of course the EFF are ideological, that's their entire purpose!)
rockskon 20 minutes ago [-]
Sometimes it's not just about quantity. Not all impressions are equal.
And like it or not - Twitter is still the preferred communication platform of quite a few influential people.
lux-lux-lux 16 minutes ago [-]
Interactions on X are notoriously low-quality and botted to hell, so “not all impressions are equal” might not be a great point to push here.
chaosharmonic 5 minutes ago [-]
"Open source network that isn't controlled by corporations" is ideological, but not quite in the same way that you seem to be framing this.
supern0va 10 minutes ago [-]
>then say they will still be on BlueSky and Mastodon then you know it's purely ideological.
Both Bluesky and Mastodon are open/federated networks, which aligns more with EFF's values. So, yes, but I don't think for the reasons you're hinting at.
asdfman123 41 minutes ago [-]
Their front page says "The leading nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation for 35 years and counting!"
They are an organization that exists to support an ideological viewpoint. Any political stance is ideological!
lux-lux-lux 19 minutes ago [-]
Just looking over recent posts, the EFF gets more interaction on BlueSky than it does on X despite 1/3 the followers and being on a much smaller site.
I think that says it all.
CobrastanJorji 7 minutes ago [-]
Plus, even if it did get less engagement, I imagine that BlueSky is full of the sorts of people who donate to EFF.
surgical_fire 31 minutes ago [-]
We are talking about EFF. They are essentially an advocacy group, 100% ideological by definition.
It would be dishonest of them to pretend they were not ideological. Staying on Twitter was likely worse for their mission then leaving it.
watwut 46 minutes ago [-]
The article is honest and open about reasons.
What is dishonest is to write as if there was something wrong with leaving twittwr for "ideological" reasons.
bakugo 42 minutes ago [-]
Citing low engagement numbers as a reason for leaving while continuing to maintain an active Threads account is the opposite of honest.
paulbjensen 1 minutes ago [-]
There does seem to be evidence that X (formerly Twitter) is a dying platform, but what surprised me here is that longtime platforms like Snapchat, Reddit and even Pinterest get more MAUs than X - and this is more October 2025:
It would be really interesting to learn if brands and advertisers are seeing the same thing?
Ir0nMan 1 hours ago [-]
This reads as very performative. You don't have to choose between posting 10 times a day or deleting your account; you could just post less or use it for major updates.
spicymaki 21 minutes ago [-]
Performative expression is critical. You need to actually do the thing you believe and if it is of political significance say it and do it visibly. Otherwise there is no impact.
lxgr 38 minutes ago [-]
But then how would I know where to get more regular updates as somebody following them there? It used to be a bannable offense to even link to your presence on a competing side; not sure if it still is.
44 minutes ago [-]
tonymet 43 minutes ago [-]
well put. if their mission is to help protect vulnerable communities, and the effort to post on X is near zero ( it can be automated or take just a moment manually), they are betraying their mission to help protect as many vulnerable communities as possible.
jesse_dot_id 40 minutes ago [-]
Astounds me that anyone is still using that platform after seeing how Musk treated the engineers when he took over.
ghshephard 28 minutes ago [-]
I was recently at a brown bag at work - regarding enablement of AI in the workplace (it was awesome - all over the roadmap) - and one of the audience asked the speakers (a very diverse group of people) how on earth they keep up with all the developments in AI?
All six of the speakers immediately said Twitter was realistically the only place you can keep up with the conversation. Having an extensively curated list means that anytime anything breaks (and often a few hours before) you are going to hear about it on X/Twitter.
I would love to know if there is anything even close to the reach of X. It has a lot of problems - but if you want to track breaking news, I can't think of anything else close to it.
trollbridge 20 minutes ago [-]
Well, Twitter has a lot of separate spheres. It's pretty easy to curate just tpot (the part that concerns itself with the Bay area, venture capital, and so forth) by following the right people and then engaging with posts that are on-topic.
threetonesun 6 minutes ago [-]
Even when it was Twitter drinking from the firehose didn't really make your life better. I don't need a two sentence breaking update from a Miyazaki baby to stay on top of this stuff, and quite frankly if they can't bother to make a blog post or press release it's probably just noise any way.
alex1138 10 minutes ago [-]
bsky is meant to hold the promise of control your algorithm, I don't see why that can't be the model going forward
supern0va 7 minutes ago [-]
The problem is largely one of community. The folks talking about AI are still primarily on X and haven't moved over.
650REDHAIR 23 minutes ago [-]
He banned me after I replied to his tweet with my display name set as "Elon's Musk".
I think I lasted <1 week after this takeover.
numpad0 23 minutes ago [-]
It's cheaper to try to extort more out of a sucker than setting up a proper decentralized alternative. That's how I personally see what's going on, that nobody is moving out but everyone focus on gaming the system.
SecretDreams 36 minutes ago [-]
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.
reg_dunlop 18 minutes ago [-]
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.
satvikpendem 32 minutes ago [-]
Lots of good discussion there still if you follow the right people and block certain categories of discussion. If you use lists then you'll see no suggested content beyond who you follow.
I'm more astounded that people think every single part of it is a cesspool when in reality there are gems to be found that aren't in any other X alternative like Bluesky or Mastodon or (lol) Threads.
Lord_Zero 27 minutes ago [-]
This is a poor take. "You can make this mismanaged steaming pile of bot-infested garbage better if you just filter everything!"
satvikpendem 23 minutes ago [-]
How is it a poor take? Yes that's exactly what I said to do. It's the same as Reddit, I don't read whatever garbage is on r/all, I follow specific subreddits. Honestly people should curate no matter what social media they're on and find ways to stop seeing suggested content; my Instagram shows me only people I follow too, via a third party app/mod.
nkohari 20 minutes ago [-]
The problem is that there isn't really an alternative. The discussion is still happening there and nowhere else. (Trust me, I've looked.)
helaoban 16 minutes ago [-]
>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?
traderj0e 12 minutes ago [-]
It does, but what I'm reading from this is Twitter users are too right-wing for EFF to want to be around them. "Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day."
Ajedi32 54 minutes ago [-]
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...
mghackerlady 51 minutes ago [-]
there isn't enough people left there to be worth the tradeoff
Ajedi32 50 minutes ago [-]
13 million impressions a year isn't enough to be worth copy-pasting a few posts from Facebook?
ceejayoz 48 minutes ago [-]
Not if enough folks think your posting there is a sign you're an ass.
If you hang out in a bar with KKK memorabilia everywhere - and open the replies of any reasonably popular news story on X before complaining that's not a fair comparison - people make conclusions off your presence, even if you're personally there for the tasty beer.
satvikpendem 6 minutes ago [-]
Those people would have long left X though so I'm not sure why the existing people would think that. If you're talking about external people judging them about posting there, no one thinks that, like the sibling comment mentions. People will just think at worst that they might need the reach of X so they begrudgingly post there.
loeg 45 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
cosmic_cheese 34 minutes ago [-]
Even if I make an effort to train its algorithm away from overtly political posts, I frequently see all manner of far-right garbage in the replies, often including racial slurs among other nastiness. That kind of thing existed in the Twitter days too, but at least back then it was at dramatically lower volumes and repeat offenders usually got banned. Now it runs rampant, largely coming from bot accounts posting from south-east Asia and various parts of Africa.
ceejayoz 43 minutes ago [-]
Those are two directly contradictory statements.
qzx_pierri 30 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
EricDeb 20 minutes ago [-]
X "impressions" are not worth very much
the_real_cher 49 minutes ago [-]
I had that exact same thought. The argument they presented applies to any walled garden, they gave no reason why X would be the exception.
It's clear this is about politics, and I'm not opposed to that, Elon is not awesome, but trying to justify it otherwise seems kind of shady.
ethanrutherford 7 minutes ago [-]
It's pretty damn simple actually. Their target audience by and large doesn't use twitter anymore, either.
samename 53 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
jimmar 4 minutes ago [-]
Interesting that they are leaving the most uncensored social media site, but saying on the most tightly censored sites. Makes me wonder what their vision for the internet really is.
nickdothutton 2 hours ago [-]
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.
redox99 3 minutes ago [-]
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.
snayan 1 hours ago [-]
Agreed.
Assuming they use the same principles everywhere, they're getting more views on Mastodon and Bluesky? That is surprising.
evolve2k 37 seconds ago [-]
I honestly enjoyed the article and agree with their move but I did have a chuckle reading all the way through and then see g right there under the article the X social media sharing icon.
I’m sure it’s on its way out, but I did quietly laugh to myself from the irony.
rockemsockem 58 minutes ago [-]
This seems completely unnecessary and performative. I have a hard time understanding how reducing their reach could possibly be helpful to the goals of the organization. I'm definitely going to keep donating to them, but I'm concerned.
ruszki 36 minutes ago [-]
How do you know that they reduce their reach to their target audience in any considerable way? According to their article their reach on X is about 3% of what was 7 years ago, and god knows how much is bot from those 3%.
amatecha 1 hours ago [-]
Is there any site that keeps track of companies/orgs and/or noteworthy people who have left "X"? I've noticed some pretty significant orgs leaving in the recent year or two and have repeatedly wondered if there's some kind of list out there. I mean, it would just be a handy list to show people when I say something like "more and more people are leaving that garbage site" and they want receipts and I'm like... "uh the province of New Brunswick was the latest I saw" >_> I found this list of celebrities in the meantime, at least: https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/twitter-celebr...
1234letshaveatw 31 minutes ago [-]
That is just like when those US celebs moved to Europe after Trump was elected!
txrx0000 1 hours ago [-]
This is unfortunate. Elon despite his flaws opposes mass surveillance and censorship, and that's the general sentiment on X at the moment. He just retweeted the Telegram founder 20 hours ago. [0]
I'm afraid we're being divided and conquered. The people pushing for mass control are attempting to reframe the fight for digital freedoms as a "leftist" talking point, so that they can later ride the populist wave and use its momentum to kill online free speech and general purpose computing altogether. Perhaps the EFF has been compromised, because it should not be falling for this trick. It would be wise to use all of the information channels available to reach as many people as possible.
> Elon despite his flaws opposes mass surveillance and censorship, and that's the general sentiment on X at the moment. He just retweeted the Telegram founder 20 hours ago.
There are probably things more relevant about X than what it is that Elon Musk currently proclaims about his political opinions?
rangerelf 51 minutes ago [-]
This is to laughably misguided that it leans toward malicious.
I mean, you're talking about Elon, the Doge guy, the one who organized mass hoovering of citizens data from whatever sources he could get his grubby mitts on? That Elon?
Opposed to mass surveillance??
And then you sprinkle some commonly known truths on top to make your comment palatable ("we're being divided and conquered!"), and finally you add a dash of malicious speculation to seed some doubt against the organization ("Perhaps the EFF has been compromised!! It's a trick!!").
No thanks.
subjectsigma 42 minutes ago [-]
It is malicious, and you shouldn’t be downvoted for calling out someone who is so obviously arguing in bad faith.
txrx0000 37 minutes ago [-]
Not arguing in bad faith. Go read my past comments. I'm pretty consistent on this.
fontain 60 minutes ago [-]
Elon is anti-censorship when it’s censorship of racism, homophobia, sexism and the other things the woke liberal left hate.
Elon is pro-censorship for the things he doesn’t like, like the word “cis”.
You can be happy that Elon is allowing alt-right speech, that’s fair, he has brought that back to Twitter, slurs are finally allowed again, truly the speech we all long for, but anti-censorship as a principle? Please. Pull the other one.
bcantrill 1 minutes ago [-]
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 of in the long term.
I follow lots of accounts that have low views, thanks for considering me not worth a simple cut and paste once in a while.
pino83 25 minutes ago [-]
If we would talk about my local pizza restaurant here: Very nice move.
For EFF: That's ~15 years too late, and way too specific. Their job (without them ever having realized in fact) was to generate some force against these centralized commercial walled gardens, where we have our public discourse, with some opaque algorithms deciding what goes up and what goes down.
blurbleblurble 37 minutes ago [-]
I just wanna remind people that this website is full of elon's drones and bots who mob flagged any criticism of DOGE for months on end. A lot of the "outrage" expressed in this discussion is likely faux.
bakugo 16 minutes ago [-]
Posts about US politics that have nothing to do with technology and are otherwise uninteresting get flagged because HN is not the place for that.
If you just want to talk about how much you hate the current US administration with other people who also spend all their time talking about how much they hate the current US administration, there are much better places for that, such as r/politics.
blurbleblurble 13 minutes ago [-]
DOGE posts had everything to do with technology and silicon valley
MidnightRider39 29 minutes ago [-]
I mean it’s always been an outlet of a popular Silicon Valley VC.
As the US sinks more and more into despotism, those controlling Silicon Valley are just enablers of that despotism.
cryptoegorophy 27 minutes ago [-]
Are they leaving because of low views? This means they are more concerned about views than anything else? I thought any sane company wants as much exposure anywhere no matter the political stance or other views.
CrzyLngPwd 31 minutes ago [-]
So they are chasing engagement, and X isn't giving them the attention they think they deserve.
The golden days of the sentinels driving traffic without you paying for it are over, and they won't come back.
Lord_Zero 23 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, pretty sad to try and package it around morals. There were 2 dozen cataclysmic events on X since Elon walked in with the kitchen sink but THIS is the final straw. "Not my views!"
declan_roberts 2 minutes ago [-]
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.
mikaeluman 49 minutes ago [-]
I tend to almost only use X now. I really can't use Facebook or Instagram since the introduction of "ad breaks" because I haven't given them ability to give me "personalised ads".
Their decision to leave X seems mostly centered around engagement numbers. Or at least, that's the reason they led with. And I'm not sure that I believe the numbers they're throwing out.
> To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
Okay. View counts are public now, but not available on older tweets. But replies, like, and retweet counts are, and shouldn't they scale similarly?
I'm just eyeballing it, but when I look through the EFF's twitter feed now, I see 20-100 likes as typical, with the occasional popular tweet that hits a couple hundred. When I look at their 2018 tweets - you can use the `from:EFF until:2018-04-01` filter on twitter search - the numbers are... The same. Aside from the occasional popular tweet, most other tweets are in the neighborhood of 20-100 likes. Similar for replies and retweets.
I don't understand how this could be if the tweets are being seen 30x less.
It is, but the other one is a link to their twitter post, whereas this is the longer self-hosted statement. This is a better, more informative source.
daft_pink 27 minutes ago [-]
Just noting it. The other post was submitted earlier. The mod's can figure out how to combine/reconcile. Update: I think you are correct and this one won :)
crims0n 58 minutes ago [-]
I don't understand, does it cost them something to copy/paste their posts to X?
SAI_Peregrinus 52 minutes ago [-]
Brand reputation. Every brand that chooses to use X implicitly supports X, even if they're not verified & paying X money.
loeg 42 minutes ago [-]
Does anyone seriously think EFF posting to X yesterday tarnished their brand? Be real.
AlexAplin 26 minutes ago [-]
The advertisers that evaporated and left behind a lot of no label dropshipping scams seem to think so. Did a lot of them eventually come back because there is some audience to squeeze numbers from? Sure, but I also wouldn't negate that many didn't and aren't coming back because it is Elon's playground now.
nickthegreek 40 minutes ago [-]
Yes, people do in fact judge others for their associations.
If you don't that is fine but I imagine you would also hold the view that not posting on X shouldn't be controversial then either.
horacemorace 33 minutes ago [-]
My neighbor blares Fox in their kitchen every day. I view them with the same flavor of suspicion as someone who posts there.
jdashg 29 minutes ago [-]
I do, yeah. Hope that helps!
650REDHAIR 19 minutes ago [-]
Yes.
I applaud the move and only wish they would have done it sooner.
diath 34 minutes ago [-]
Not really, this is the kind of argument you only ever see on Reddit/HN, normal people don't care.
650REDHAIR 18 minutes ago [-]
Who is "normal" in this context? Because people who support the EFF's mission are pretty clued into what is happening and do care.
coldpie 21 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, I do. People & brands having a link to an X account is a huge red flag.
crims0n 48 minutes ago [-]
Going against the network effect out of principal doesn't seem to be a winning strategy when the goal is to raise awareness about issues.
orwin 46 minutes ago [-]
I've coded a 3rd party tool that could post to mastodon/twitter at the same time around 2020 (plenty of idle time during covid). I lost twitter API access, never bothered to try to make it work again (i hate working with interface clickers). to be clear, i don't really post on social media, it was just an experiment because i had faaar too much time and thought at the time that this kind of product could be interesting.
But i would bet social media managers use similar tools, and the fact that no one can access twitter API might add just the little bit of friction you want to avoid.
50 minutes ago [-]
busterarm 57 minutes ago [-]
No, they even would get money for the engagement they get. This is purely moral grandstanding disguised as something else.
thevillagechief 50 minutes ago [-]
Not sure this is true anymore. X is now just pay to play. Organic engagement is completely dead there. It's all a virality game now.
watwut 43 minutes ago [-]
Moral grandstanding is much better then vice grandstanding. Moral grandstandings are good, especially in a world that think being moral makes you a looser.
That being said, there is no disguise.
ApolloFortyNine 59 minutes ago [-]
This reads like the classic Youtuber whose annoyed their views dropped (this almost always amounts to 'people don't actually like your content as much as you thought').
>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.
It's incredibly unlikely someone at X shoved the EFF in a 'low visibility' bucket. It's much more likely they've simply updated their alogorithms and the EFF doesn't hit some engagement metric.
They're still getting 13 million impressions by simply posting tweets, I really don't understand 'taking a stand' here. Instead of 13 million they'll simply get 0... The opportunity cost in the worst case is a human being copy pasting a tweet, there's plenty of software to schedule posts across platforms though, which would make it essentially free even in user time.
Imo, they had a 'personal stance' motivation, and dug deep for any reason to argue for it.
pdpi 53 minutes ago [-]
> It's much more likely they've simply updated their alogorithms and the EFF doesn't hit some engagement metric.
It's even more likely that Twitter's audience in 2018 was fairly supportive of the EFF's goals, but X's audience in 2026 is either indifferent or hostile.
As they put it:
> X is no longer where the fight is happening. The platform Musk took over was imperfect but impactful. What exists today is something else: diminished, and increasingly de minimis.
otherme123 23 minutes ago [-]
I work as a consultant for a small media, zero politics and very technical, and they report the same trend for X for the last 5 years or so. I was surprised that they told me they still want the "share on Twitter button" and keep the Twitter account but their activity there is nil, for the following reasons combined: 1) they have thousands of followers and thousands of impressions, but the engagement ratio (likes, comment, shares per follower) is abysmal compared with the other networks, 2) the format is different from other networks, while you can create something common for LinkedIn or Facebook, the Twitter share requires image re-crop and text rewrite (they don't use Instagram, the content doesn't fit) 3) while the main site receives a lot of clicks to read the full content (and see the ads that drive the income) from LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter doesn't send clicks (people just read the header, at most hit the like-heart, and keep scrolling). Their conclusion: Twitter doesn't work any more for them and is getting worse (that said, BlueSky is even worse for them). Even spending 30 seconds there to polish a publication are 30 seconds wasted.
I don't know the numbers for EFF, but having 400K followers on X and getting between zero and five comments per post if you go back a couple of weeks (to skip today's fire), between zero and 20 retweets... sounds like a failed platform. They get better numbers from Facebook, a dying platform, with half the followers. They get similar or better numbers from Instagram with less than 10% of the followers they have in Twitter.
lambdas 51 minutes ago [-]
I don’t feel their stance is “I’m not getting enough attention and it’s all Musk’s fault and I’m leaving”.
More “X is simply not worth our time anymore”. I can’t say with any certainty that X is on a death spiral (personally it does feel that way), but the kind of crowd who have remained in spite of Musk’s many public embarrassments (and the handling of Grok deep fakes and women) probably aren’t the kind who are passionate about the EFF
dpweb 57 minutes ago [-]
However if you view your content as valuable and the algorithm does not anymore, it's probably not the best platform for you to be on.
ppeetteerr 20 minutes ago [-]
I applaud the move. It's also a little disingenuous to talk about moral standings when the third opening sentence is "The math hasn’t worked out for a while now." If the numbers were working out, would they continue to turn a blind eye on the privacy tracking?
rapax 28 minutes ago [-]
"Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day."
What was wrong with just saying people instead of this nonsense? EFF has been a joke for a while now so has every organization that does something for people. It's just a box that can be ticked when someone asks something stupid like "who protects some imaginary rights".
ks2048 1 hours ago [-]
> To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
That's a huge drop. It could be changes to the algorithm or it could be their former readers are no longer on X. I suppose it's both.
enether 1 hours ago [-]
It could also be that the world as a whole cares less about privacy today than they did seven years ago. Without a relative measurement from a similar platform, it's a bit of an empty statement
One thing that has certainly changed is that algorithms have become more aggressive. If your content isn't performing well, it gets hidden much faster and more aggressively than before. This makes sense when you consider it from the PoV of the platforms (they have much more content to choose from)
numpad0 45 minutes ago [-]
They divide up users into groups a la Google+ groups(separate and against following/followers system) and restrict global visibility of your tweets unless you win the daily lottery, in which case your tweet gets bajilion views, or something. Attempts to bypass that system is penalized.
Not saying it's working, but I believe something like that is their current design intent of that joke of a massive backwards revolver. The way it currently works is that only those smart enough to bypass the penalization wins.
EFF reps on Twitter probably aren't "smart enough" to game that system, so they stay in the tiny group, and therefore they won't get the views.
cosmic_cheese 1 hours ago [-]
Definitely both, potentially with one driving the other. While Twitter has always had an inclination towards quippy hot takes and similar, in its transformation into X it's taken a hard turn towards junk politically-slanted engagement bait above all else[0]. Content with any semblance of substance or nuance and especially anything misaligned with controlling interests gets buried.
The EFF is at odds with both facets of the current US administration as well as the big corporate donors in its pockets and its posts deal with nuanced topics, and so naturally its posts are among those not surfaced as often.
I'm a former EFF member and donor and have an X account. Their engagement problem isn't with X or X's members. It's with the EFF itself.
A decade ago they lost the plot. They pulled some bullshit and lied to their entire membership in order to boost their cronies/friends at the Library of Congress. They framed efforts to keep the LoC under loose Congressional/Presidential oversight and free to do as they want as some Anti-Trump fight. Requests about why they would do this went completely unanswered to the membership.
The EFF Board serves their own goals and believe themselves unaccountable to their membership, so they no longer get my money and I no longer entertain or signal boost their message.
jpadkins 1 hours ago [-]
Old twitter embraced bots and counting bot impressions. X is more truth seeking, and hard line against bots and follower pumping.
wtfwhateven 1 hours ago [-]
The opposite is true, actually.
realusername 58 minutes ago [-]
I would bet the opposite, Twitter was already a small competitor compared to Facebook and never reached its popularity, switching the audience to the far right likely cut down even more of what was left.
glhaynes 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
selectively 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
slackfan 55 minutes ago [-]
Hey, everybody you disagree with outside of these specific parameters is a right-wing bot. It's definitely a choice, enjoy your bubble.
herecomesthepre 54 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
Glandalf 59 minutes ago [-]
This is true and it’s making the bots angry.
warbaker 22 minutes ago [-]
I wish this announcement weren't infused with intersectionality.
"Your abortion fund uses TikTok to spread crucial information" is listed as one of three sample reasons you might use social media.
I support reproductive rights! But I don't want EFF to do that, and I don't want EFF to push conservatives out of the movement. I want EFF to appeal to everyone who cares about digital civil liberties, including people who disagree with me on other issues.
numpad0 59 minutes ago [-]
> We called for:
> - Transparent content moderation: Publicly shared policies, clear appeals processes, and renewed commitment to the Santa Clara Principles
> - Real security improvements: Including genuine end-to-end encryption for direct messages
> - Greater user control: Giving users and third-party developers the means to control the user experience through filters and interoperability.
Makes sense. Especially the point 1 and 3 had been long-standing issues for Twitter since before the acquisition, and the situation had worsened since - only except that means to those became successively more adorably braindead.
kjksf 51 minutes ago [-]
Are they getting that from Bluesky? Mastodon? LinkedIn? Instagram? TikTok? Facebook?
Of course not.
And yet they leave X and only X.
orwin 43 minutes ago [-]
I don't know about the others, but mastodon: yes to all three, since before twitter was bought by Musk. Twitter interoperability use to be good though, but i don't know what they did after locking the public API. Do you have a more limited access to twitter api now? or is it still locked?
mghackerlady 44 minutes ago [-]
Because those aren't occupied by horrible people. Freedom is intersectional, you can't fight for freedom while indirectly supporting the oppression of others. Sometimes, the benefits of more eyeballs are worth it but there aren't enough people left on twitter for it to be worth supporting
numpad0 4 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
linuxhansl 40 minutes ago [-]
Good. Now leave TikTok and Facebook as well. People who care will find out what you are up to, and people who don't won't see you on social media anyway.
I left Twitter, Facebook, et al about a decade ago. And I can assure you: You will never miss any important development.
The notion that we need to plugged into Twitter, X, whatever, to stay up to date is simply false.
lxgr 32 minutes ago [-]
Personally I don’t use it for anything I can find pretty much everywhere else as well, but there are still a few people whose posts I consider interesting that only post on X.
CrzyLngPwd 33 minutes ago [-]
Ahh, eff it, I'm also leaving :-p
cabirum 54 minutes ago [-]
So uh, could impressions decrease across the board, not only on X. Like, social platforms have peaked years ago and the downward trend is completely organic.
AlexAplin 39 minutes ago [-]
We have probably crested over some peak, but you would not look at the broad numbers and say 3% of a peak is organic to that trend. That is a dying/dead website, at least from the position of someone running socials for EFF.
>Yes. And we understand why that looks contradictory. Let us explain.
Lol, rubbish.
proee 25 minutes ago [-]
Leading out with "The numbers aren't working out" is a bit disingenuous. If they were "working out", would you continue to stay? If the answer is "no", then just remove the numbers talking point in your justification altogether.
bko 1 hours ago [-]
> Musk fired the entire human rights team and laid off staffers in countries where the company previously fought off censorship demands from repressive regimes
Is the contention here that there is more censorship on X compared to Twitter pre acquisition? Is X more heavily censored than Facebook or TikTok
They go on to say they're still on Facebook and TikTok and explain:
> The people who need us most are often the ones most embedded in the walled gardens of the mainstream platforms and subjected to their corporate surveillance.
None of this is unique to Facebook and TikTok and not for X.
> Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day
I'm pretty sure all these demographics use X as well.
It's just so bizarre. If you want to reach people, esp people that maybe come from a different perspective from you, why would you opt out of the best way to get your message across?
ceejayoz 59 minutes ago [-]
> Is the contention here that there is more censorship on X compared to Twitter pre acquisition?
Twitter's own first published transparency report under Musk acknowledged they suspended 3x as many accounts (for policy reasons other than spamming) in six months as they had done over an equivalent period just before he acquired it.
bko 54 minutes ago [-]
That's where you draw the line? Does a social media allow you to dox the owner's location? A true test of free speech!
There are many accounts that show the flight paths but on a 24h delay. I see that as reasonable. It allows you to do view the data but there is no security risk.
Meanwhile people were banned off twitter for saying "men are not women".
ceejayoz 52 minutes ago [-]
> That's where you draw the line?
Yes, a "free-speech absolutist" who explicitly promised to preserve a very specific example of free speech on explicit free speech grounds immediately banned the account when he was able to.
And then he banned reporters for reporting on it.
It's the easiest possible example to demonstrate his principles were never genuine here.
> Falsely labeling non-violent people as “fascist” or “Nazi” should be treated as incitement to murder
That's not very free speech, right?
subjectsigma 48 minutes ago [-]
There was never any security risk, the flight data was and is public information. You should be able to say “men are not women” and also repost public data. Stop pretending Elon cares about free speech.
inkysigma 20 minutes ago [-]
X under Musk has sustained more government takedown requests.
To talk to a botnet? no thanks. You can decide to just not feed into twitter.
postepowanieadm 1 hours ago [-]
I will follow them on linkedin.
blurbleblurble 59 minutes ago [-]
More should follow them. That website is a complete cesspool at this point and if you're not noticing it I worry about how it's gonna effect your psychological wellbeing later in life. The internet is bad enough as it is, but that site is at another degree of awful.
an0malous 59 minutes ago [-]
I closed my X account Tuesday evening after the US-Iran ceasefire was announced. Something just snapped finally and I realized there’s no value in monitoring the situation and all these accounts are just monetizing my energy and attention with no value provided.
The only social media I’m going to keep for now is Reddit and YouTube because I think it’s still a net positive for the educational content, but even those are on the chopping block for me. The whole Internet is being capitalized into junk food, people just push out sensationalized low calorie garbage because they get paid per view. It’s sad to see.
loeg 43 minutes ago [-]
You're keeping Reddit of all places? If you want a net win for attention and value, Reddit ain't it.
orwin 42 minutes ago [-]
Reddit is a lot of different things and places. Some subreddit are basically PhpBB forums of old. Though now that discord seemingly took over, most of the closed communities i was part of went there, i don't think i connect more than once a month on average.
sirbutters 51 minutes ago [-]
How the hell is this comment shadowed? It's 100% true.
26 minutes ago [-]
1 hours ago [-]
kennywinker 2 hours ago [-]
As we all should. I’m not playing in a billionaire’s toxic propaganda sandbox, neither should you.
nslsm 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sgt 1 hours ago [-]
A sandbox, sure, but a toxic one?
an0malous 51 minutes ago [-]
YC for sure is, HN should be separated from it and run independently. There’s tons of brigading against any criticism of YC or any of its portfolio companies. Just the other day someone re-posted OpenAI’s post about how GPT-2 was too dangerous to release (in response to the similar recent claim about Claude Mythos), I saw it hit #1 and then a few minutes later it had gotten flagged off the front page.
nslsm 1 hours ago [-]
We all have a different definition of toxic. HN gets really toxic sometimes, but it goes with the ideology of the site, so it’s like nobody notices. And that applies to all platforms, including Twitter.
stackghost 1 hours ago [-]
I see overt racism and sexism posted here frequently.
It's usually couched in sophisticated-sounding faux-intellectual language, though, which is the key to posting whatever you want here. You can say literally anything on HN, so long as you camouflage it with SV techbro vernacular.
sgt 50 minutes ago [-]
I don't even know what your thresholds are. They could be very low, like misgendering something and you see it as sexism - or simply refusing to call someone "they". For all I know you could be one of those people who stand up and call that sexism or transmisogyny.
krapp 28 minutes ago [-]
Misgendering someone or refusing to recognize their gender identity is sexism and transmisogyny.
sirbutters 53 minutes ago [-]
Why is your comment getting shadowed. The F is wrong with HN crowd.
tpm 35 minutes ago [-]
The nazis are out in full force.
mvdtnz 42 minutes ago [-]
Drive-by reddit comments tend not to do well here. This website rewards thoughtful discussion.
42 minutes ago [-]
anonymousiam 58 minutes ago [-]
I left EFF last year. I was a top-tier donor for 20 years, but EFF has changed from neutral rights-focused activism into questionable political activism. Leaving X is just another example of it. Would EFF be leaving X if Elon had not taken over? Does EFF actually believe that there's more free speech on Facebook?
quaverquaver 33 minutes ago [-]
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.
kevincrane 48 minutes ago [-]
Just to clarify, until recently you were under the impression that the political advocacy organization you donated to had no political opinions of their own?
loeg 41 minutes ago [-]
GP is complaining about a shift from one set of positions to a different set.
anonymousiam 7 minutes ago [-]
GP (me) is not complaining about shifting positions. EFF was fairly neutral for the prior two decades, and even though I did not agree with everything they did, I thought they were worthy of support. Last year, they began filing some lawsuits without much research or diligence, and without much of a legal basis. I waited a while and watched, and I saw them becoming more and more partisan.
I liked it when they were more about defending rights and less about attacking the "right."
feature20260213 38 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
contagiousflow 32 minutes ago [-]
You think the EFF was not political before 2024?
mghackerlady 35 minutes ago [-]
TDS/EDS don't exist, it's called not liking fascists and not supporting them any more than you have to because they directly oppose your goals
feature20260213 23 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
mghackerlady 18 minutes ago [-]
ad hominem.
but whatever, lets suppose trump and elon aren't fascists.
what exactly do fascists do?
Oppression of minorities? Check
Capitalism as the main apparatus of the state? Check
Imprisoning dissenting voices? Check
Creating lists of people to get rid of? Check
Authoritarianism? Double check
Creating an out group and scapegoating it as an "enemy from within" Check
if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it doesn't have to scream it's a duck and sieg heil to be sure it's probably a duck or at least not a swan
feature20260213 6 minutes ago [-]
Putting check next baseless claims? Priceless. For everything else, there's MasterCard.
feature20260213 2 minutes ago [-]
The saddest part is you slop up this propaganda and repeat it so confidently. What dissenting voices are being imprisoned? What the fuck does "Capitalism as the main apparatus of the state" even mean? Sorry you have freedom as a consumer as opposed to the violence of the state? What minorities are being oppressed? How? What lists of people exist to get rid of?
contagiousflow 15 minutes ago [-]
I can't believe such a nonpolitical organization would do this!!! Come on, you either have to be lying or you were never paying attention.
They're leaving because the platform because of a combination of not enough real people and elon turning it into a nazi hellscape. The visibility isn't worth the hit to brand reputation which makes sense if you recognise liberty as intersectional
benlivengood 20 minutes ago [-]
The EFF has always been against a large political segment, namely the status quo of "long-term intellectual property good, DRM good, businesses have the right to do whatever they want with data they collect, businesses have the right to arbitrarily use de-facto monopolies on computing platforms" which make no mistake were never neutral positions about rights.
dbingham 41 minutes ago [-]
In a two party world where one of those parties has been captured by a fascist movement, there is no "political neutrality". You're either pro-fascist or anti-fascist. And if you care about rights at all, including free speech, then the correct alignment is anti-fascist.
And yes, this is a US centric comment. The EFF is a US based organization and the center of gravity of the tech world they deal with is in the US.
bitwize 34 minutes ago [-]
People who fight for individual rights kinda have a problem with Nazis. Big freaking surprise.
blurbleblurble 57 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
anonymousiam 53 minutes ago [-]
Please elaborate. What political views did I express or advocate, other than free speech?
mindslight 40 minutes ago [-]
While I agree with where the EFF is generally coming from, it would make much more sense to just syndicate posts from a libre solution. They could even do adversarial interoperability things. Imagine something akin to a Matrix bridge such that replies on Xitter show up on Masto or some other libre protocol solution, so they (and others) can engage with replies right in the libre ecosystem. Or perhaps every nth of their xits not being the original post verbatim, but rather a link directing people to a web implementation of the libre solution with links to go deeper into that ecosystem. This type of thing would be perfectly in line with the EFF's goals. And not being able to get it together to do even this much is quite sad.
sepisoad 24 minutes ago [-]
bye!
tamimio 24 minutes ago [-]
I feel I am grateful that I never used social media even when they were cool and fun, I always thought it’s vanity “farming”, except now it’s some people’s full time jobs in grifting and being edgy just to farm impressions aka money. Social media is ruined because of monetization, it tapped onto the oldest vulnerability in humanity: greed.
oulipo2 37 minutes ago [-]
At long last. It should be the case with everybody.
Those who stay there because "it's practical", or worse they like it, or worse they support Musk, should be ashamed
nailer 39 minutes ago [-]
> Musk fired the entire human rights team and laid off staffers in countries where the company previously fought off censorship demands from repressive regimes.
X fired a “Trust and Safety” team that was spending time enforcing gender ideology rather than working on scalable solutions to trust and safety. Community Notes wouldn’t have happened without X.
wetpaws 13 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
animanoir 3 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
colechristensen 1 hours ago [-]
TL;DR
Nobody reads their posts on Twitter any more because most of the people are gone.
Vaslo 25 minutes ago [-]
lol what? Still hundreds of millions of users on X.
Polarity 57 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
novateg 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
feature20260213 44 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
brindidrip 54 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
halestock 47 minutes ago [-]
There what is?
r2_pilot 48 minutes ago [-]
I'm sorry, you didn't say anything about your reasoning behind your ad hominem attack, so I can't properly evaluate your point. I eagerly await your clarification as to the relevance of your observation with regards to this HN topic.
brindidrip 43 minutes ago [-]
If the reason for leaving X is a 97% drop in impressions, explain moving to Bluesky and Mastodon where you'll get even less. The numbers argument is a fig leaf. This is an ideological decision dressed up as strategy, and that's fine -- just say that instead of pretending it's about data. As for "ad hominem" -- pointing out that the person making the decision has an advocacy background, not a growth background, isn't an attack. I am providing context for why a "data-driven" post reads like a manifesto.
21 minutes ago [-]
mghackerlady 50 minutes ago [-]
Person fighting for liberty fights for liberty, more at 11
Ir0nMan 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
mort96 1 hours ago [-]
> you could just post less or use it for major updates
Why?
Brendinooo 45 minutes ago [-]
If you think something like "open source is good" or "patent trolling is bad" and you want to advocate for those things, you should want to maximize your reach and do what you can to demonstrate that these are not inherently partisan issues, because if people start to perceive that the things that the EFF cares about are bound up with partisan ideology, then it will be dismissed as such.
(It's also buying into the narrative that X is a ideological monolith. It, of course, is not. But it does lean a different way than other major social media platforms, which means there's a unique opportunity to speak to a different kind of audience!)
dijit 58 minutes ago [-]
because it’s a marketing channel/feed, just like any other.
meeting people where they are doesn’t inherently mean you support where they are. You just meet the people themselves.
It’s not like X is really gaining anything from the EFF, so it feels a little bit performative. Sure.
orwin 40 minutes ago [-]
Do you have the API access on twitter back? because if not, it's not like any other. it's more bothersome to power users. I thought people on HN of all places would understand that.
dijit 38 minutes ago [-]
Idk, I have to use Microsoft utilities for work (yay! game development!), and I feel like opening twitter and pasting something is lower friction than trying to do Teams automation.
orwin 30 minutes ago [-]
Good luck, worked on that a few weeks ago actually. Once you get it working though, you can just forget it (that's what i did).
For twitter and EFF, it's a work account, so probably 2FA with a timeout. You have to connect to it, pass the 2FA, then click, then copy paste. Or you can just log in to your tool, and post simultaneously on linkedin/mastodon (i don't know about the others, never used them). If your tool is well integrated, you can also just post on your company blog, and all social media wiht a public API are updated at the same time. TBH i don't really use social media, but i understand the "it's not big enough to loose 10 minutes each day, let's drop it if they don't fix their shitty API".
ericmay 1 hours ago [-]
It just seems like they are unhappy with the algorithm, and like any customer for any service you can cancel service, say why you are canceling service, and move to alternatives especially when your concerns aren't addressed.
Then again, who cares one way or the other?
kjksf 53 minutes ago [-]
And yet they post on Bluesky and Mastodon. If it's about effort vs. impressions, leaving X doesn't sound like a rational decision.
ericmay 44 minutes ago [-]
Seems like they prefer those platforms and perhaps the algorithm works better for their goals. Maybe they'll grow users over time and it'll be better for the EFF on a post/engagement ratio. Maybe more engaging users are on those platforms? I'm not fan of Bluesky (interactions I've seen are racist and/or far-left lunatics or communists and other such water heads), but then again who cares where they post?
staplers 1 hours ago [-]
We all perform everyday. Those performances eventually become our identity and influence our actions.
tempaccountabcd 53 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
novateg 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ecshafer 41 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
mghackerlady 40 minutes ago [-]
>defending child murder as well
explain
ecshafer 34 minutes ago [-]
One of their posts that they themselves link is supporting abortion. I am not sure how abortion connects with my right to not disclose information about myself or digital rights.
mghackerlady 17 minutes ago [-]
it does when those against it violate your digital rights to prosecute you
so... fighting for the exact kind of freedom they've fought for since day 1? Being against illegal invasions of privacy means being against it even when it becomes beneficial to prosecuting child murder
throwawaypath 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
martinky24 1 hours ago [-]
From a throwaway...
1 hours ago [-]
mrits 1 hours ago [-]
"The math hasn’t worked out for a while now."
How lazy do you have to be to not like this math. They act like tweeting is some sort of significant effort.
alwa 1 hours ago [-]
I read “the math” there as doing something a little more figurative. It seemed to me like they led with circulation figures less because they care about their CPM efficiency or whatever, and more to use “views” as a kind of synechdoche for “the people who want to hear what we have to say.”
ceejayoz 1 hours ago [-]
Brand reputation from staying on Twitter is part of the math.
tempaccountabcd 58 minutes ago [-]
How could you possibly lose reputation from that?
minimaxir 1 hours ago [-]
Tweeting is easy. Managing the weirdos that respond to your tweets is hard.
1 hours ago [-]
thomasarmel 1 hours ago [-]
Thanks, maybe I can suggest posting here the statement in their website instead of the tweet, in order to avoid generating traffic on X
bradley13 1 hours ago [-]
So they're still getting a million impressions s month, and that's not interesting Anyway, putting something up on Instagram and then also on X - that's pretty low effort, no? Weird decision...
Also: 1500 posts per year, so around 4 per day - a bit much. There just aren't four important topics to talk about each and every day. Honestly, I wouldn't subscribe to that either. Maybe that's part of why their numbers are going down...
Rendered at 18:39:17 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
They would have been absolutely appalled and ashamed to see a business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white homeland" and similar comments.
I find it deeply dismaying that people consider that "just politics" or that opposing it is "ideological". We can argue all day about the proper rate of corporate taxation or debate the best way to implement environmental regulations, and I will not consider you a bad person if you disagree with me. But the kind of crap coming out of that guy? That's beyond politics.
And like I pointed out, these are not just any old "political views". It's extremist stuff that in the past would have gotten you ostracized. I'm old enough to remember Trent Lott losing his Senate leadership position, for instance.
Also, because of "network effects", simply providing content to Twitter makes the site more valuable.
If you went to a restaurant and it had Confederate flags and pro-slavery memorabilia on the walls, would you think: “Well, that’s just their political view, I don’t have to share it to eat here?”
He's also using his fame and fortune to much more directly fund and promote political change in places like the UK. It goes beyond this one service, but moving away from this service weakens his position more broadly as well.
This helped keep a neutral or at worst ambivalent image of these owners in the minds of the larger public and thus for the most part didn't factor into purchase decisions.
It's now easier than ever to see the true character of a business owner and so it's only natural that customers have begun to factor in this information in purchase/usage decisions.
I don’t expect them to provide a platform for people who make it a point to hate others and advocate for removal of their / my rights and so on.
Since 18th century at the very least; see: anti-slavery sugar boycott[1].
That's if you absolutely ignore the parent's point that political views are things like specifics of policy, not whether some people should be considered subhuman.
>Seems to me that this is what has changed.
It seems so because you don't know history, and didn't do a one-minute Google search for history of successful boycotts.
The article I'm linking is in the "bite-sized" category.
Enjoy.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3rj7ty/revision/7
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boycotts
I mean, there are a lot of conservatives I respect including Mitt Romney, Robert Nisbett, George Will, and Thomas Sowell. Then there are the jerks like William F. Buckley and David Horowitz. [1]
Then there is Musk who's below even them -- but I am not particularly offended by Hobby Lobby or Chicken-Fil-A.
[1] if you want to know the criteria I use take a look at this book https://www.amazon.com/Watch-Right-Conservative-Intellectual...
And I wouldn't call white nationalism a "political" view, like it's some ordinary kind of opinion. That's sanewashing something disgusting and disgraceful. That type needs to get shoved back under the rock they crawled out from.
"It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured."
it's an absolute joke anyone disputes what he did
https://www.foxnews.com/media/elon-musk-cory-booker-made-sim...
https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i6par1/elon_musk_vs_...
But I've yet to see someone show video of a prominent democrat doing the same salute as Musk. Which is probably why it's left as an exercise for the reader to find.
That said, we don't need to speculate about his salute when you can look directly at the slop he posts on Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GKQjIOFuGs&t=192s
If you normalize a bit for Musk being more physically awkward than Booker it's the same motion.
Those are different gestures. Musk is clearly forcefully throwing out his harm, mimicking the Nazi salute. Booker is moving his arm from his chest to a waving motion, using two hands instead of one at some points.
It seemed pretty blatant to me if you watch the whole video, the chest pound and the clear arm/hand extension really makes it difficult to see as anything else.
It was distinctly different from the stills of other politicians waving that often get used as comparison by trolls trying to defend it... when you compare videos the difference is not even questionable.
But you knew that.
> business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white homeland"
It is not every commenter's duty to cite their sources when you have the ability to easily infer the context and search the internet. These are very well documented actions that they refer to. Your attempts to drive sentiment through casting doubt are noticed.
No, it isn't. It's a distinction without significance.
Everyone should hate fascism and Nazis.
I'm not sure why xorg exists if their sole purpose is to kill x. As per the many posts by their developers.
Through that lens, I guess it makes sense that they see TikTok, Instagram, and BlueSky as worth their time and presence but not X.
Of course they care about ideological concerns.
I'll ask you then: What are the three main areas of advocacy where you think the EFF has been the most visible and/or effective?
So when people support EFF's technological goals (freedoms for users on technology platforms), if they are themselves possibly on the right, they project their own values onto the organization or system (which here is the EFF).
Never-mind if some of those values are incompatible with the values you think you hold (being authoritarian generally is incompatible with being not being authoritarian about technology). When someone points out the (otherwise obvious) contradiction to you, you're surprised that your set of values is incongruous.
Now this can happen to anyone coming from any political starting point, they agree with something but find it doesn't quite fit with their world views. If you are deeply religious about it, you tend to hold on for dear life and either decide to "pick" on set of values over another (suddenly you realize, actually, yes you would like to enslave everyone) or engage in some form of hypocrisy or another (authoritarians are good, but for some reason or the other I'm going to make an exception for technology).
Keep in mind that X only has ~500 MAU, putting it in the same league as Pinterest or Quora.
> The Numbers Aren't Working Out
I don't know. That's front and center. Can to share how that's an "outright rejection"?
It's like how the Soviets and the Americans were allies in world war II, the pros outweighed the cons
What is your working definition of freedom? I'm interested in replying but I'd like to engage with you on your terms.
That is the exact opposite of what that means. It means freedom should be supported for all, especially for the oppressed. Those who stand for oppression in one way serve to benefit other forms of oppression
I believe in freedom of speech for people that I don't want to talk to. There is no contradiction in that.
No one has asserted this.
If your views suck, people have the freedom to say "ok, bye".
(Musk asserts otherwise, of course. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/01/nx-s1-5283271/elon-musk-lawsu...)
So I'm not free to assert moral reasons for my actions?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-elon-musk-uses-his...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/23/business/elon...
> To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
and
> Our presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok is not an endorsement. We've spent years exposing how these platforms suppress marginalized voices, enable invasive behavioral advertising, and flag posts about abortion as dangerous. We’ve also taken action in court, in legislatures, and through direct engagement with their staff to push them to change poor policies and practices.
It's pretty clear that all these platforms have various problems within EFF's purview, but the difference with X is that they're not getting value from using it.
Maybe they were also getting flamed really hard on Twitter. Idk, haven't used that site in forever.
Because what I read is that their X posts are getting only 3% of the engagement compared to pre-Musk Twitter.
The post insinuates that's because the platform intentionally down-ranks posts for ideological purposes.
https://www.fire.org/
You have to scroll down a bit further to find their real reason for preferring those sites:
> people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day
[0] https://www.threads.com/@efforg
Threads has more daily active users than X and is growing quickly vs. the latter’s cratering usage rates. Demographics trend younger, too.
Yeah, somewhere where regular people that aren't terminally online won't ever have the chance to see it. This is a dumb decision. I'd very much like for open, distributed social networks to win, but that's not a reality we'll be living in anytime soon. X, for better or worse, gets you eyes, more so than any other alternative social media.
But that is actually what they called out: they're not getting eyes anymore. Views at X have cratered so hard that it's barely worth the time.
You think those people are on X?
Which is fine but just be honest about it.
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 where the company previously fought off censorship demands from repressive regimes. Many users left. Today we're joining them.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eff-leaving-x
I think people were just upset certain figures were held to the TOS.
No they weren't:
"There are only two genders."
"Men cannot become pregnant."
"Children should not be given sterilization drugs."
"Deporting illegal immigrants is a good thing."
Just because you disagree with them doesn't make it "violent hate speech".
It's a perfect analogue for asking confederate fans, "state's rights to do what?"
The "were usually" is doing a lot of lifting.
A lot of the time it was as mundane as disagreeing with ANY democrat politician/their policies.
And this sometimes wasn't even from a right-winger, but from more Left leaning voices.
You should take a look at the twitter files. This has nothing to do with "violent hate speech."
That's your problem? Wait until you get around to the Snowden Files, you'll be floored.
They also banned NY Post for publishing that Hunter Biden laptop story. Which as much of a nothingburger as that story was, it's insane to get banned for that.
You're presumably referencing Missouri v. Biden, to which the EFF did file an amicus[1]. In it, they note,
> Many platforms have potentially problematic “trusted flagger” programs in which certain groups and individuals enjoy “some degree of priority in the processing of notices
> Of course, governmental participation in content moderation processes raises First Amendment issues not present with non-governmental inputs
With their overall opinion being something like "content moderation is normal, the government flagging content is also normal, and there are instances where the government's flagging of content moderation can be fine & not run afoul of 1A, but there are instances where it can, and we urge the court to think"
Note in this case, the platform was removing the content. The government was, in one respect, merely asking. (There were assertions that in other instances, such as public statements, the case was less so.) The court eventually ruled, and the ruling I saw from the 5th circuit seemed reasonable. (I think that was a preliminary injunction. AIUI, the case as a whole was never ruled on, because the Trump administration took over.)
[1]: https://www.eff.org/document/missouri-v-biden-amicus-brief
Conservative talking points were fucking everywhere, and still are.
If you aren't kicking nazis out of your bar, it'll become a nazi bar. Twitter stopped kicking out the nazis
Their demands like "genuine end-to-end encryption for direct messages" are not met for many of the other platforms they are staying on.
Then you have lines like this that make the agenda far more clear: "Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day."
(Of course the EFF are ideological, that's their entire purpose!)
And like it or not - Twitter is still the preferred communication platform of quite a few influential people.
Both Bluesky and Mastodon are open/federated networks, which aligns more with EFF's values. So, yes, but I don't think for the reasons you're hinting at.
They are an organization that exists to support an ideological viewpoint. Any political stance is ideological!
I think that says it all.
It would be dishonest of them to pretend they were not ideological. Staying on Twitter was likely worse for their mission then leaving it.
What is dishonest is to write as if there was something wrong with leaving twittwr for "ideological" reasons.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
It would be really interesting to learn if brands and advertisers are seeing the same thing?
All six of the speakers immediately said Twitter was realistically the only place you can keep up with the conversation. Having an extensively curated list means that anytime anything breaks (and often a few hours before) you are going to hear about it on X/Twitter.
I would love to know if there is anything even close to the reach of X. It has a lot of problems - but if you want to track breaking news, I can't think of anything else close to it.
I think I lasted <1 week after this takeover.
Still, I'd advocate to leave social media in general. And certainly to get off twitter.
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'm more astounded that people think every single part of it is a cesspool when in reality there are gems to be found that aren't in any other X alternative like Bluesky or Mastodon or (lol) Threads.
Does this not apply to X users?
If you hang out in a bar with KKK memorabilia everywhere - and open the replies of any reasonably popular news story on X before complaining that's not a fair comparison - people make conclusions off your presence, even if you're personally there for the tasty beer.
It's clear this is about politics, and I'm not opposed to that, Elon is not awesome, but trying to justify it otherwise seems kind of shady.
They do this in almost every tweet.
Assuming they use the same principles everywhere, they're getting more views on Mastodon and Bluesky? That is surprising.
I’m sure it’s on its way out, but I did quietly laugh to myself from the irony.
I'm afraid we're being divided and conquered. The people pushing for mass control are attempting to reframe the fight for digital freedoms as a "leftist" talking point, so that they can later ride the populist wave and use its momentum to kill online free speech and general purpose computing altogether. Perhaps the EFF has been compromised, because it should not be falling for this trick. It would be wise to use all of the information channels available to reach as many people as possible.
[0] https://nitter.net/durov/status/2041979377773133898#m
Comical.
> It would be wise to use all of the information channels available to reach as many people as possible.
How about their website, which is accessible to everyone because it doesn't require you to log in?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/25/elon-mu...
Sure, just like he was pro-free speech, until he suddenly wasn't.
His broken promise not to ban @elonjet is still up. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456
There are probably things more relevant about X than what it is that Elon Musk currently proclaims about his political opinions?
I mean, you're talking about Elon, the Doge guy, the one who organized mass hoovering of citizens data from whatever sources he could get his grubby mitts on? That Elon?
Opposed to mass surveillance??
And then you sprinkle some commonly known truths on top to make your comment palatable ("we're being divided and conquered!"), and finally you add a dash of malicious speculation to seed some doubt against the organization ("Perhaps the EFF has been compromised!! It's a trick!!").
No thanks.
Elon is pro-censorship for the things he doesn’t like, like the word “cis”.
You can be happy that Elon is allowing alt-right speech, that’s fair, he has brought that back to Twitter, slurs are finally allowed again, truly the speech we all long for, but anti-censorship as a principle? Please. Pull the other one.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhSL-5GtmQM#t=1h9m57s
For EFF: That's ~15 years too late, and way too specific. Their job (without them ever having realized in fact) was to generate some force against these centralized commercial walled gardens, where we have our public discourse, with some opaque algorithms deciding what goes up and what goes down.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
If you just want to talk about how much you hate the current US administration with other people who also spend all their time talking about how much they hate the current US administration, there are much better places for that, such as r/politics.
The golden days of the sentinels driving traffic without you paying for it are over, and they won't come back.
Don't get me started on tiktok...
> To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.
Okay. View counts are public now, but not available on older tweets. But replies, like, and retweet counts are, and shouldn't they scale similarly?
I'm just eyeballing it, but when I look through the EFF's twitter feed now, I see 20-100 likes as typical, with the occasional popular tweet that hits a couple hundred. When I look at their 2018 tweets - you can use the `from:EFF until:2018-04-01` filter on twitter search - the numbers are... The same. Aside from the occasional popular tweet, most other tweets are in the neighborhood of 20-100 likes. Similar for replies and retweets.
I don't understand how this could be if the tweets are being seen 30x less.
I think the only practical consequence is that EFF loses some fraction of audience.
If you don't that is fine but I imagine you would also hold the view that not posting on X shouldn't be controversial then either.
I applaud the move and only wish they would have done it sooner.
But i would bet social media managers use similar tools, and the fact that no one can access twitter API might add just the little bit of friction you want to avoid.
That being said, there is no disguise.
>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.
It's incredibly unlikely someone at X shoved the EFF in a 'low visibility' bucket. It's much more likely they've simply updated their alogorithms and the EFF doesn't hit some engagement metric.
They're still getting 13 million impressions by simply posting tweets, I really don't understand 'taking a stand' here. Instead of 13 million they'll simply get 0... The opportunity cost in the worst case is a human being copy pasting a tweet, there's plenty of software to schedule posts across platforms though, which would make it essentially free even in user time.
Imo, they had a 'personal stance' motivation, and dug deep for any reason to argue for it.
It's even more likely that Twitter's audience in 2018 was fairly supportive of the EFF's goals, but X's audience in 2026 is either indifferent or hostile.
As they put it:
> X is no longer where the fight is happening. The platform Musk took over was imperfect but impactful. What exists today is something else: diminished, and increasingly de minimis.
I don't know the numbers for EFF, but having 400K followers on X and getting between zero and five comments per post if you go back a couple of weeks (to skip today's fire), between zero and 20 retweets... sounds like a failed platform. They get better numbers from Facebook, a dying platform, with half the followers. They get similar or better numbers from Instagram with less than 10% of the followers they have in Twitter.
More “X is simply not worth our time anymore”. I can’t say with any certainty that X is on a death spiral (personally it does feel that way), but the kind of crowd who have remained in spite of Musk’s many public embarrassments (and the handling of Grok deep fakes and women) probably aren’t the kind who are passionate about the EFF
What was wrong with just saying people instead of this nonsense? EFF has been a joke for a while now so has every organization that does something for people. It's just a box that can be ticked when someone asks something stupid like "who protects some imaginary rights".
That's a huge drop. It could be changes to the algorithm or it could be their former readers are no longer on X. I suppose it's both.
One thing that has certainly changed is that algorithms have become more aggressive. If your content isn't performing well, it gets hidden much faster and more aggressively than before. This makes sense when you consider it from the PoV of the platforms (they have much more content to choose from)
Not saying it's working, but I believe something like that is their current design intent of that joke of a massive backwards revolver. The way it currently works is that only those smart enough to bypass the penalization wins.
EFF reps on Twitter probably aren't "smart enough" to game that system, so they stay in the tiny group, and therefore they won't get the views.
The EFF is at odds with both facets of the current US administration as well as the big corporate donors in its pockets and its posts deal with nuanced topics, and so naturally its posts are among those not surfaced as often.
[0]: https://substack.com/home/post/p-193285131
A decade ago they lost the plot. They pulled some bullshit and lied to their entire membership in order to boost their cronies/friends at the Library of Congress. They framed efforts to keep the LoC under loose Congressional/Presidential oversight and free to do as they want as some Anti-Trump fight. Requests about why they would do this went completely unanswered to the membership.
The EFF Board serves their own goals and believe themselves unaccountable to their membership, so they no longer get my money and I no longer entertain or signal boost their message.
"Your abortion fund uses TikTok to spread crucial information" is listed as one of three sample reasons you might use social media.
I support reproductive rights! But I don't want EFF to do that, and I don't want EFF to push conservatives out of the movement. I want EFF to appeal to everyone who cares about digital civil liberties, including people who disagree with me on other issues.
Of course not.
And yet they leave X and only X.
I left Twitter, Facebook, et al about a decade ago. And I can assure you: You will never miss any important development.
The notion that we need to plugged into Twitter, X, whatever, to stay up to date is simply false.
https://flowingdata.com/2025/10/03/passed-peak-social-media-...
>Yes. And we understand why that looks contradictory. Let us explain.
Lol, rubbish.
Is the contention here that there is more censorship on X compared to Twitter pre acquisition? Is X more heavily censored than Facebook or TikTok
They go on to say they're still on Facebook and TikTok and explain:
> The people who need us most are often the ones most embedded in the walled gardens of the mainstream platforms and subjected to their corporate surveillance.
None of this is unique to Facebook and TikTok and not for X.
> Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day
I'm pretty sure all these demographics use X as well.
It's just so bizarre. If you want to reach people, esp people that maybe come from a different perspective from you, why would you opt out of the best way to get your message across?
That's easy to sustain.
Pre-acquisition: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456
Post-acquisition: https://x.com/elonjet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1993828797066748081
There are many accounts that show the flight paths but on a 24h delay. I see that as reasonable. It allows you to do view the data but there is no security risk.
Meanwhile people were banned off twitter for saying "men are not women".
Yes, a "free-speech absolutist" who explicitly promised to preserve a very specific example of free speech on explicit free speech grounds immediately banned the account when he was able to.
And then he banned reporters for reporting on it.
It's the easiest possible example to demonstrate his principles were never genuine here.
See also: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1993828797066748081
> Falsely labeling non-violent people as “fascist” or “Nazi” should be treated as incitement to murder
That's not very free speech, right?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/25/elon-mu...
The only social media I’m going to keep for now is Reddit and YouTube because I think it’s still a net positive for the educational content, but even those are on the chopping block for me. The whole Internet is being capitalized into junk food, people just push out sensationalized low calorie garbage because they get paid per view. It’s sad to see.
It's usually couched in sophisticated-sounding faux-intellectual language, though, which is the key to posting whatever you want here. You can say literally anything on HN, so long as you camouflage it with SV techbro vernacular.
I liked it when they were more about defending rights and less about attacking the "right."
Oppression of minorities? Check
Capitalism as the main apparatus of the state? Check
Imprisoning dissenting voices? Check
Creating lists of people to get rid of? Check
Authoritarianism? Double check
Creating an out group and scapegoating it as an "enemy from within" Check
if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it doesn't have to scream it's a duck and sieg heil to be sure it's probably a duck or at least not a swan
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/activists-sue-san-francis... https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-activists-demonstrate... https://www.eff.org/press/releases/media-alert-eff-argues-ag... https://www.eff.org/press/releases/law-enforcement-use-face-... https://www.eff.org/press/releases/trumps-blocking-people-hi... https://www.eff.org/press/releases/comprehensive-legal-refor...
And yes, this is a US centric comment. The EFF is a US based organization and the center of gravity of the tech world they deal with is in the US.
Those who stay there because "it's practical", or worse they like it, or worse they support Musk, should be ashamed
X fired a “Trust and Safety” team that was spending time enforcing gender ideology rather than working on scalable solutions to trust and safety. Community Notes wouldn’t have happened without X.
Nobody reads their posts on Twitter any more because most of the people are gone.
Why?
(It's also buying into the narrative that X is a ideological monolith. It, of course, is not. But it does lean a different way than other major social media platforms, which means there's a unique opportunity to speak to a different kind of audience!)
meeting people where they are doesn’t inherently mean you support where they are. You just meet the people themselves.
It’s not like X is really gaining anything from the EFF, so it feels a little bit performative. Sure.
For twitter and EFF, it's a work account, so probably 2FA with a timeout. You have to connect to it, pass the 2FA, then click, then copy paste. Or you can just log in to your tool, and post simultaneously on linkedin/mastodon (i don't know about the others, never used them). If your tool is well integrated, you can also just post on your company blog, and all social media wiht a public API are updated at the same time. TBH i don't really use social media, but i understand the "it's not big enough to loose 10 minutes each day, let's drop it if they don't fix their shitty API".
Then again, who cares one way or the other?
explain
How lazy do you have to be to not like this math. They act like tweeting is some sort of significant effort.
Also: 1500 posts per year, so around 4 per day - a bit much. There just aren't four important topics to talk about each and every day. Honestly, I wouldn't subscribe to that either. Maybe that's part of why their numbers are going down...