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Why leave X but stay on Facebook, Insta, bluesky, youtube, linkedin, ticktock, and threads?
This is clearly political, they clearly love censorship, they clearly just didnt like when it wasnt censored in the ways they wanted.
Another reason why they stayed there for years is not only it’s one of many channels for which to impart their news about their activities or telling users they have individual right to privacy, with fucking Musk now in charge, their presence sought to challenge that bastard’s grip upon social media. Likewise, neither the UN nor Al-Jazeera are yet leaving the platform for the sake of informing the world and the oppressed in general, despite these organizations being opposed to right-wing warmongering, lying, and mafia capitalism, and Musk and those goddamned bots in response trying to harass or reduce their presence.
People leaving Twitter now is not very impressive. Less “seeing the light” and more “Trumpgret”.
I’ll remind you that the Debian project left Twitter over a year ago. So the EFF isn’t as fast moving or comfortable with change like … Debian.
This is not a contest to be holier than thou. It’s a numbers game.
EFF stayed on Twitter because it has a larger audience and that means a larger portion of people will see their messaging. In fact, I would argue that the people that are still on Twitter are the ones most in need of seeing those messages. The people that care about what Debian is posting are almost certainly already on Mastadon.
Did it though? EFF says that the number of impressions their content received is why they left:
Those [2018] tweets garnered somewhere between 50 and 100 million impressions per month.
Then
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.
But, I wonder what the real numbers actually are. Do we think Elon is honestly reporting real numbers to people? And, of the “impressions” that are real, how many of those are actually from bots rather than actual human users?
IMO, one of the biggest tricks Elon has managed to pull with Twitter is to convince celebrities and brands that it’s still a thriving site full of other people, leading to them sticking around because supposedly no other site gets as much traffic.
I feel like the EFF’s messaging is just not going to get through to anyone still on Twitter.
Remember, it’s not a fair forum; it’s an algorithm. And it’s not going to show the EFF to users who need to see it.
I feel like the EFF’s messaging is just not going to get through to anyone still on Twitter.
The problem is that the fundamental catch-22 of social networks is that the content and the users reinforce each other. Self-hating/regretting Twitter/X users exist, but they are there because there are network effects, including organizations who still also use it, they are not willing to give up. Similar organizations are there because the users are still there. And yes, I do think they still see the people they want because of follows/subscriptions, even if alt-right fascism is also being thrown into their feed by the algorithm.
It sucks so many people haven’t left yet, but that’s why every choice to leave is worth celebrating, because it breaks down the long-term network effects every time, even at the cost of short-term value to the users or orgs.
To illustrate what I mean more clearly, look at the top comments/replies for the NASA Artemis posts, as an example.
…It’s basically all conspiracy theorists, and government skeptics.
Twitter’s focusing the Artemis posts on them because it’s what they want to see, and most engaging for them.
In the EFF’s case, I’m not just talking about Musk’s influence. The algorithm will only show the EFF to users who would be highly engaged by it. E.g., angry skeptics who wouldn’t be swayed by the EFF anyway, or fans who already agree with the EFF. It’s literally not going to show the EFF to people who need to see it, as Twitter’s metrics would show it as unengaging.
This is the “false image” I keep trying to dispel. Twitter is less and less an “even spread” of exposure like people think it is, like it sort of used to be, more-and-more a hyper focused bubble of what you want to hear, and only what you want to hear. All the changes Musk is making are amplifying that. Maybe that’s fine for some orgs, but there’s no point in the EFF staying in that kind of environment, regardless of ethics.
I was listening to a podcast (informal morning show from one of the guys who founded roosterteeth) and he talked about how he got off Twitter and Facebook and everything well before the pandemic… but has been needing to get back on them just to connect with others in his community.
Right people need to understand the algorithm is biased and the company is going to prioritize it’s world view over the average persons.
I don’t believe in Trumpgret.
Their hearts haven’t changed, they just don’t like being hated.
We are seeing this a lot with podcast/youtube people, like Alex Jones.
It doesn’t matter what they say now, they begged for him to be elected. They chose him and are responsible.
I believe first term Trumpgret to be more that they thought Trump was going to do things about [insert dumb ideology here] and he turned out to be [dumb ideology] personified, but they still believe in [dumb ideology]. Not that they regret the things he’s doing, more that this he not doing enough of.
For example, drain the swamp. They thought he was going to get rid of Democrats who they thought were the swamp. It turned out during his first term he needed some Democrat support so he met in the middle and that pissed them off and then associated him with the swamp too.
Or building the wall and making Mexico pay for it. It turns out only a small portion got built, and came from US or private (not even his) funding.
Second term Trumpgret from everyday MAGA i agree, i don’t really believe anyone truly regrets voting for him, just that they are now hated by their loved ones, and they don’t see the direct causes of them voting for him and his actions hurting their loved ones, therefore their loved ones cut off contact.
Trumpgret from the likes of Alex Jones, i believe comes from a place of they never really believed in the it from the start, they just saw the easy grift and now the easy money is to jump off the bandwagon.
Progress is progress. As any sane people would repeat: perfect is not the enemy of good.
I think sane people say the opposite - perfect is the enemy of good. OCD motherfuckers like me try to rationalize perfect as not being the enemy of good, but we are usually wrong.
What the everliving fuck were they still doing there
Trying to help people that didn’t know about the alternatives.
Not sure the best place to discuss peace and love is at a Nazi rally.
Yeah, everyone knows the key to popular Revolution is a small collection of insular ML reading groups /s
Progress is progress. As any sane people would repeat: perfect is not the enemy of good.
About fucking time.
Overdue
obligatory self pat on my own shoulder: left my 30k followers when elon took over
Yet they stayed after the CEO of X did a Nazi salute on TV.
I have little respect for this.
I wish they would have used X (formerly Twitter) in their article title as a departing annoyance to Elon.
That took entirely too long.
Again??
They left Twitter and then went back? When? I didn’t hear about that.
Leave Xitter, but keep facebook, insta, tiktok, youtube etc. Also us keeping using them is not an endorsement.
And this is not hypocritical, why?
You gotta reach people where they are. Twitter doesn’t have as many eyeballs as the others.
And what is the actual work requirement to copy-paste you post to your twitter? Assuming that they didn’t spend their social-media person didn’t spend time arguing with people on X.
Leaving when others are getting fucked is making a stand and having principles. Yay applause.
Going lalalalala and staying on right until you get fucked is just whatever. Don’t brag please.
