While I'm not against people not-using Twitter/X (or any other platform): would it have been better to keep the account as a 'placeholder' so no one else can grab it? Have a post saying "We do not monitor this account." or some such?
You only need a placeholder if you think the platform matters enough to hold space for. For example: they don't have a placeholder on MySpace.
But if your goal is to prevent other people from having the name altogether, the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked. That forces them to hold your account only to prevent anyone from using it, lest you might sneak back in and say something "harmful" like "stonetoss is hans kristian graebener".
No, I described a way of getting blocked that I personally enjoyed. Haters (me) gonna hate, after all.
I think the FSF should not be on Twitter at all. Sorry if I was unclear about that in my previous comment, but the first paragraph was meant to contradict OP's suggestion.
That was the thing that got me blocked enough for it to stick. But it was right during the height of that meme, so I doubt it would go far now. Unless a bunch of people all started doing it or something.
If you're looking for something that might actually work right now, though, I think there's still some weird libertarian-ish "principle" they're pretending makes it wrong to post elon's (or others') flight information. At least that would be where I would start, because I don't like to bother people that don't deserve it, so general abusiveness is out, and it's funny to throw their free speech bullshit back in their face.
Stonetoss is a well known comic by an alt-Right Neo-Nazi. He kept his identity secret for years (for obvious reasons), but was outed a few years back. He received a lot of hate over this, and got fired from his tech job over it.
The comic was antitrans, antisemitic (with full-on Holocaust denial), racist, and sexist... but Graebener himself is a Latino, so he gets hated on by both the Left and the Right.
Websites that cater to the alt-Right ban users for saying his real name and ban people who make Stonetoss memes that shit on Graebener for being a Nazi.
And you know why HN is actually a great place? dang isn't going to ban me for repeating verifiable facts.
> People argue and disagree here but somehow in pleasant way I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Turn on `showdead` in your settings (or don’t, probably for the best) and be prepared to read some nasty comments. No substance, only hate. There are a few on this very submission.
I agree. Park the handle with a polite "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" note and a suggested list of other places for more fruitful discussion.
I made and follow my own "lists" and that blocks just about anything (including most ads). Also, having just under 10,000 block and mute words helps a bit.
From my experience, Twitter/X is doing just fine. I don't even see politics on my feed.
Compare that to Reddit, where my 'Home' is flooded with far-left politics.
As for content moderation, I am not convinced X is especially bad. Content glorifying terrorist groups such as the Al Qassam brigades can stay up for many days on Reddit, for example. I had to personally fill the special form for content illegal in the EU, and even then it took a long time to be removed.
Personally, I am not convinced the complaints against X are fair and unbiased. I suspect a lot of it is politically motivated, coming from liberals who typically hate Musk and would like to see conservatives banned from online discussions.
I never visit twitter/X “for you” or homepage, but instead just use the timeline and see only people I follow. This is mostly interesting people in tech or hobbies. It is great for that!
Every platform has their extremists and if you let the algorithm suggest content to you it will be stuff designed to fester hated and rage. However twitter is one of the few platforms that let you curate your feed, and I couldn’t use it without that.
Liberals, Fascists, and Communists always like to throw mud at each other as if they're not all cut from the same collectivist cloth (and all responsible for the deaths of millions). Best to pay them no mind.
Personally I'm not much a fan of Reddit or Twitter though, simply because the algorithmic nonsense is clearly there just to drive ad views and not to provide me with the interactions I'm there to have. Nostr is a much more pleasant experience.
> Content glorifying terrorist groups such as the Al Qassam brigades can stay up for many days on Reddit, for example. I had to personally fill the special form for content illegal in the EU, and even then it took a long time to be removed.
I remember reporting open calls to violence in various socialist subreddits with no action ever taken as far as I could tell. That was about a decade ago.
There was also a comment (I still have the link saved and it was never deleted) from more than a decade ago, from a moderator at the time (account since deleted) of the main transgender subreddit, openly accusing transgender members of the sub of being drug addicts and prostitutes based on absolutely nothing beyond disagreeing with the moderation team's hard-line woke (it was called "SJW" back then, of course) posture.
The usual hodgepodge of policy and constituent packages that evolve election to election, pasted onto semi-tribal partisan affiliations. Politics (in democracies) is rarely ideologically coherent because the data pull the model, not vice versa.
Like, we can describe the illiberal wings of the right and left, MAGA and academic progressivism, respectively, and it will get readership in the New Yorker and Atlantic, but it’s not going to tell you much about who’s in power and why.
More specifically, complaining about “liberals who typically hate Musk” misses that most of Musk’s antagonism in the last 1 year has come from a different cohort than that which has soured on him since he bought Twitter which is again quite different from the crowd that never liked him at all. There is no “typical” Musk hater, even if we just focus on those who vote blue.
Putting "MAGA" and "academic progressivism" on equal footings is pure bothsideism. What do you mean by "illiberal" exactly, and why would that apply to progressives?
> Putting "MAGA" and "academic progressivism" on equal footings is pure bothsideism
One is a political movement that controls the Presidency and several states. The other has a seat at the table in a few cities. If you’re seeing equal footing, you’re squinting hard.
> What do you mean by "illiberal" exactly, and why would that apply to progressives?
I’m specifically referring to the policing of speech. Brendan Carr telling broadcasters what they can and cannot say is illiberal. Same goes for the euphemism escalators that regulated the form, but not content, of classic political correctness. More broadly, liberalism triumphs tolerance while conservativism purity.
But to the point, LatinX and the Gulf of America being similarly dumb is an academic exercise. They’re functionally dumb and dangerous for entirely separate reasons. Compressing them into illiberalism is interesting, but not usefully descriptive.
Going back to OP, treating the world as pro- or anti-Musk is similarly uselessly reductive.
Make a new X account, open the front page. Within a few tweets, you can see neonazis casually discussing the jewish question or lunatics fantasizing about a coming race war. Reddit feels very, very milquetoast in comparison.
For that matter, if I check any random tweet link in an incognito tab and look over at the "What's happening" panel, it's all sports and celebrity nonsense, nothing "culture war" or political at all.
It happens A/B style even with old accounts. Crazy conspiracy stuffs and fake repost accounts pop up out of nowhere, and goes away after I've blocked few of them. It's as if a hatch on the floor comes popping up and back down.
Otherwise the site is at most, "egg prices had tripled" bad. Far from cash on wheelbarrows bad.
I don't even know what this means today. What things are "non-political"? Saying "there are no politics" seems like the same thing as "the status quo is the only possibility" - exactly the stagnation from which I want to move away on socials.
> the art or science of government: as [that] concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy, ... [or] winning and holding control over a government; political actions, practices, policies, ... affairs or business
Broad sense:
> the total complex of relations between people living in society
In my experience, the question is almost always disingenuous. Topics being "political" is clearly the exception rather than the norm. The subtext of asking is something like "you are a bad person for objecting to my political statements (but I will still reserve the right to object to yours, should you decide that turnabout is fair play)".
> Saying "there are no politics" seems like the same thing as "the status quo is the only possibility" - exactly the stagnation from which I want to move away on socials.
There are all kinds of projects and activities that can be discussed without touching upon the relations between people in society, let alone matters of governmental policy or the quest for power.
There is nothing at all "stagnant" about a community focused on such things. OP is about the Free Software Foundation; focusing on discussion of the software has nothing to do with politics, and is generally improved by consciously avoiding politics.
The mere fact of existence of other political possibilities does not necessitate discussing those possibilities at every opportunity.
Why does everybody I see complaining about modern Twitter say the exact phrase "Nobody should be on that platform."? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your point, just curious if there was some manifesto going around or if everybody suddenly started using the same phrase.
Is it just me or have people started using the same phrases more often and faster than before? Reminds me of when everybody started saying "God forbid" a few months ago.
I don't know about the phrase, but I share the sentiment. The owner is a racist promoting racist things. It's not a 'public square' because he controls the algorithm, so it'll never be a 'fair fight' for those who disagree with him.
Paying users are also explicitly given priority in the reply section, which naturally hands a megaphone to the type of user that is more willing to give money to Elon Musk and wear the "I gave money to Elon Musk" badge.
I did some searches for “nobody should be on that platform” and found:
- one hit on a Lana del Rey message board
- one bluesky post from 8 months ago with no likes, reposts, or replies.
If you widen the search to “should be on that platform” then you get more hits, but many are references to Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, TikTok etc. It seems that people are reaching for a noun that can refer to these social media properties that are not just “sites” and not just “apps.” It would appear that ”platform” is the word we’ve landed on.
The groupthink is real, and it's coming for a skull near you.
But in all seriousness I think it's a mix of bots on the dead internet leading the monkey see monkey do paradigm. If you see 80 out of 100 people doing a thing then you get swept up in the flood. Even if 50 of those 80 are bots.
It's mostly been on comments on various Reddit posts over the last few months. I unfortunately don't have any examples saved. I'm not accusing anybody of anything, just personally curious and remarking on a pattern I've perceived and was wondering if it was just a "me" thing.
Like pareidolia humans are great at seeing patterns that don't exist. Nobody should on that platform is an extremely common phrase. So you'll probably hear it more than once. However that doesn't mean there is a conspiracy.
It's a good idea to leave X, considering the values of the Free Software Foundation and how they don't exactly align with X's profit-driven model, and the spread of internet garbage.
I think either leaving a hostile platform or staying to promote ideas which run against it are reasonable choices. But what the article doesn't say is why they (as an organisation whose mission is to protect and promote free software) should choose to leave now, when from what I know, Twitter has always been a non-free, profit-driven network.
Generally speaking, both using and not using X seem like reasonable choices for the FSFE, in my opinion. But deciding to leave it right now over changes in 'direction and climate' seems… odd.
The FSFE's mission, as I understand it, is to support and promote free software. But as far as I know, Twitter has never been a friend of free software, nor has it been supportive of other related values the article mentions, like 'privacy', 'transparency', 'autonomy', 'data protection', etc. It has always been a non-free, centralised network which cared about profit more than user rights, and engagement more than fostering civil discourse.
I don't see FSFE's presence on a platform as endorsement of its values, but rather as a way to leverage its popularity to better promote their mission. That hasn't changed; X is still a popular platform. It's attitude to Free Software and related ideas doesn't seem to have changed, either. So why leave now? I get 'misinformation, harassment, and hate speech' are never a good thing, but I don't recall the FSFE opposing them so vehemently before (more like just ignoring them), so why now, out of the blue? Unless there's been a change in their internal priorities, which they don't communicate, it doesn't really add up for me.
In the end, this just reads like them taking a political stance and trying to rationalise it in more neutral language. And I can understand and respect that decision, but the fuzzy phrasing still rubs me the wrong way.
> The FSFE's mission, as I understand it, is to support and promote free software. But as far as I know, Twitter has never been a friend of free software, nor has it been supportive of other related values the article mentions, like 'privacy', 'transparency', 'autonomy', 'data protection', etc. It has always been a non-free, centralised network which cared about profit more than user rights, and engagement more than fostering civil discourse.
Indeed, and FSFE writes:
> The platform never aligned with our values
> a space we were never comfortable joining, yet one that was once important for reaching members of society who were not active in our preferred spaces for interaction
And then says in no unclear terms what changed:
> Since Elon Musk acquired the social network [...] the FSFE has been closely monitoring the developments of this proprietary platform
> Over time, it has become increasingly hostile, with misinformation, harassment, and hate speech more visible than ever.
> an algorithm that prioritises hatred, polarisation, and sensationalism, alongside growing privacy and data protection concerns, has led us to the decision to part ways with this platform.
You cherry-picked two words "direction and climate" from the article and criticised them for taking an ambiguous political stance, but there is nothing ambiguous about the actual announcement and they clarify their exact motivation for leaving multiple times.
The problem is that 'what changed' is hardly related to why they joined Twitter in the first place. Becoming 'increasingly hostile' and prioritising 'hatred, polarisation, and sensationalism' (more than before) doesn't really contradict or prevent you from 'reaching members of society who were not active in [y]our preferred spaces for interaction'. Like I wrote, X is still popular, there are still people you can communicate with about your mission. The original logical (and given) reason for being on X is still just as valid.
And I didn't criticise them for taking an ambiguous stance. On the contrary, I remarked they seem to be taking a rather unambiguous political stance (one opposed to that of X's new leadership). What I criticised was their not being upfront about this and instead giving explanations which don't really add up for me (for reasons restated above).
I quoted only short parts to avoid making my comment appear twice as long, but please let me know if you found the way I did so to be misleading in some way.
> The problem is that 'what changed' is hardly related to why they joined Twitter in the first place.
Does it have to be? The original calculus was "unpleasantness of using unfree software vs. benefit of reaching more people". The calculus has changed to "unpleasantness of using unfree software + unpleasantness of encountering hate speech vs. benefit of reaching more people". In other words, what used to be "1 + -1 = 0" has become "1 + -2 = -1" for the FSFE. As humans, they are free to consider other reasons than their primary mission alone when determining whether the platform is still one they find to be worthwhile to use.
> What I criticised was their not being upfront about this
I really don't get how your impression is that they are not upfront about this, and yes, I found your comment to have been quite misleading, having skimmed the comments before reading the article. The very first sentence in the article starts with "Since Elon Musk...". What part of this would you have liked them to be more upfront about?
Sort of? For an individual, there's obviously a ton of personal factors that play a role in decision-making. For an organisation with a stated mission, though, I should expect them to make their decisions based on what best aligns with said mission, or another set of priorities they're bound to follow. This is important for knowing if one should support the organisation and if their values are aligned. How can one trust an organisation which only ever claims to fight for Y, but then in practice randomly throws Z, W, and U into the mix, as they feel like it?
As I wrote, the content they criticise X for is the kind of content I recall them being much more indifferent about in the past, so seeing this come up as their main reason for leaving this platform, with no indication of any internal re-evaluation of priorities having happened, is rather out of the blue.
> The very first sentence in the article starts with "Since Elon Musk..."
… and goes on to tell us they have been monitoring it; found it increasingly hostile; that they originally joined to interact with people, promote free software and alternative networks; that the platform feeds hatred, polarisation and sensationalism and grows privacy concerns; and finally that they're leaving.
> What part of this would you have liked them to be more upfront about?
What they suddenly have a problem with and why. As I said, what they actually wrote doesn't add up to this for me. Hostile environment, misinformation, harassment? They didn't seem to care much or see it as hindering their mission before. Hatred, polarisation, sensationalism? Same thing, and it doesn't necessarily hinder their activity on the network. Data protection, privacy concerns? The network has always been non-free, for-profit and centralised. Interacting with people and promoting free software? You literally can still do that.
They say why they originally came, but those reasons are still valid today. They say what they dislike about their platform, but it's either irrelevant to their mission or they haven't disliked it so much before. So what they say does not explain their decision. It doesn't explain the logic behind it. Trying to use it as an explanation doesn't really make sense with their supposed mission.
I can only guess the actual logic is more like 'we have other values we care about more now, which the platform now goes against, and in our current political climate we want to more noticeably stand at the "right side" and gain favour with our primary audience over there'. This, for example, could be a sensible explanation. But they chose not to give one.
That's a lot of words with not a lot of substance. I suppose their whole identity is announcing that they're superior to other people and branching off, while asking for money for what looks like mostly sending people to talk at events (which are probably mostly more fundraising).
> "In the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation[sic] in which Richard Stallman has a leading position."
I do wish more people would try to fix things from the inside, and I get there's a point where it's no longer possible, but in this case it sounds like they didn't like people calling them out on X and had no way to control the narrative. What other gain would there be for a group trying to spread information in as many channels as possible?
Who knew that an ideologically-oriented organization would have morals and values, and that they wouldn't be aligned with Leon? Maybe they should've just sold out to AI, then they'd get a ticker tape parade.
How would it not be open and transparent on twitter? It's a site where everyone can see what they are talking about. It's only when they try to limit to whom and where they talk to people that they are not open and transparent.
What do these have to do with open and transparent communication?
> I don't need to talk to you or use your favored public platform for my published material to be open and transparent on some other public platform.
Very true, but limiting the platforms limits the openness and transparency. With some simple software you can post to all with almost no effort. Seems weird to disclude one just to write a blog post about it for attention.
it's the town square- it's not about the two people talking but for everyone reading what they said instead of controlling the narrative by only speaking to people you want in places you want. They don't even have to answer to everyone, so the only benefit of losing access to thousands/millions of people is to make an article like this for Pride.
Good on them. It always feels like " But other than that, Mrs Lincoln enjoyed the play" watching people rationalize why they are still on Twitter or use Grok
why would anyone need to rationalize it? they're still two of the best platforms in their respective silos. most people don't care about drama and virtue signaling
Only one rationalization is need- Musk is evil. If you are still using Twitter, as far as I am concerned, you in league with him. You might as well just put on a MAGA hat.
The best time to leave Twitter was when Elon made it a yahtzee pron site. The next best time is now. Kudos to the FSFE, it's never too late to do the right thing.
certain words get filtered out by the algorithms. "yahtzee" translates to "Those snappily dressed German fascists during WWII". "pron" translates to "sexually explicit material". So if you don't want your posts flagged, you have to use code words.
I see more hate and misinformation on Mastodon than I see on X. Here is a very mild one:
[edit: link removed; I don't want to promote that guy but to give the gist he was saying that people who believe in free speech are trash, targeting X users with hate. Mastodon is absolutely saturated with this.]
Most of the criticism I see of X seems completely made up out of malice or is regurgitation of things other poorly informed or resentful people have said.
The supposed FSF in Europe should post links to the sections of the open source algorithm they claim to be criticizing, and show us their PR.
My criticism of X is primarily rooted in 2 things: the massive degradation of my experience using the platform and a distrust that Musk wouldn't use the platform to manipulate public opinion to achieve political goals.
On the first point the simplest thing is I used to report people who use overt slurs or anti-semitic language. When Musk took over it started taking months for them to follow up and the response was simply to lock the account until they deleted the offending tweet. Eventually when I would report those people X just switched to saying they weren't breaking the rules. Now the replies of tons of seemingly normal posts that get lots of visibility are full of vile people trying to derail conversation with racism or anti-semitism.
Another big problem is the way that blue-check accounts are boosted has incentivized every account to act like click-bait all the time. Whenever a post gets semi-viral the blue-check replies are artificially lifted to the top and most of them are totally worthless because the commenters are just trying to 'grab space' so people click their profile and follow them. It used to be that if big accounts posted something interesting you might see a bunch of interesting follow up replies. Now it's spammers at the top and then racists / crazies mixed in with more thoughtful replies if you scroll down a few pages past the blue-checks. It used to be that the algorithmic feed would surface me all sorts of interesting and novel work from people across the tech world but now there's a whole category of people trying to make every single Tweet viral enough to get payouts.
And then there's Musk himself. He's ordered the algorithm to be manipulated to boost himself more. He's clearly expressed discontent when the algorithm doesn't work the way he wants, he's meddled heavily in the platform's AI bot to make it say things Musk prefers, and he's been rather unscrupulous chasing his political goals. I think it's not unlikely he'd use the platform to guide public opinion, perhaps even using AI to do it discretely and intelligently. I view that as a significant risk.
So the platform has gone from something that's highly useful to me, and a place I greatly enjoyed, to something that more often than not wastes my time and exposes me to people that disturb me. And on top of all that I think contributing to the platform may empower someone who I deeply distrust to manipulate public opinion towards their political goals.
I don't have an opinion of Elon Musk. What would you say to those who think he's a value-add to the world, or are completely neutral about them (as I am)?
Do you really think your values are that pervasive, even here in HN (which tends towards an echo chamber)?
Yes. We all know that he is an untrustworthy, spoiled man-child with daddy issues so deep, that even the whole world is not enough. He is a fascist and an anchor around the neck of the entire world. In a more just world, he would be loaded onto one of his rockets and launched into the Phantom Zone.
The only one's who can't see this are so hopelessly deluded, they cannot be reasoned with.
I don’t really like the political nature of these decisions. It feels like political people often take over groups and institutions to implement their own political agendas through such policies.
On the other hand, Twitter/X has a problem of spam. I don’t even think it’s bots but actual humans. You see low effort and racist comments all over the place, poisoning the conversations. And it’s not just on political posts. If you’re Chinese or African or Indian, there will be vile comments spamming your posts.
Such a space isn’t welcoming to many people and I think groups like FSFE have legitimate reasons to want to avoid exposing their members to this stuff. It’s a hostile environment.
Love it or hate it, Twitter (yeah, I choose to be stubborn here) is still probably overwhelmingly the most impactful platform in this way.
While I respect the idea of the "boycott" in the abstract, perhaps the most wrong thing people think about it is "Because it's controlled by so-and-so, everyone who uses it is brainwashed and it's impossible to do good there."
Nope. Look, a lot of good people are still there. I personally also wish they would all leave and we all go elsewhere -- but that's not the present reality.
As such, people who insist that you must leave and no good can happen through staying ring the same to me as "IF SO AND SO GETS ELECTED IM LEAVING THE COUNTRY."
I don’t think leaving a platform you don’t enjoy has much, if anything, in common with physically relocating. I left X, but I have an account i use to log in about once a week to see if there’s anything worth while. I haven’t really found an alternative to X, things are fragmented now. Where I used to be able to follow most people I were interested in on Twitter, i now have some on bluesky, some on mastodon, some still on X, a bunch at instagram and YouTube… it’s a mess
The parallel I'm drawing here is that a lot of people threaten that when they don't really mean it, and more specifically, don't seem to think about why others don't.
I still have people there, so I will stick around.
I don't understand people who have the opinion that twitter is indispensable for them. I never had a twitter account and I only see tweets if they are posted on some news site or whatever. I don't feel uninformed. I don't feel like I am missing any critical information. I don't see any value in it.
Thank you. Hey, I 100% respect anyones individual decision about the place FOR THEMSELVES.
But a lot of people become absolutely insufferable when they try to dictate why this should be the case for someone else, I absolutely hate the framing of "indispensable" which I never said.
You don't find value, fine! I do. Let's actually talk about why I do if you like.
> Nope. Look, a lot of good people are still there. I personally also wish they would all leave and we all go elsewhere -- but that's not the present reality.
Nah, fuck that. If Stormfront had half a billion daily users that doesn't somehow compel you to participate; anyone willing to stay on Twitter isn't worth talking to even if they are personally nice to you.
Stormfront users wouldn't have really been relevant for the FSF. But on a platform like Twitter, which isn't mono-subject like the Stormfront forums, would have been relevant for an organization like FSF.
And personally the few people I follow there (mostly game devs) are totally worth talking to.
* A web-of-trust social media, where I can instantly see, about any account, all of the chains of separation between us, in order to verify and validate the humanity and social connection of another person.
Presently, twitter (and even moreso, reddit) are just so overrun by bots whose job seems to be to muddy all waters with short-shrift, low-effort takes, but expressed in way more words than are necessary.
I don't mind (in fact, I love) long-form posts like were common in the old reddit, but that are thoughtful and perhaps radical (in the same of addressing the root of the subject). Today's reddit is almost as bad as twitter. I'm kinda ready to get off both of them, but I'd like to still have daily engagement on topics that challenge me / my worldviews.
> In the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation in which Richard Stallman has a leading position
These guys are entitled to use or avoid any social media platform they want. I'm entitled, as well, to judge them for putting purity tests in unrelated domains above their commitment to free software and thereby rendering themselves ineffective in their primary mission.
Irrelevance is their choice.
That said, there's a transparency consideration. Doesn't Europe have laws about charities having to use donor funds to advance the ostensible purpose of the charity?
Matthias Kirschner is FSFE president and a full time employee. Do FSFE's donors know the FSFE is making itself less effective towards its mission of promoting free software by avoiding people who the FSFE leadership team dislike for reasons unrelated to free software? If they want to do this stuff, they should put it in their charter.
If you ever run a large organization you will quickly find there are lots of people you are unable to cooperate with for reasons unrelated to your organization's primary mission. Especially in a nonprofit, the primary thing for being effective in your mission is having people who want to work together, if you have people who can't stand each other you're not going to be effective.
That is not true. The libertarian free-speech FSF(E) was way more effective in 2000 than it is now.
All these organizations have been infiltrated by career bureaucrats who have their pet political wedge issues and bite away everyone else. Of course they are silent on the really big issues. They would ban Stallman but not go after Epstein's real friends.
And that is in a nutshell how these political pseudo movements differ from the real political movements at the end of the sixties. At that time they were not afraid of going after the big guys.
Except now the just have less reach? I didn't follow them, so perhaps they had 10 followers and no reach to begin with, but this seems foolish if you have a mission you care about.
I found myself wondering the same thing. Do they genuinely expect people who have never heard about FSFE to be using a decentralized social platform? That sounds scary. Normal people don't use scary sounding things.
They're certainly welcome to do whatever they think is right, and it sounds more "on brand" for them, but it seems ridiculous to say something like "[Using Twitter was] important for reaching members of society who were not active in our preferred spaces for interaction." but then end with "Follow the FSFE on Mastodon and Peertube!" I am very tech literate and I've never even heard of Peertube. There is very little chance they are ever going to reach even a single set of ears this way.
At that point, they might as well just send random fliers in the mail to strangers.
I would say that I hate this, but I actually don't know what good it does to be a political organization actively engaging on social media anymore. There are too many paid mercenaries with expensive automation who will disrupt whatever you do.
But what are they going to do instead, nothing? Killing yourself in protest makes it really easy on your enemies (and aren't the only enemies of Free Software the people who want to sell closed devices?). Do what you do, don't feel like you have to control all the responses to what you do, or that they are hurting you. Your engagement with the public is independent of any reaction to you. You have total control over it. In this case, it looks like you're choosing to withdraw into a closet and only speak to your friends.
All that being said, twitter/X, both pre-Musk and post-Musk, sabotaged and sabotages reach based on opinionated, political, and profit-driven algorithms. People don't even see you. If your reach numbers were crap, you might as well not waste the effort. But I actually don't know what the effort is to fire and forget links to your press releases and current campaigns that you've doubtlessly posted other places. Seems almost zero.
My fear is that this is being pushed by people who are simply taking advantage of their power in an organization to push their own personal grievances. Free Software should only care about Elon Musk and Twitter to the extent that it is not Free Software. If you've moved into the "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" place, you've lost the plot.
I'm also getting a bit sick of Europeans stepping out of conversations because they aren't censored enough, even if the algorithm is definitely promoting the worst for engagement. It's scary. Europe has a comically bad history with this.
edit: and even the mention of "misinformation" is a red flag. I don't want a FSF that is a "misinformation" and hate speech monitor. I want a FSF that neonazis and climate skeptics feel free to join if they think that software should be Free.
> What initially intended to be a place for dialogue and information exchange has turned into a centralised arena of hostility, misinformation, and profit-driven control, far removed from the ideals of freedom we stand for.
The issue is the new algorithm I think. It's the same on thread. You're more likely to get a view by responding to outrage bait than by promoting your own work, while before it was 50/50: responding to bait was great to reach a new audience, but for people who already followed you, you could still reach them by posting 'normally'.
Do you follow any content creator anywhere? Before 2019, you basically _had_ to be on Twitter to follow updates. Then the media diversified, but by 2023, even people still on X will rather use discord to have update on content creator they follow (or, weirdly, Instagram it seems? At least my favourite vulgarisation content creator seems to think so)
There are plenty of people who love FOSS and terminally on X. Yes they are crazy, paranoid and racist but thats cutting off one of your key markets lol
Perhaps, but of all people, FOSS devotees should know why Twitter needs to die. The fact that so many people remain on the platform is disheartening to say the least. How bad does it have to get before you refuse to take part?
While I'm not against people not-using Twitter/X (or any other platform): would it have been better to keep the account as a 'placeholder' so no one else can grab it? Have a post saying "We do not monitor this account." or some such?
You only need a placeholder if you think the platform matters enough to hold space for. For example: they don't have a placeholder on MySpace.
But if your goal is to prevent other people from having the name altogether, the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked. That forces them to hold your account only to prevent anyone from using it, lest you might sneak back in and say something "harmful" like "stonetoss is hans kristian graebener".
> the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked.
So you think the FSF should've used the account representing them to troll?
Haven't tested lately, but at least for a while you could get your account blocked by publicly suggesting people follow you some other place.
PG got suspended for directing his followers to Mastodon: https://x.com/alexisohanian/status/1604604968677392386
They did walk that policy back due to the backlash, but they really wanted to do it.
I made my account private and put my bsky address in my profile, so that doesn't appear to be an insta ban.
IIRC, it was for a while and then the decision was reverted.
It received so much backlash it didn’t even last one day.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/19/tech/twitter-elon-musk-de...
No, I described a way of getting blocked that I personally enjoyed. Haters (me) gonna hate, after all.
I think the FSF should not be on Twitter at all. Sorry if I was unclear about that in my previous comment, but the first paragraph was meant to contradict OP's suggestion.
could change birthday to underage and get banned that way
> the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked.
Interesting idea. What did you do?
> say something "harmful" like "stonetoss is hans kristian graebener".
What that it?
That was the thing that got me blocked enough for it to stick. But it was right during the height of that meme, so I doubt it would go far now. Unless a bunch of people all started doing it or something.
If you're looking for something that might actually work right now, though, I think there's still some weird libertarian-ish "principle" they're pretending makes it wrong to post elon's (or others') flight information. At least that would be where I would start, because I don't like to bother people that don't deserve it, so general abusiveness is out, and it's funny to throw their free speech bullshit back in their face.
Stonetoss is a well known comic by an alt-Right Neo-Nazi. He kept his identity secret for years (for obvious reasons), but was outed a few years back. He received a lot of hate over this, and got fired from his tech job over it.
The comic was antitrans, antisemitic (with full-on Holocaust denial), racist, and sexist... but Graebener himself is a Latino, so he gets hated on by both the Left and the Right.
Websites that cater to the alt-Right ban users for saying his real name and ban people who make Stonetoss memes that shit on Graebener for being a Nazi.
And you know why HN is actually a great place? dang isn't going to ban me for repeating verifiable facts.
HN is the safe space. People argue and disagree here but somehow in pleasant way I haven’t seen anywhere else. So dang has easy job :))
And as you can downvote a comment so HN is self-regulating.
> People argue and disagree here but somehow in pleasant way I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Turn on `showdead` in your settings (or don’t, probably for the best) and be prepared to read some nasty comments. No substance, only hate. There are a few on this very submission.
It's a sign of someone gifted that they make everything look easy
You could still lose your account
https://help.x.com/en/using-x/x-handle-marketplace
I agree. Park the handle with a polite "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" note and a suggested list of other places for more fruitful discussion.
Why help Twitter be a safer more trustworthy platform when Twitter doesn't seem to want to be a safe or trustworthy platform?
I don't think twitter allows someone to take over an account after it's been deleted
They absolutely do. Someone’s parked on what use to be my account there.
During deactivation period nobody can take the username but after deletion I'm pretty sure they can.
I congratulate you to that decision. Twitter is really a breeding ground for racism and hate. Nobody should be on that platform.
Really depends on your feed, I first muted Elon, and only follow artists, so that's all my feed is, no hate or any racism.
The same. I follow tech accounts and some parody accounts and haven’t never seen racism&co.
But x’s algorithm is a self-evolving b*tch so my recent feed can change anytime…
But you had to mute the owner and sole decision maker of the platform to get that result.
How long will he allow the peasants to mute or block him?
You literally can't block people anymore on X https://www.cnet.com/tech/blocking-on-xtwitter-doesnt-work-a...
I made and follow my own "lists" and that blocks just about anything (including most ads). Also, having just under 10,000 block and mute words helps a bit.
> blocks just about anything (including most ads).
Do you not run uBlock Origin for some reason? Is the modern web even usable living like that?
It doesn't. Elon will happily spam your notifications with his own racist tweets directly, even if you don't follow him.
That's social media in general
It's not the content- it's the ownership. I don't want to give another dime to Mush and Zuckerberg.
From my experience, Twitter/X is doing just fine. I don't even see politics on my feed.
Compare that to Reddit, where my 'Home' is flooded with far-left politics.
As for content moderation, I am not convinced X is especially bad. Content glorifying terrorist groups such as the Al Qassam brigades can stay up for many days on Reddit, for example. I had to personally fill the special form for content illegal in the EU, and even then it took a long time to be removed.
Personally, I am not convinced the complaints against X are fair and unbiased. I suspect a lot of it is politically motivated, coming from liberals who typically hate Musk and would like to see conservatives banned from online discussions.
I never visit twitter/X “for you” or homepage, but instead just use the timeline and see only people I follow. This is mostly interesting people in tech or hobbies. It is great for that!
Every platform has their extremists and if you let the algorithm suggest content to you it will be stuff designed to fester hated and rage. However twitter is one of the few platforms that let you curate your feed, and I couldn’t use it without that.
Liberals, Fascists, and Communists always like to throw mud at each other as if they're not all cut from the same collectivist cloth (and all responsible for the deaths of millions). Best to pay them no mind.
Personally I'm not much a fan of Reddit or Twitter though, simply because the algorithmic nonsense is clearly there just to drive ad views and not to provide me with the interactions I'm there to have. Nostr is a much more pleasant experience.
Both places are infested with bots, but for me somehow reddit bots are more vile.
Definitely more open discussion up in X. Here or in reddit everything gets flagged and banned pretty quickly which defeats the purpose.
> Content glorifying terrorist groups such as the Al Qassam brigades can stay up for many days on Reddit, for example. I had to personally fill the special form for content illegal in the EU, and even then it took a long time to be removed.
I remember reporting open calls to violence in various socialist subreddits with no action ever taken as far as I could tell. That was about a decade ago.
There was also a comment (I still have the link saved and it was never deleted) from more than a decade ago, from a moderator at the time (account since deleted) of the main transgender subreddit, openly accusing transgender members of the sub of being drug addicts and prostitutes based on absolutely nothing beyond disagreeing with the moderation team's hard-line woke (it was called "SJW" back then, of course) posture.
> I suspect a lot of it is politically motivated, coming from liberals
The liberal-conservative political dichotomy was dying before Trump and is decidedly non-descriptive now.
What has replaced it?
The usual hodgepodge of policy and constituent packages that evolve election to election, pasted onto semi-tribal partisan affiliations. Politics (in democracies) is rarely ideologically coherent because the data pull the model, not vice versa.
Like, we can describe the illiberal wings of the right and left, MAGA and academic progressivism, respectively, and it will get readership in the New Yorker and Atlantic, but it’s not going to tell you much about who’s in power and why.
More specifically, complaining about “liberals who typically hate Musk” misses that most of Musk’s antagonism in the last 1 year has come from a different cohort than that which has soured on him since he bought Twitter which is again quite different from the crowd that never liked him at all. There is no “typical” Musk hater, even if we just focus on those who vote blue.
Putting "MAGA" and "academic progressivism" on equal footings is pure bothsideism. What do you mean by "illiberal" exactly, and why would that apply to progressives?
> Putting "MAGA" and "academic progressivism" on equal footings is pure bothsideism
One is a political movement that controls the Presidency and several states. The other has a seat at the table in a few cities. If you’re seeing equal footing, you’re squinting hard.
> What do you mean by "illiberal" exactly, and why would that apply to progressives?
I’m specifically referring to the policing of speech. Brendan Carr telling broadcasters what they can and cannot say is illiberal. Same goes for the euphemism escalators that regulated the form, but not content, of classic political correctness. More broadly, liberalism triumphs tolerance while conservativism purity.
But to the point, LatinX and the Gulf of America being similarly dumb is an academic exercise. They’re functionally dumb and dangerous for entirely separate reasons. Compressing them into illiberalism is interesting, but not usefully descriptive.
Going back to OP, treating the world as pro- or anti-Musk is similarly uselessly reductive.
Musk buying Twitter and him starting to support the Republicans both happened April/May 2022. Who soured over buying Twitter rather than the politics?
the same in HN where ad hominems, insults, rants are fine as long as they attack the right or use passwords like "fascist" or "racist"
now, you want to post conservative or rationalist ideas and better use 3 layers of metaphors or else you will be flagged within a minute
My account here is throttled for posting what I think are conservative views.
Make a new X account, open the front page. Within a few tweets, you can see neonazis casually discussing the jewish question or lunatics fantasizing about a coming race war. Reddit feels very, very milquetoast in comparison.
I tried this. It is not at all true.
For that matter, if I check any random tweet link in an incognito tab and look over at the "What's happening" panel, it's all sports and celebrity nonsense, nothing "culture war" or political at all.
It happens A/B style even with old accounts. Crazy conspiracy stuffs and fake repost accounts pop up out of nowhere, and goes away after I've blocked few of them. It's as if a hatch on the floor comes popping up and back down.
Otherwise the site is at most, "egg prices had tripled" bad. Far from cash on wheelbarrows bad.
> I don't even see politics on my feed.
I don't even know what this means today. What things are "non-political"? Saying "there are no politics" seems like the same thing as "the status quo is the only possibility" - exactly the stagnation from which I want to move away on socials.
> What things are "non-political"?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/politics
Narrow sense:
> the art or science of government: as [that] concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy, ... [or] winning and holding control over a government; political actions, practices, policies, ... affairs or business
Broad sense:
> the total complex of relations between people living in society
In my experience, the question is almost always disingenuous. Topics being "political" is clearly the exception rather than the norm. The subtext of asking is something like "you are a bad person for objecting to my political statements (but I will still reserve the right to object to yours, should you decide that turnabout is fair play)".
> Saying "there are no politics" seems like the same thing as "the status quo is the only possibility" - exactly the stagnation from which I want to move away on socials.
There are all kinds of projects and activities that can be discussed without touching upon the relations between people in society, let alone matters of governmental policy or the quest for power.
There is nothing at all "stagnant" about a community focused on such things. OP is about the Free Software Foundation; focusing on discussion of the software has nothing to do with politics, and is generally improved by consciously avoiding politics.
The mere fact of existence of other political possibilities does not necessitate discussing those possibilities at every opportunity.
Actually OP is about the Free Software Foundation Europe, an organization that empowers users to control technology.
A number of their campaigns have direct policy/political goals: Public Money Public Code, Device Neutrality, etc.
Basically this, yes.
I see one side engendering discussion and debate. The other side wants to shut discussion down.
People on either side find comfort in echo chambers, but definitely one more than the other.
Why does everybody I see complaining about modern Twitter say the exact phrase "Nobody should be on that platform."? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your point, just curious if there was some manifesto going around or if everybody suddenly started using the same phrase.
Is it just me or have people started using the same phrases more often and faster than before? Reminds me of when everybody started saying "God forbid" a few months ago.
I don't know about the phrase, but I share the sentiment. The owner is a racist promoting racist things. It's not a 'public square' because he controls the algorithm, so it'll never be a 'fair fight' for those who disagree with him.
Paying users are also explicitly given priority in the reply section, which naturally hands a megaphone to the type of user that is more willing to give money to Elon Musk and wear the "I gave money to Elon Musk" badge.
I did some searches for “nobody should be on that platform” and found:
- one hit on a Lana del Rey message board
- one bluesky post from 8 months ago with no likes, reposts, or replies.
If you widen the search to “should be on that platform” then you get more hits, but many are references to Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, TikTok etc. It seems that people are reaching for a noun that can refer to these social media properties that are not just “sites” and not just “apps.” It would appear that ”platform” is the word we’ve landed on.
I was more specifically referring to Reddit comments and the like, which I don't think are indexed by search engines.
The groupthink is real, and it's coming for a skull near you.
But in all seriousness I think it's a mix of bots on the dead internet leading the monkey see monkey do paradigm. If you see 80 out of 100 people doing a thing then you get swept up in the flood. Even if 50 of those 80 are bots.
We want X to exist to contain these people.
The same situation applies to League of Legends and their wonderfully toxic player base
It's a straightforward solution to the monopoly problem.
Can you find me some notable examples?
It's mostly been on comments on various Reddit posts over the last few months. I unfortunately don't have any examples saved. I'm not accusing anybody of anything, just personally curious and remarking on a pattern I've perceived and was wondering if it was just a "me" thing.
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
Like pareidolia humans are great at seeing patterns that don't exist. Nobody should on that platform is an extremely common phrase. So you'll probably hear it more than once. However that doesn't mean there is a conspiracy.
It's quite possible it isn't a pattern but I'd like to add I never implied (or meant to imply) a conspiracy.
It's a good idea to leave X, considering the values of the Free Software Foundation and how they don't exactly align with X's profit-driven model, and the spread of internet garbage.
I think either leaving a hostile platform or staying to promote ideas which run against it are reasonable choices. But what the article doesn't say is why they (as an organisation whose mission is to protect and promote free software) should choose to leave now, when from what I know, Twitter has always been a non-free, profit-driven network.
Actually the announcement is by the Free Software Foundation Europe, an organization that empowers users to control technology.
"We keep being active on some other proprietary platforms in order to reach a wider part of society, journalists, and decision makers."
Stallman would not be proud.
The only way to get attention on X is to announce you're leaving it. Well played, whoever you are.
Generally speaking, both using and not using X seem like reasonable choices for the FSFE, in my opinion. But deciding to leave it right now over changes in 'direction and climate' seems… odd.
The FSFE's mission, as I understand it, is to support and promote free software. But as far as I know, Twitter has never been a friend of free software, nor has it been supportive of other related values the article mentions, like 'privacy', 'transparency', 'autonomy', 'data protection', etc. It has always been a non-free, centralised network which cared about profit more than user rights, and engagement more than fostering civil discourse.
I don't see FSFE's presence on a platform as endorsement of its values, but rather as a way to leverage its popularity to better promote their mission. That hasn't changed; X is still a popular platform. It's attitude to Free Software and related ideas doesn't seem to have changed, either. So why leave now? I get 'misinformation, harassment, and hate speech' are never a good thing, but I don't recall the FSFE opposing them so vehemently before (more like just ignoring them), so why now, out of the blue? Unless there's been a change in their internal priorities, which they don't communicate, it doesn't really add up for me.
In the end, this just reads like them taking a political stance and trying to rationalise it in more neutral language. And I can understand and respect that decision, but the fuzzy phrasing still rubs me the wrong way.
It's really not that fuzzy.
> The FSFE's mission, as I understand it, is to support and promote free software. But as far as I know, Twitter has never been a friend of free software, nor has it been supportive of other related values the article mentions, like 'privacy', 'transparency', 'autonomy', 'data protection', etc. It has always been a non-free, centralised network which cared about profit more than user rights, and engagement more than fostering civil discourse.
Indeed, and FSFE writes:
> The platform never aligned with our values
> a space we were never comfortable joining, yet one that was once important for reaching members of society who were not active in our preferred spaces for interaction
And then says in no unclear terms what changed:
> Since Elon Musk acquired the social network [...] the FSFE has been closely monitoring the developments of this proprietary platform
> Over time, it has become increasingly hostile, with misinformation, harassment, and hate speech more visible than ever.
> an algorithm that prioritises hatred, polarisation, and sensationalism, alongside growing privacy and data protection concerns, has led us to the decision to part ways with this platform.
You cherry-picked two words "direction and climate" from the article and criticised them for taking an ambiguous political stance, but there is nothing ambiguous about the actual announcement and they clarify their exact motivation for leaving multiple times.
The problem is that 'what changed' is hardly related to why they joined Twitter in the first place. Becoming 'increasingly hostile' and prioritising 'hatred, polarisation, and sensationalism' (more than before) doesn't really contradict or prevent you from 'reaching members of society who were not active in [y]our preferred spaces for interaction'. Like I wrote, X is still popular, there are still people you can communicate with about your mission. The original logical (and given) reason for being on X is still just as valid.
And I didn't criticise them for taking an ambiguous stance. On the contrary, I remarked they seem to be taking a rather unambiguous political stance (one opposed to that of X's new leadership). What I criticised was their not being upfront about this and instead giving explanations which don't really add up for me (for reasons restated above).
I quoted only short parts to avoid making my comment appear twice as long, but please let me know if you found the way I did so to be misleading in some way.
> The problem is that 'what changed' is hardly related to why they joined Twitter in the first place.
Does it have to be? The original calculus was "unpleasantness of using unfree software vs. benefit of reaching more people". The calculus has changed to "unpleasantness of using unfree software + unpleasantness of encountering hate speech vs. benefit of reaching more people". In other words, what used to be "1 + -1 = 0" has become "1 + -2 = -1" for the FSFE. As humans, they are free to consider other reasons than their primary mission alone when determining whether the platform is still one they find to be worthwhile to use.
> What I criticised was their not being upfront about this
I really don't get how your impression is that they are not upfront about this, and yes, I found your comment to have been quite misleading, having skimmed the comments before reading the article. The very first sentence in the article starts with "Since Elon Musk...". What part of this would you have liked them to be more upfront about?
> Does it have to be?
Sort of? For an individual, there's obviously a ton of personal factors that play a role in decision-making. For an organisation with a stated mission, though, I should expect them to make their decisions based on what best aligns with said mission, or another set of priorities they're bound to follow. This is important for knowing if one should support the organisation and if their values are aligned. How can one trust an organisation which only ever claims to fight for Y, but then in practice randomly throws Z, W, and U into the mix, as they feel like it?
As I wrote, the content they criticise X for is the kind of content I recall them being much more indifferent about in the past, so seeing this come up as their main reason for leaving this platform, with no indication of any internal re-evaluation of priorities having happened, is rather out of the blue.
> The very first sentence in the article starts with "Since Elon Musk..."
… and goes on to tell us they have been monitoring it; found it increasingly hostile; that they originally joined to interact with people, promote free software and alternative networks; that the platform feeds hatred, polarisation and sensationalism and grows privacy concerns; and finally that they're leaving.
> What part of this would you have liked them to be more upfront about?
What they suddenly have a problem with and why. As I said, what they actually wrote doesn't add up to this for me. Hostile environment, misinformation, harassment? They didn't seem to care much or see it as hindering their mission before. Hatred, polarisation, sensationalism? Same thing, and it doesn't necessarily hinder their activity on the network. Data protection, privacy concerns? The network has always been non-free, for-profit and centralised. Interacting with people and promoting free software? You literally can still do that.
They say why they originally came, but those reasons are still valid today. They say what they dislike about their platform, but it's either irrelevant to their mission or they haven't disliked it so much before. So what they say does not explain their decision. It doesn't explain the logic behind it. Trying to use it as an explanation doesn't really make sense with their supposed mission.
I can only guess the actual logic is more like 'we have other values we care about more now, which the platform now goes against, and in our current political climate we want to more noticeably stand at the "right side" and gain favour with our primary audience over there'. This, for example, could be a sensible explanation. But they chose not to give one.
That's a lot of words with not a lot of substance. I suppose their whole identity is announcing that they're superior to other people and branching off, while asking for money for what looks like mostly sending people to talk at events (which are probably mostly more fundraising).
> "In the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation[sic] in which Richard Stallman has a leading position."
I do wish more people would try to fix things from the inside, and I get there's a point where it's no longer possible, but in this case it sounds like they didn't like people calling them out on X and had no way to control the narrative. What other gain would there be for a group trying to spread information in as many channels as possible?
Who knew that an ideologically-oriented organization would have morals and values, and that they wouldn't be aligned with Leon? Maybe they should've just sold out to AI, then they'd get a ticker tape parade.
From what I saw, their page has a lot of writing and no data on successes. I think that sums it up. They sold out to Pride instead of Greed.
I'm not sure why this affects you so much.
I guess I got nerd sniped. I don't really enjoy replying to all the comments, but it is what I'm advocating for so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The pull quote doesn't appear in the linked article. What is it from?
edit: https://fsfe.org/about/fsfnetwork.html
What strategies could FSF employ to "fix things from the inside" on Twitter?
Talk openly and transparently with whomever is not aligning with their ideals. They used to call it discussion.
What if the problem they were facing on Twitter was that others weren't doing their part in the open and transparent discussion?
How would it not be open and transparent on twitter? It's a site where everyone can see what they are talking about. It's only when they try to limit to whom and where they talk to people that they are not open and transparent.
> How would it not be open and transparent on twitter?
Lying. Trolling. Bullshitting. Stonewalling.
> It's only when they try to limit to whom and where they talk to people that they are not open and transparent.
I don't need to talk to you or use your favored public platform for my published material to be open and transparent on some other public platform.
> Lying. Trolling. Bullshitting. Stonewalling.
What do these have to do with open and transparent communication?
> I don't need to talk to you or use your favored public platform for my published material to be open and transparent on some other public platform.
Very true, but limiting the platforms limits the openness and transparency. With some simple software you can post to all with almost no effort. Seems weird to disclude one just to write a blog post about it for attention.
> What do these have to do with open and transparent communication?
If I'm lying to you, I'm being neither open nor transparent, by definition.
> Very true, but limiting the platforms limits the openness and transparency.
It only limits the audience who will see it incidentally. Anyone who's looking for it can still find it.
> With some simple software you can post to all with almost no effort.
I rather suspect that they are avoiding the platform for reasons other than the effort it takes to simply create a post. This seems moot in context.
lol
imagine thinking you can discuss a hopped up ket-head into "aligning with your ideals".
it's the town square- it's not about the two people talking but for everyone reading what they said instead of controlling the narrative by only speaking to people you want in places you want. They don't even have to answer to everyone, so the only benefit of losing access to thousands/millions of people is to make an article like this for Pride.
Good on them. It always feels like " But other than that, Mrs Lincoln enjoyed the play" watching people rationalize why they are still on Twitter or use Grok
why would anyone need to rationalize it? they're still two of the best platforms in their respective silos. most people don't care about drama and virtue signaling
Only one rationalization is need- Musk is evil. If you are still using Twitter, as far as I am concerned, you in league with him. You might as well just put on a MAGA hat.
The best time to leave Twitter was when Elon made it a yahtzee pron site. The next best time is now. Kudos to the FSFE, it's never too late to do the right thing.
What's a "yahtzee pron site"?
certain words get filtered out by the algorithms. "yahtzee" translates to "Those snappily dressed German fascists during WWII". "pron" translates to "sexually explicit material". So if you don't want your posts flagged, you have to use code words.
So it’s a dog whistle?
I see more hate and misinformation on Mastodon than I see on X. Here is a very mild one:
[edit: link removed; I don't want to promote that guy but to give the gist he was saying that people who believe in free speech are trash, targeting X users with hate. Mastodon is absolutely saturated with this.]
Most of the criticism I see of X seems completely made up out of malice or is regurgitation of things other poorly informed or resentful people have said.
The supposed FSF in Europe should post links to the sections of the open source algorithm they claim to be criticizing, and show us their PR.
My criticism of X is primarily rooted in 2 things: the massive degradation of my experience using the platform and a distrust that Musk wouldn't use the platform to manipulate public opinion to achieve political goals.
On the first point the simplest thing is I used to report people who use overt slurs or anti-semitic language. When Musk took over it started taking months for them to follow up and the response was simply to lock the account until they deleted the offending tweet. Eventually when I would report those people X just switched to saying they weren't breaking the rules. Now the replies of tons of seemingly normal posts that get lots of visibility are full of vile people trying to derail conversation with racism or anti-semitism.
Another big problem is the way that blue-check accounts are boosted has incentivized every account to act like click-bait all the time. Whenever a post gets semi-viral the blue-check replies are artificially lifted to the top and most of them are totally worthless because the commenters are just trying to 'grab space' so people click their profile and follow them. It used to be that if big accounts posted something interesting you might see a bunch of interesting follow up replies. Now it's spammers at the top and then racists / crazies mixed in with more thoughtful replies if you scroll down a few pages past the blue-checks. It used to be that the algorithmic feed would surface me all sorts of interesting and novel work from people across the tech world but now there's a whole category of people trying to make every single Tweet viral enough to get payouts.
And then there's Musk himself. He's ordered the algorithm to be manipulated to boost himself more. He's clearly expressed discontent when the algorithm doesn't work the way he wants, he's meddled heavily in the platform's AI bot to make it say things Musk prefers, and he's been rather unscrupulous chasing his political goals. I think it's not unlikely he'd use the platform to guide public opinion, perhaps even using AI to do it discretely and intelligently. I view that as a significant risk.
So the platform has gone from something that's highly useful to me, and a place I greatly enjoyed, to something that more often than not wastes my time and exposes me to people that disturb me. And on top of all that I think contributing to the platform may empower someone who I deeply distrust to manipulate public opinion towards their political goals.
> he was saying that people who believe in free speech are trash, targeting X users with hate.
That’s not hate speech.
You sound like Michael from the office!
The GP didn't say it was hate speech. Said it was hate. And calling someone trash... yeah, I think that fits within my definition of hate.
If you still have a twitter account, you really ought to be ashamed. There's no longer any excuses.
What should anyone with an X account be ashamed of, exactly?
Because you are putting more money in the pocket of Musk.
I don't have an opinion of Elon Musk. What would you say to those who think he's a value-add to the world, or are completely neutral about them (as I am)?
Do you really think your values are that pervasive, even here in HN (which tends towards an echo chamber)?
Yes. We all know that he is an untrustworthy, spoiled man-child with daddy issues so deep, that even the whole world is not enough. He is a fascist and an anchor around the neck of the entire world. In a more just world, he would be loaded onto one of his rockets and launched into the Phantom Zone.
The only one's who can't see this are so hopelessly deluded, they cannot be reasoned with.
Go ask MechaHitler.
Who?
and nothing of value was lost
I hate how announcements etc from gvt officials, public entities etc started getting announced on X, Fb or social media in general ?
what happened to the official blob & official press releases ? these things are a solved problem (wordpress etc, if you wanna subscribe use RSS)
I don’t really like the political nature of these decisions. It feels like political people often take over groups and institutions to implement their own political agendas through such policies.
On the other hand, Twitter/X has a problem of spam. I don’t even think it’s bots but actual humans. You see low effort and racist comments all over the place, poisoning the conversations. And it’s not just on political posts. If you’re Chinese or African or Indian, there will be vile comments spamming your posts.
Such a space isn’t welcoming to many people and I think groups like FSFE have legitimate reasons to want to avoid exposing their members to this stuff. It’s a hostile environment.
Bad idea.
Love it or hate it, Twitter (yeah, I choose to be stubborn here) is still probably overwhelmingly the most impactful platform in this way.
While I respect the idea of the "boycott" in the abstract, perhaps the most wrong thing people think about it is "Because it's controlled by so-and-so, everyone who uses it is brainwashed and it's impossible to do good there."
Nope. Look, a lot of good people are still there. I personally also wish they would all leave and we all go elsewhere -- but that's not the present reality.
As such, people who insist that you must leave and no good can happen through staying ring the same to me as "IF SO AND SO GETS ELECTED IM LEAVING THE COUNTRY."
I don’t think leaving a platform you don’t enjoy has much, if anything, in common with physically relocating. I left X, but I have an account i use to log in about once a week to see if there’s anything worth while. I haven’t really found an alternative to X, things are fragmented now. Where I used to be able to follow most people I were interested in on Twitter, i now have some on bluesky, some on mastodon, some still on X, a bunch at instagram and YouTube… it’s a mess
The parallel I'm drawing here is that a lot of people threaten that when they don't really mean it, and more specifically, don't seem to think about why others don't.
I still have people there, so I will stick around.
Wasn't it supposed as a feature of mastodon when people are on different servers and you can integrate them email style?
I don't understand people who have the opinion that twitter is indispensable for them. I never had a twitter account and I only see tweets if they are posted on some news site or whatever. I don't feel uninformed. I don't feel like I am missing any critical information. I don't see any value in it.
> don't understand people who have the opinion that twitter is indispensable
Not on X. But if you’re a public figure, it sort of is. You don’t need to post anything. But you’re going to be affected by what happens there.
Thank you. Hey, I 100% respect anyones individual decision about the place FOR THEMSELVES.
But a lot of people become absolutely insufferable when they try to dictate why this should be the case for someone else, I absolutely hate the framing of "indispensable" which I never said.
You don't find value, fine! I do. Let's actually talk about why I do if you like.
Pretending you’re going to emigrate from your home country is not similar to actually logging off from a website you hate.
Never used twitter. Never found that to be a problem or limitation in any way. Now it's owned by Musk, it's even less attractive a prospect.
Speaking as someone who recently left the country (if by "the country" you mean the USA) ...
And that's fine if that's what YOU WANT TO DO. I respect that.
The insufferables are those who are trying to dictate what I should do.
Every click on Twitter puts a penny in musks pocket. If that is not enough reason to leave, nothing ever will be.
Reductio ad absurdum
> Nope. Look, a lot of good people are still there. I personally also wish they would all leave and we all go elsewhere -- but that's not the present reality.
be the change you want to see
I am!
That's the other part of this that makes these naysayers insufferable; you can use more than one.
My twitter handle literally has my mastodon handle IN IT.
You wish all leave, leave
Nah, fuck that. If Stormfront had half a billion daily users that doesn't somehow compel you to participate; anyone willing to stay on Twitter isn't worth talking to even if they are personally nice to you.
Stormfront users wouldn't have really been relevant for the FSF. But on a platform like Twitter, which isn't mono-subject like the Stormfront forums, would have been relevant for an organization like FSF.
And personally the few people I follow there (mostly game devs) are totally worth talking to.
Be serious.
Stormfront is not like Twitter.
I want something that seems so very simple:
* A web-of-trust social media, where I can instantly see, about any account, all of the chains of separation between us, in order to verify and validate the humanity and social connection of another person.
Presently, twitter (and even moreso, reddit) are just so overrun by bots whose job seems to be to muddy all waters with short-shrift, low-effort takes, but expressed in way more words than are necessary.
I don't mind (in fact, I love) long-form posts like were common in the old reddit, but that are thoughtful and perhaps radical (in the same of addressing the root of the subject). Today's reddit is almost as bad as twitter. I'm kinda ready to get off both of them, but I'd like to still have daily engagement on topics that challenge me / my worldviews.
Note the word "Europe":
> In the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation in which Richard Stallman has a leading position
https://fsfe.org/about/fsfnetwork.html
These guys are entitled to use or avoid any social media platform they want. I'm entitled, as well, to judge them for putting purity tests in unrelated domains above their commitment to free software and thereby rendering themselves ineffective in their primary mission.
Irrelevance is their choice.
That said, there's a transparency consideration. Doesn't Europe have laws about charities having to use donor funds to advance the ostensible purpose of the charity?
Matthias Kirschner is FSFE president and a full time employee. Do FSFE's donors know the FSFE is making itself less effective towards its mission of promoting free software by avoiding people who the FSFE leadership team dislike for reasons unrelated to free software? If they want to do this stuff, they should put it in their charter.
If you ever run a large organization you will quickly find there are lots of people you are unable to cooperate with for reasons unrelated to your organization's primary mission. Especially in a nonprofit, the primary thing for being effective in your mission is having people who want to work together, if you have people who can't stand each other you're not going to be effective.
That is not true. The libertarian free-speech FSF(E) was way more effective in 2000 than it is now.
All these organizations have been infiltrated by career bureaucrats who have their pet political wedge issues and bite away everyone else. Of course they are silent on the really big issues. They would ban Stallman but not go after Epstein's real friends.
And that is in a nutshell how these political pseudo movements differ from the real political movements at the end of the sixties. At that time they were not afraid of going after the big guys.
I don't see how they would be any more transparent about it.
What is X?
The new name for Twitter, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Since_2022
Except now the just have less reach? I didn't follow them, so perhaps they had 10 followers and no reach to begin with, but this seems foolish if you have a mission you care about.
Exactly, seems like the people on X are exactly the people whose minds they should be trying to change.
I found myself wondering the same thing. Do they genuinely expect people who have never heard about FSFE to be using a decentralized social platform? That sounds scary. Normal people don't use scary sounding things.
They're certainly welcome to do whatever they think is right, and it sounds more "on brand" for them, but it seems ridiculous to say something like "[Using Twitter was] important for reaching members of society who were not active in our preferred spaces for interaction." but then end with "Follow the FSFE on Mastodon and Peertube!" I am very tech literate and I've never even heard of Peertube. There is very little chance they are ever going to reach even a single set of ears this way.
At that point, they might as well just send random fliers in the mail to strangers.
I would say that I hate this, but I actually don't know what good it does to be a political organization actively engaging on social media anymore. There are too many paid mercenaries with expensive automation who will disrupt whatever you do.
But what are they going to do instead, nothing? Killing yourself in protest makes it really easy on your enemies (and aren't the only enemies of Free Software the people who want to sell closed devices?). Do what you do, don't feel like you have to control all the responses to what you do, or that they are hurting you. Your engagement with the public is independent of any reaction to you. You have total control over it. In this case, it looks like you're choosing to withdraw into a closet and only speak to your friends.
All that being said, twitter/X, both pre-Musk and post-Musk, sabotaged and sabotages reach based on opinionated, political, and profit-driven algorithms. People don't even see you. If your reach numbers were crap, you might as well not waste the effort. But I actually don't know what the effort is to fire and forget links to your press releases and current campaigns that you've doubtlessly posted other places. Seems almost zero.
My fear is that this is being pushed by people who are simply taking advantage of their power in an organization to push their own personal grievances. Free Software should only care about Elon Musk and Twitter to the extent that it is not Free Software. If you've moved into the "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" place, you've lost the plot.
I'm also getting a bit sick of Europeans stepping out of conversations because they aren't censored enough, even if the algorithm is definitely promoting the worst for engagement. It's scary. Europe has a comically bad history with this.
edit: and even the mention of "misinformation" is a red flag. I don't want a FSF that is a "misinformation" and hate speech monitor. I want a FSF that neonazis and climate skeptics feel free to join if they think that software should be Free.
Ok, now how about a GPL-4 that forbids "AI" training?
FSFE stooges downvote because they do not want to be reminded of their real mission. Interesting.
> What initially intended to be a place for dialogue and information exchange has turned into a centralised arena of hostility, misinformation, and profit-driven control, far removed from the ideals of freedom we stand for.
Always has been.
The issue is the new algorithm I think. It's the same on thread. You're more likely to get a view by responding to outrage bait than by promoting your own work, while before it was 50/50: responding to bait was great to reach a new audience, but for people who already followed you, you could still reach them by posting 'normally'.
Do you follow any content creator anywhere? Before 2019, you basically _had_ to be on Twitter to follow updates. Then the media diversified, but by 2023, even people still on X will rather use discord to have update on content creator they follow (or, weirdly, Instagram it seems? At least my favourite vulgarisation content creator seems to think so)
It got more deliberately manipulative with pushing a right wing agenda.
It became more obviously manipulative when it started pushing a right wing agenda.
There are plenty of people who love FOSS and terminally on X. Yes they are crazy, paranoid and racist but thats cutting off one of your key markets lol
Well then it's a good thing the FSFE isn't selling commodities on the "market"
Perhaps, but of all people, FOSS devotees should know why Twitter needs to die. The fact that so many people remain on the platform is disheartening to say the least. How bad does it have to get before you refuse to take part?
You can either be a leader or a follower.