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That statement pretty clearly shows that they have certain ideological concerns that they value more highly than the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF prim
by Brendinooo 6mo ago
That statement pretty clearly shows that they have certain ideological concerns that they value more highly than the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about (digital privacy, open source, patent trolling, etc).
Through that lens, I guess it makes sense that they see TikTok, Instagram, and BlueSky as worth their time and presence but not X.
- bakugo 6mo agoAgreed. The fact that their Threads account[0] is still active (remember that site? yeah, me neither, I had forgotten it existed until I saw it linked on eff.org's socials page) makes it clear that the opening statement about "the numbers not working out" is deceptive. You have to scroll down a bit further to find their real reason for preferring those sites: > people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day [0] https://www.threads.com/@efforg https://www.threads.com/@efforg
- matt-attack 6mo ago[flagged]
- MidnightRider39 6mo agoI don’t even see them using that phrase in the linked thread? What’s wrong with it anyway?
- satvikpendem 6mo agoI don't see it either, funny how people had a knee jerk reaction without even visiting the thread and validating that the phrase even exists. Maybe it's even further down but without logging in I can't see it.
- throwawaypath 6mo agoThat quote is in the linked EFF statement, which you clearly didn't read.
- satvikpendem 6mo agoTrue, I was looking at the linked thread as mentioned not the article.
- pixl97 6mo agoRemind me again what the Q in LGBTQ stands for?
- mrguyorama 6mo agoHow is the EFF charter incompatible with saying "Queer folks"? What are you even saying with this criticism? Do you think queer folks were never going to come up in "Digital rights"?
- lux-lux-lux 6mo agoYou’re a little behind the times, mate. Threads has more daily active users than X and is growing quickly vs. the latter’s cratering usage rates. Demographics trend younger, too.
- satvikpendem 6mo agoDAU for Threads is misleading, Meta seems to count impressions in Instagram where Threads sections sometimes show up. I personally know no one who uses Threads.
- lux-lux-lux 6mo ago> I personally know no one who uses Threads Real ‘I don’t know anyone who voted for Nixon’ energy here.
- satvikpendem 6mo agoThat's why I didn't start off with that statement lest I be accused of anecdata which is fair. But it's true in my case. How many do you know that use Threads, especially on a regular basis?
- theshackleford 6mo ago> I personally know no one who uses Threads. I don’t know literally anyone using twitter and yet obviously people do. Perhaps what the individuals we know are doing are in fact reflective of not very much.
- bakugo 6mo agoSorry but no. I don't care what inflated numbers Meta brags about after redirecting random people from Instagram and counting that as an "active user", Threads is so utterly irrelevant that I literally forget it exists for months at a time because nobody talks about it. Even here on HN, searching for links to threads.com in comments from the past year yields a mere 53 results. For comparison, searching for xcancel.com, an unofficial frontend for x.com that allows logged out users to view replies, yields 795 results.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- mghackerlady 6mo agofreedom is intersectional. it's hard to fight for freedom while supporting those that actively limit the freedom of others, especially when the amount of impressions are no longer worth doing it for
- nailer 6mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 6mo ago> You don’t have a freedom to make anyone else agree with or believe in your views… No one has asserted this. If your views suck, people have the freedom to say "ok, bye". (Musk asserts otherwise, of course. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/01/nx-s1-5283271/elon-musk-lawsuit-advertisers-boycott-new https://www.npr.org/2025/02/01/nx-s1-5283271/elon-musk-lawsu...)
- greenavocado 6mo ago[flagged]
- nailer 6mo ago[flagged]
- 6mo ago
- tikhonj 6mo agoAh yes, a non-profit reaching out to a broader audience for its activism is clearly a "certain ideological concern" separate from their core mission.
- bradyd 6mo agoThis is the exact opposite of reaching out to a broader audience.
- oulipo2 6mo ago[flagged]
- nailer 6mo agoCheck out the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, they support anonymity, privacy and free expression: https://www.fire.org/ https://www.fire.org/
- panarky 6mo agoWhere did you read that in their post? Because what I read is that their X posts are getting only 3% of the engagement compared to pre-Musk Twitter. The post insinuates that's because the platform intentionally down-ranks posts for ideological purposes.
- Brendinooo 6mo agoWhere you do you see this insinuation being made? I don't see anything like that.
- onetimeusename 6mo ago> Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.
- pirate787 6mo ago[flagged]
- Legend2440 6mo agoThe EFF is and has always been a political activist organization. Of course they care about ideological concerns.
- Brendinooo 6mo agoWhere in my comment did I claim otherwise?
- slg 6mo agoYou discussed two distinct groups: "certain ideological concerns" and "the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about". I think you're getting this type of response because many of us can't see any actual difference between those two groups besides your own politics and assumptions.
- Brendinooo 6mo agoYou might be right; I don't know what the broad populace thinks of what EFF does. I'll ask you then: What are the three main areas of advocacy where you think the EFF has been the most visible and/or effective?
- jeffbee 6mo agoEFF has basically only succeeded in defending Section 230, which makes me wonder if the people who talk in this article and the people elsewhere on HN denouncing Section 230 know about each other.
- Terr_ 6mo agoThere's been a lot of misinformation around section 230 in the last several years. This might be helpful, either as something to give out or to receive, depending. https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre... Granted, it's from 2020, so there may be updated versions by now.
- UncleMeat 6mo agoThey also mention that tweets today get far less engagement than they once did.
- nostrademons 6mo agoI had the opposite impression, that this decision was primarily economic in nature. People (or at least the sort of people interested in the EFF) simply aren't on X/Twitter anymore, and so it's not worth posting there.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- conradfr 6mo agoBut what is the cost of posting on X? Why do they even have a blue tick?
- jjk166 6mo agoMore than the cost of not posting on X.
- solid_fuel 6mo agoIt lends legitimacy to a declining site controlled by a white supremacist and filled with more neo-nazi’s by the day. The fewer legitimate organizations posting on twitter, drawing eyes and views to the site, the better.
- stale2002 6mo agoIts a bit silly to say that they are declining. For its specific niche (mass short form/viral content) there simply aren't any relevant competitors that even come close.
- eduction 6mo ago[flagged]
- dingdingdang 6mo agoIt's sad that they have gone political whereas their goal should, in my optics, be almost technocratically in favour of their own stated goals of "protecting user privacy from government/corporate surveillance, defending free speech online, enforcing net neutrality, promoting encryption, and combating abusive intellectual property laws".
- traderj0e 6mo ago[flagged]
- jimmar 6mo agoSo just talk to the people who you think already agree with you?
- traderj0e 6mo agoI guess? Washington Post and others were doing this for a while. As insane as it was for a "neutral" news source to officially endorse political candidates, it was earning them subscribers. And Fox News didn't do this officially, but it was obvious. If you want to give EFF more credit, maybe they figured at least they can reach people on TikTok who don't already agree but don't already disagree, while Twitter was just flaming.
- archagon 6mo agoHow is it insane for a news source to endorse political candidates? This has been a routine function of newspapers for over a century.
- traderj0e 6mo ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 6mo ago[flagged]
- traderj0e 6mo ago[flagged]
- 6mo ago
- lynndotpy 6mo agoI didn't see that in the post. The thesis is pretty clear and aligned with EFF as a non-profit that has to allocate resources strategically: > To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago. and > Our presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok is not an endorsement. We've spent years exposing how these platforms suppress marginalized voices, enable invasive behavioral advertising, and flag posts about abortion as dangerous. We’ve also taken action in court, in legislatures, and through direct engagement with their staff to push them to change poor policies and practices. It's pretty clear that all these platforms have various problems within EFF's purview, but the difference with X is that they're not getting value from using it.
- nicce 6mo agoThey would also leave TikTok and Instagram as well if it would be pure ideological reasoning.
- rc_kas 6mo ago[flagged]
- pepperoni_pizza 6mo agoNot that I know of. But if you look at how TikTok and Meta impacted our society, you could argue they did worse.
- zahlman 6mo agoWhat do you mean by "also"?
- conradfr 6mo agoYes to be honest the "But You're Still on Facebook and TikTok?" part is not really convincing. It's like they dislike Musk but miss the boat to quit for just this reason. On the other hand I don't think have ever seen their posts on X, I mostly hear about them via their mailing list.
- solid_fuel 6mo ago[flagged]
- bpt3 6mo agoAnd how does picking and choosing which social media platforms they blast content onto fight fascism? Are Tiktok and Facebook leadership known for their antifascist stances?
- p_j_w 6mo agoEncouraging people to use X drives money into the hands of fascists.
- hakrgrl 6mo agoTwitter, before Elon, was the company that literally banned your account for sharing the hunter Biden laptop story. That story was purported to be a "conspiracy theory" but was actually true. And people were locked out of their account for sharing it. That is true fascism.
- solid_fuel 6mo ago[flagged]
- hakrgrl 6mo ago[flagged]
- tbrownaw 6mo agoIt's from Latin for a bundle of sticks. Everything - government, companies, social clubs, etc - unified as elements of one cohesive State, all directed towards one shared goal. It's not about being past some position on the badness meter, it's about how things are shaped.
- bpt3 6mo ago
- i_love_retros 6mo ago[flagged]
- janalsncm 6mo agoWould you mind spelling it out for people like me, generally aware of the EFF but haven’t been following it too closely? What ideological concerns are they focused on? Imo wanting digital privacy has always been ideological, and to the extent it has ever been part of a culture war they seem to have lost that war.
- poszlem 6mo agoAnother victim of the long march through the institutions.