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The EFF is and has always been a political activist organization. Of course they care about ideological concerns.
by Legend2440 6mo ago
The 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.
- slg 6mo agoI can't definitively give you a top three and honestly don't see any value in ranking them like that. I would simply describe them as the ACLU for technology and the Internet in that they fight for general civil liberties. X and more specifically Elon Musk have shown that they are on the opposite side when it comes to many of those civil liberties even if they all agree on some other issues. Online censorship (both explicit and through algorithmic bias) is the most obvious example that bridges your two distinct groups. Musk might claim he agrees with the EFF on that, but through his and X's actions, it's clear he doesn't.
- smaudet 6mo agoIt's an association fallacy - Musk may be a radical extremist on the right, and a technology mogul, you may find yourself aligning with some of his world views (not all of them, remember he is an extremist relative to yourself). So when people support EFF's technological goals (freedoms for users on technology platforms), if they are themselves possibly on the right, they project their own values onto the organization or system (which here is the EFF). Never-mind if some of those values are incompatible with the values you think you hold (being authoritarian generally is incompatible with being not being authoritarian about technology). When someone points out the (otherwise obvious) contradiction to you, you're surprised that your set of values is incongruous. Now this can happen to anyone coming from any political starting point, they agree with something but find it doesn't quite fit with their world views. If you are deeply religious about it, you tend to hold on for dear life and either decide to "pick" on set of values over another (suddenly you realize, actually, yes you would like to enslave everyone) or engage in some form of hypocrisy or another (authoritarians are good, but for some reason or the other I'm going to make an exception for technology).
- Brendinooo 6mo agoI dunno. My understanding of coalition building is "we disagree about a bunch of stuff, but we agree on this one thing, so let's work together on it". You seem to be saying: "if you disagree with me on the other stuff, your agreement on this thing is rooted in a contradictory value system you haven't fully examined". Is that correct?
- smaudet 6mo agoNot exactly. Values have a hierarchy. You can't (effectively) agree to painting everything the color blue, if you can't agree what the color blue is. And you will run into a very similar issue when everyone starts objecting to the pink you have spread everywhere, despite supposedly agreeing to the color scheme.
- dvt 6mo ago> Not exactly. But then you go on to describe exactly what @Brendinooo described, just under the guise of your system of "value hierarchy." The problem is that you can always default to "our values are hierarchically misaligned" and then never have to do any coalition building ever. So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you can't.
- genxy 6mo ago[flagged]
- zahlman 6mo agoWhatever you're trying to imply here, it's a personal attack that does not contribute to the discourse.
- genxy 6mo agoThe OP is coyling spraying half baked questions across discussion in an effort to do who knows what. It is an attack on the delivery, not the person.
- zahlman 6mo agoNo, nothing of the sort is happening. There is no reason to assume bad faith in those questions. The questions are not "half-baked". I make such dismissals because if I merely expressed doubt, it appears that you would make the same accusations against me. The burden of proof is on you; what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence; etc.
- Brendinooo 6mo agoJust noting that I saw this, but I don't really see a point in replying outside of this comment at this time because I don't feel the need to prove myself to you, and I don't know how I could change what I'm writing to satisfy you personally anyways. Have a nice evening!
- zahlman 6mo ago> 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. I think that is why, yes. I also think the differences are really obvious, and I genuinely can't understand why so many people here can't see that.
- Brendinooo 6mo agoThis might be the most interesting insight I gained by commenting here today. I expected people to be on board with it; I didn't expect people to be so acclimated to it that they don't even see how others might notice it.
- rexpop 6mo agoOnboard with what? Acclimatized to what? You reactionary types are always so damn cryptic and vague.
- Brendinooo 6mo agoI suspect you're not asking these questions earnestly, given that you then pivot to calling me a "reactionary type".
- rexpop 6mo agoI'm asking them earnestly!! Why wouldn't I both ask and express frustration?? Insufferable.
- Brendinooo 6mo agoWhy did you call me a "reactionary type"? I can understand frustration at me being "cryptic and vague" - and that's something I could answer for you! But it seems like you already have an answer to that question, you have made a judgment about my values, and are now calling me insufferable. I asked you a question in this comment - and I wouldn't mind an answer, which is why I'm not tacking on a "you people" comment or some kind of insult, because I think that would make it less likely that I get one.
- account42 6mo agoThen you are doing yourself a disservice by alienating people that agree with you on important issues but disagree with you on others.
- r-w 6mo agoWhy would you say "this statement shows XYZ" if you didn't believe XYZ was a new piece of information?
- Brendinooo 6mo agoMy original comment did not claim that they were not ideological and it did not claim that that they do not do political activism, so a reply of "[o]f course they care about ideological concerns" makes no sense to me.
- beepbooptheory 6mo agoYou said the "statement pretty clearly shows that they have certain ideological concerns..." like you were uncovering some hidden truth or gotcha in between the lines here. Was that not what you intended to write? And then like what is the point of your original comment if you agree that what you could only deduce earlier is now an obvious truism?
- danadam 6mo agoIIUC, "clearly shows" doesn't apply to "they have certain concerns" but rather to the part that you replaced with "...". In other words "the statement clearly shows that they value [their certain concerns] more highly than the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about"
- gred 6mo agoHe's saying that they have ideological concerns beyond the ideological concerns you would tend to associate with the EFF (digital privacy, open source, patent trolling, etc). I for one am sad to see that this is the case. There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.
- baggachipz 6mo ago[flagged]
- gred 6mo ago> they have been silenced by the platform Where do you see that? All I see is a claim that it no longer makes sense from a financial standpoint (but no comparative numbers provided for the other platforms they are keeping, which is sus, especially given their presence on very niche platforms like Bluesky), and vague justifications based on identity politics and "community care" loci, which is either nonsense or deep argot unsuitable for the intended audience.
- mayneack 6mo agoBluesky might have be niche in terms of users but it's an open platform like activity pub so it's at least quite aligned with the EFF mission.
- baggachipz 6mo ago> Where do you see that? Assuming that Twitter's user count has remained relatively steady (within 100% either way), the only thing that could explain a huge drop in views would be a change to their opaque algorithm. > To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago. Twitter's user count has trended upward for the last 10 years: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ Therefore, Twitter must be downranking or silencing the EFF's account. Unless you have a better explanation?
- 6mo ago
- indoordin0saur 6mo agoThose concerns have evolved away from their original mission. Not an unusual situation for organizations like this as a they shrink and lose relevance.
- archagon 6mo agoWhat makes you think they are shrinking and losing relevance, other than feels?
- boznz 6mo agoIt's just logic. Unless their twitter audience all create accounts on these other platforms, then by default the EFF have both shrunk their influence and lost relevance.
- manwds 6mo agoTheir post is a good start. The 'numbers' argument is just a facade to leave X because they don't like Elon.
- Arubis 6mo agoMy sibling in sin, I have an EFF tee from about 2001-2002 that reads, in boldface, “FREE SPEECH HAS A POSSE”. They have always been broadly political.
- zahlman 6mo agoThis does not address the substance of the comment you are replying to. In fact, that comment was itself replying to a comment making the same argument you are making, explicitly explaining why it is non-sequitur.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- poisonarena 6mo ago[flagged]
- 0ckpuppet 6mo agojust not twitter censorship
- gulfofamerica 6mo ago[dead]