[helaoban]

>Our presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok is not an endorsement [...] We stay because the people on those platforms deserve access to information, too. We stay because some of our most-read posts are the ones criticizing the very platform we're posting on. We stay because the fewer steps between you and the resources you need to protect yourself, the better.

Does this not apply to X users?

[spopejoy]

The story behind the numbers they present clearly demonstrates that X is censoring/shadowbanning them. Going from 600MM to 13MM impressions/yr -- losing 98% of their impressions! -- is no accident but clearly Musk's thumb on the scale.

Imagine what this means if you are trying to gauge impact of a post. Remember, X is giving them zero information about who they're preventing from seeing it. Impressions is the main datapoint so if you can't figure out why you've lost 98% of your impact, how on earth are you going to evaluate it vs other platforms?

And yes, each platform has a cost. There's a LOT more to social strategy than just "copy and paste this announce to every platform".

[nradov]

Is censorship the only possible explanation for the drop in impressions? Presumably the vast majority of impressions before were from bots.

[theshrike79]

"From bots" =)

The only thing Elmo managed to do was block legitimate and fun bots posting silly stuff.

The actual pretending-to-be-humans bots / professional trolls that argue for any viewpoint they get paid to endorse are still there in full force. They even pay the fee for the checkmark.

[cbsmith]

It sort of doesn't matter. Bottom line is it isn't an effective platform for them.

[ngc248]

What does it take to characterize legit users also as bots

[scarab92]

They still get more engagement on X than on Bluesky.

Also, cross positing the same content on multiple platforms isn’t time consuming.

This is clearly EFF violating their stated commitment to political neutrality, and providing only a superficial and easily discredited rationale for cover.

[conception]

Do we have to be politically neutral to the abhorrent?

[Levitz]

Probably not, but then go ahead and say it.

The problem is they can't really say it, because if their stance is that Musk's management deserves such rejection, then they are cutting their nose to spite their face, and if the abhorrent ones are X users in general, they show themselves to be only on one side of the aisle, removing any legitimacy to their principles.

[watwut]

They went ahead and said it. Literally. And remained completely legitimate.

The problem is that people ignore what they said, so that they can argue made up "illegitimacy".

[sublinear]

Yes. Even though I agree with a lot of what the EFF does, this is a valid reason to be skeptical of intent.

[unclebucknasty]

>They still get more engagement on X than on Bluesky.

Is this the right metric? Or would having 98% of their impressions lopped off by the platform factor in? What if they were 100% suppressed? Would it still be "political" for them to leave? If not, then what's the threshhold?

And, if the platform is suppressing them, then isn't it the platform that's playing politics? How are they absolved, and why should EFF stick around to give them its imprimatur of legitimacy / neutrality?

[theshrike79]

So if they're politically neutral, should they have an account on Truth Social too in your opinion?

[denkmoon]

Should they not? I can’t see why truth social users shouldn’t be a target for EFF’s message

[pseudohadamard]

It's not necessarily shadowbanning (although it could well be), given that it's been turned into a cesspit where huge numbers of users left and the ones still there are probably not the demographic that would engage with the EFF, it could just be a natural consequence of Musk's wrecking it.

[dsr_]

Same result, either way.

[dingle_thunk]

https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/2040909183525048638

The political slant in X is why.

[jmull]

Just above that they explain the tradeoffs leading them to leave twitter.

Basically, they can't reach X users on X.

[wesleywt]

Do you really need to reach users on X. It is filter for a specific type of user who don't share the ideals of the EFF. And racists.

[lenkite]

I don't use Facebook, Instagram & Tiktok. But I do use X, since there the censoring is least on X amongst all those platforms.

[silexia]

Exactly! I love the freedom of speech, and Community Notes are the best possible way to deal with misinformation.

[phillipcarter]

The problem they're not talking about is that for all the X users they could potentially help, their messages will be actively suppressed by the platform owner.

Nate Silver, famously popular (...lol) with the online left, made a post about this recently: https://www.natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-become-a-freak...

EFF is, politically, left wing.

[ecshafer]

EFF used to stand for a cause that was neither left nor right.

[jerrythegerbil]

Perhaps they still do, particularly because that’s exactly what they stand for. The overall shift in perspective and narrative to the right makes them appear left.

If the narrative of a platform is intentionally divisive and making them appear left, leaving is the only way to both be center and present as center.

A warped perspective is hard to spot if you’ve been staring at it too long.

[ecshafer]

The only congressman who would actually support the EFF in digital rights is Massie, a republican.

Reading their post they throw out every progressive buzz word for the omnicause, they are clearly aligning themselves with the progressive wing of the Democrats. The wing which is ironically some of the most anti-free speech in all of American politics.

[_bohm]

The current administration’s curtailments of free speech go far above and beyond anything progressives would ever propose to do.

[barry-cotter]

What’s the point of lying this blatantly? You don’t believe it and neither does anyone else; who’s it for?

[0dayz]

Nothing said here is of substance and instead mere projection of speculation.

If they came out openly as gay as an organization but kept their current stated goal of digital freedom, they still would be a digital rights organization I do not see what driveling about supposed progressive politics makes fighting for digital rights bad.

[kelipso]

An organization aligning itself with progressives means they will only support a certain set of digital rights that align with progressive politics and not others.

I guess you can still call yourself a digital rights organization if you want by you won’t be seen as legitimate by both sides of the aisle.

[guelo]

This is a lie, certain powerful elements of the right wing are much more anti free speech.

[tovej]

Who?

[soundnote]

Search for:

from:EFF "twitter files" on X. Zip, zilch, nada. Nothing about a large government censorship campaign that especially targeted conservatives.

[HereIGoAgain]

Well if you look at board you see that more than one member served in the Obama admin or directly worked for it at some point.

https://www.eff.org/about/board

[claytongulick]

That's when I would donate to them, annually. I still have two t-shirts.

[tailscaler2026]

EFF still does.

MAGA is the one who decided ideas like freedom of expression, an expectation of privacy, and holding governments accountable were woke liberal concepts.

[ecshafer]

Massie, a republican, and Rand Paul, another republican, are by far the most supportive of free speech politicans in congress.

[root_axis]

By what metric?

[IG_Semmelweiss]

The freedom index is a good start.

https://freedomindex.us/us/

Massie has 99% And Paul was at 96 % in the 117th congress

https://freedomindex.us/us/legislators/session/11/sort/sd/

[tailscaler2026]

And neither of them are MAGA. They fucking hate Trump. Republicans aren't all MAGA.

[ETH_start]

Blue Sky heavily censors its platform

[datsci_est_2015]

Blue Sky has like 3 dozen employees or something nuts like that. They have no time to perform censoring at the scale other platforms do.

[theshrike79]

[citation needed]

No citation needed for Twitter censorship, just badmouth Elmo and you'll see what happens to your reach.

[nilespotter]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SnAJOluk1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC64XJl2mXg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZhTVHeQK10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKRF80IWYX8

[pessimizer]

> ideas like freedom of expression, an expectation of privacy, and holding governments accountable

This was a bipartisan agreement. Democrats just say "nothingburger" a lot when you talk about it.

The EFF is, and has always been, a libertarian org with a narrow focus.

[833]

That is incredible rewriting of history.

[CursedSilicon]

How? He's "investigating" CNN right now for...something? Something about them reporting on the Iran war

[saulapremium]

No, that is the obvious and clear truth. MAGA has done a pretty good job at making the opposite appear true, though.

[thaumasiotes]

True as stated, but if you generalize the statement to "enemy concepts", who decided that?

For example, where did the term "freeze peach" come from?

[watwut]

Right went full fascist. Being moderate fascist is not an apolitical position despite being in the middle.

[michaelbrave]

I don't think they shifted their stance, I think the stances of the left and right shifted around them. For example I remember during Trumps first term they announced a rather sensible stance on the internet/net neutrality via an official blog post, and shortly after (maybe even the next day) it turned out that intern who wrote the piece was fired and it was removed. It's not that the stance was particularly anti-right etc, but that the positions of the right solidified more towards pro-big business rather than anti-regulation as they had previously been trying to be.

[dannyobrien]

I worked at EFF during that time, and this is a weird story that I’ve not heard before. EFF doesn’t let interns write blog posts (at least not with a lot of supervision) and certainly wouldn’t sack someone for getting something wrong — partly because that’s a terrible lesson to teach someone just starting out in law or activism, but also and more pragmatically it risks being a PR nightmare.

I concede it might be a mangled version of some other incident — EFF’s network neutrality policy during that time was /extremely/ subtle and we often struggled to express it without annoying some colleague organization or another. Do you remember any other details, or link to coverage of it?

[tovej]

I read parent as saying the intern worked for the Trump admin.

[michaelbrave]

yes it was this, not the EFF but the Trump admin, it was a surprisingly normal and level headed policy take, and I was pleasantly surprised, but then it turned out it wasn't their official stance, it was removed and replaced with a statement and stance that was nearly the opposite. But for the life of me I can't find it again, but I swear I didn't imagine it.

[Redoubts]

> Nate Silver, [...] made a post about this recently

Yeah and he put together an insane chart + data that's not tethered to reality.

[techblueberry]

What makes it not tethered to reality? Do you have a different chart?

[phillipcarter]

It's quite tethered to reality.

[AnthonyMouse]

> EFF is, politically, left wing.

EFF is more like classical liberal. They generally oppose regulation of speech/tech and oppressive laws like DMCA 1201 (anti-circumvention) but promote things in the nature of antitrust like right-to-repair. Everything is required to be crammed into a box now so that often gets called "left" because the tech companies (also called "left") have found it more effective to pay off the incumbents in GOP-controlled states when they don't like right-to-repair laws, although Hollywood ("left" again) are traditionally the ones pressuring Democrats to sustain the horrible anti-circumvention rule when they're in power.

It turns out trying to fit everything into one of two boxes is pretty unscientific.

[empressplay]

> EFF is more like classical liberal.

I mean, they were, but that no longer appears to be the case.

[cbsmith]

Appears being the operative word.

[pbreit]

"X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago"

Does anyone believe this?

[vintermann]

It comes from X's own metrics, why would they lie about it?

[tstrimple]

No it doesn't. Anyone sticking with X at this point is ideologically compromised. There's no reason even trying to reach them. They are hopeless.