[jl6]

Seems like any activist org should have two audiences:

1) Supporters who may become donors

2) Neutrals/opponents who may become supporters.

If you only ever communicate in forums where people already agree with you, you’ll probably have optimized your fundraising, but will probably never achieve your actual purpose.

Activist orgs have to reach and turn the non-supporters somehow, and the absolute best way to achieve the opposite is to brand them as The Enemy and cut yourself off from them. Joining the omnicause is the icing on the cake, signalling the end of focused goal-oriented activism in favor of the dilute, general grievance mire.

The left are always looking for someone to expel, and the right are always looking for someone to recruit. Guess how this ends.

[hitekker]

> signalling the end of focused goal-oriented activism in favor of the dilute, general grievance mire

An earlier signal was when the EFF ejected one of their founders from the board for disagreeing with their mission creep https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/25/john_gilmore_removed_... See http://www.toad.com/gnu/ and also the HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28992462

[carodgers]

They ejected the man responsible for "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Sweet mother earth.

[cbsmith]

You might want to read their post before commenting. They seem very much aware of the need to reach people who aren't supporters and have always actively engaged with the platforms they are critical of. It's just that X isn't really an effective use of their time anymore.

[jl6]

I read the post.

> Last year, our 1,500 posts earned roughly 13 million impressions for the entire year.

Their YouTube channel reports 2,759,491 views in total, since 2006. So while X may be a fraction of what it was, it's still a significant multiple of at least one of the other channels they are happy to use.

What kind of activist org turns down the opportunity to reach 13 million people for essentially zero cost? One that has a different reason for doing so. The subtext is clear.

[p_j_w]

Do you think an X impression has the same value or impact of a YouTube view? I very much doubt it.

> What kind of activist org turns down the opportunity to reach 13 million people

13 million impressions, not 13 million people.

[dminik]

I imagine the new pay per use pricing for the X API has something to do with it. If you're reaching single digit percentage impressions and now you have to pay for that as well ...

[cbsmith]

If you think it is "essentially zero cost", I'm going to respectfully suggest you do not understand what you read. If you think they reached 13 million people on X last year, you do not understand social media.

They have made 399 posts to YouTube over the life of their YouTube channel, so that's an average of 20 posts a year.

I'm sorry, but you're projecting a subtext.

[cbeach]

Their posts on X are getting multiple millions of views. Yes, that has declined, but I need to see whether their viewership on Facebook has declined similarly before I can pass judgement on X.

People don’t use social media in the same way they did ten years ago.

And in any case, they’re still getting massive viewership on X by most people’s standards, surely?

I’m not convinced “X is declining” is a good faith argument here.

[hitekker]

The post feigns outreach but the "Facebook and Tiktok are Evil" section blatantly panders to EFF supporters. It frontloads identity-group-affirming language to justify using platforms its supporters dislike at while saying nothing critical about platforms its supporters enjoy (Bluesky / Mastodon). That selective scrutiny suggest the EFF either doesn't care or is ignorant about the hang-ups of non-supporters, e.g., conservative and center-right folks.

I'm neither a supporter nor opponent; I only see the EFF's rhetoric as way for themselves and their supporters to lie about their mutual contempt for their opponents.

[cbsmith]

It's really weird that the EFF would post something on their own site to speak to their supporters, and that it would employ "identity-group-affirming language".

Just because they issue one post that is targeting their supporters doesn't mean that they don't care or are ignorant about the broader audience. That's ridiculous.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Agreed, I'm dismayed that the parent comment is currently the top comment, because it seems to be completely clueless as to what was actually in the blog post. EFF highlights that an X post gets less than 3% of the viewership of a tweet from 7 years ago. They also highlight that they are staying on platforms that they have strong disagreements with like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

I personally don't understand how anyone can use X anymore. I mean, even before the Musk takeover, there were plenty of loud (or, IMO, extremely obnoxious) voices from all sides, and I was generally not a fan because it just seemed designed to amplify the extremes and petty disagreements. Now, though, whenever I go there it is just a steaming pile of useless shit. Like I would look at a tweet or two from people whose perspectives I find insightful (even for folks I sometimes strongly disagree with), and the top comments under any of these people's posts is now the equivalent of "But your daddy is a giant poopie head!!" It doesn't even have any entertainment value, it's just pointless drivel where I can feel myself losing brain cells for every post I read.

[jfengel]

In this case, dealing with The Enemy is not only funding them, but lending your credibility.

Maybe it would be worth it if, as you say, they are finding ways to reach non-supporters, but Twitter has been X for almost four years. If the EFF finds that they're not recruiting people from among their opponents, then they can reasonably say that they've spent enough time trying.

[rapatel0]

Credibility with who? We’re so polarized that a single binary label will shift all credibility.

Experience, success, credentials none of it matters anymore. The left thinks everything on the right is stupid and evil, the right does the same, and everyone drinks their own kool aid.

We’ve all stopped listening.

[dpkirchner]

If we all spent more time listening the guy who called someone a pedophile because he suggested the guy's plan to save people was ridiculous, would that improve discourse? I am skeptical.

[jfengel]

I don't think Twitter is going to be the place where a revival of listening is going to start.

[p_j_w]

Perhaps EFF doesn’t want to find and legitimize the people pushing such divisivness.

[rapatel0]

This is the fallacy. These organizations no longer have any ability to “legitimize” as trust is fundamentally eroded. Leaving will simply remove any engagement with the very people they want to influence- people that are unengaged and people that actively disagree

[mcintyre1994]

It sounds like they don’t really get meaningful engagement/views on X anyway though. It sounds like it’s not a useful platform to reach any audience for them.

[michaelhoney]

yeah, but twitter is 90% assholes these days

[tts626]

sadly, all social media is 90% a-holes these days

exactly why so many are turning it off, trying to get healthy, not just looking for another echo chamber to feed their egos

[phyzome]

Not all of it. But I'm not about to advertise the exceptions to a general audience. :-P

[infotainment]

Always has been

[acdha]

Not having an official account doesn’t mean that people are blocked from talking about EFF, only that it’ll happen by directing attention towards their website. URLs still work great for letting people talk, but there is a real question about whether you encourage people to look for you first on someone else’s property–effectively supporting their business by giving them your content and audience.

[heavyset_go]

X, the non-consensual nudes app, surfaces the dumbest comments in any discussion by design. It is not a serious site, having a presence there is not meaningful.

It's like saying organizations should have a branded presence on 4chan otherwise they might not reach the very online and meme-poisoned demographics.

[fredgrott]

I do not see how being on a platform literally chasing away people with hate, sexism and outright CSAM is somehow making a wrong decision about audiences to attract...can you drop your political bias red colored shades and address this?

[cbeach]

You could literally be describing any modern day social network with those slurs.

[pesus]

How many other social network sites have their CEO posting and promoting white supremacist rhetoric?

[cbeach]

It would be illegal to post such rhetoric, and I can't name a single social network CEO who's been investigated and found guilty of posting such rhetoric. Perhaps I missed a court case somewhere?

[pesus]

Wait, you think it's illegal to post something racist online? That is absolutely not the case in the US, and I have no idea why you'd think it was. It's also pretty confusing why you think simple descriptors are "slurs".

It only takes one quick google search to show that he helps promote white supremacist rhetoric:

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/03/elon-musk-nick-fuentes-x-ac...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67446800

Don't worry, there's more.

[Planktonne]

The intentional ellision of the difference between "happened" and "happened, and then a very specific legal process also happened" is disingenuous.

If you have to resort to such tactics to make your arguments, consider rethinking your positions instead.