The EFF is and has always been a political activist organization.

Of course they care about ideological concerns.

Those concerns have evolved away from their original mission. Not an unusual situation for organizations like this as a they shrink and lose relevance.

Sad to hear. Can you help me understand its shrinkage and loss of relevancy?

My 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.

This 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.

i went to an eff meeting at a hackerspace in 2006 or 2007, and it was hacker crypto nerds, mostly fat guys with ponytails that liked X files, gaming, and 2600.. some went to 2600 meetings.

I went 10-11 years later, and half the people at the meeting were transexuals, and it was a totally different vibe.

Something happened..

I miss when tech was mostly the former. Or many just the world when these niches could exist without political activists for the omnicause.

Agreed. There are a lot of things that don't have anything to do with software freedom in this explanation of why they're leaving X. I think they've lost the plot.

Usually I try to refrain from snark on this platform, but I wonder what could have happened 10 or 11 years after 2006 that would lead transgender folks to start being more concerned with civil liberties and rights...

Spoiler: it's the same people

I was around both communities before the transition happened and you're really only about 20% right.

You learned how to identify them better, and the community is hiding their identity less.

Nothing happened, except maybe you forgot what it means to be a hacker.

bizarre gaslighting, I have always been able to tell when a man is dressed as a woman, but I don't see what that has to do with 2600 meetings and crypto anarchy with some kind of autogynephilic perversion or fetish

What makes you think they are shrinking and losing relevance, other than feels?

It'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.

It reminds me a bit of the ACLU. If nothing else, they were always respectable in their vociferous defense of the 1st amendment and free speech. But they got caught up in other ideological battles, and transitioned to a more partisan organization... defending speech they politically agreed with, not worrying about others. Generally, becoming more small-minded.

The ACLU was always considered a leftist organization, and I'm sure that in general most of it's staff was so; but their mission was scoped to certain issues, and anybody who agreed with that mission, despite their other politics, could support them. Once partisanship takes over, though, it isolates them.

If the EFF isn't careful, it is going to be an organization not for those who support certain digital freedoms, but for Leftists who support certain digital freedoms. That'll do nothing but make it more difficult to accomplish their original goals.

I expect it'll also come with a loss of focus, similar to what happened at Mozilla.

> But they got caught up in other ideological battles

That wasn't the cause, that was the effect. They got flooded with cash for participating in particular ideological battles, so they continued, the smarter older people got disgusted (and just old) and left, the stupider newer people who came in were only interested in working on those ideological battles, and at some point the ACLU ceased to stand for anything in particular and became Yet Another Democratic Nonprofit.

Hopefully this isn't happening with the EFF. If they just become Democratic Tech CEO Pressure Group, it'll be another once great institution zombified.

> Leftists

Such an abused word. These are just Democratic Party partisans. They have no firm political opinions other than their own moral superiority, just like their opponents. They're building careers; it's a politics of personal accumulation.

Where in my comment did I claim otherwise?

You 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.

> 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.

This 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.

Onboard with what? Acclimatized to what? You reactionary types are always so damn cryptic and vague.

I suspect you're not asking these questions earnestly, given that you then pivot to calling me a "reactionary type".

I'm asking them earnestly!! Why wouldn't I both ask and express frustration??

Insufferable.

Why 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.

You've expressed a sense that the organization has become “too political” in a specific way (e.g., emphasizing equity, anti‑discrimination, or skepticism of state/corporate power as a matter of justice), and that this is a kind of ideological overreach.

You've implied that digital privacy, encryption, open‑source software, and anti‑patent‑trolling should be treated as pure technical and legal questions, not as expressions of a progressive political ideology.

I'm surmising a desire to roll back the organization’s explicit engagement with social‑justice‑adjacent politics and return it to a more “classical” techno‑libertarian or “just fix the code and laws” stance.

Musk is not a neutral businessman but a political actor whose projects (X, Grok, etc.) help entrench an authoritarian, far‑right political economy. Any attempt to normalize him—or paint his products and services as neutral—is, in effect, reactionary opposition to a broader societal reckoning with fascist tendencies in tech and politics.

The reactionary position is the one that wants to preserve or normalize Musk’s power, image, and platforms as “just business” or “apolitical tech.”

> in a specific way

In one sense: yes. But in a different sense, if their post was about how they were leaving a more left-leaning platform and they dropped in a bunch of examples about how it was important to support gun-rights and pro-life groups and was alienating people on the left as a result, I'd like to think I'd be objecting in a similar way. (I certainly wouldn't be saying that you can't be pro-encryption without converting to libertarianism or whatever.)

>should be treated as pure technical and legal question

I would like that, yes. I remember being super annoyed watching net neutrality become a partisan issue in real time. I believe that ideologues are always going to exist, but for a lot of us, it's our choice to decide whether or not we are going to play that game or if we're going to do the work to persuade the persuadable and build coalitions to get wins where we can get them.

That's why I chose to be vague in some of my language, because I think it's important to be able to modulate how you speak to different people in service of other types of goods. I don't see a benefit of trying to litigate abortion or authoritarianism in a Hacker News thread about the EFF. I do see a benefit in trying to convince people that advocacy groups staying in their lanes, and that it's good to have voices that try to operate outside the left/right divide in the US in 2026.

>roll back

I get that you're saying that because it fits certain definitions of "reactionary". I don't believe in turning back any clocks, even if I might be in favor of bringing back, in some form, policies that have been dropped. If you see that as a distinction without a difference, so be it.

But "reactionary" often has a particular set of right-wing connotations that I wouldn't feel comfortable identifying myself with.

From there you pivot hard into your criticisms of a particular person as well as your perceptions about how he impacts the broader political landscape. As I started to reply to some of those ideas I realized that this is all a pretty different line of discussion than the idea that you originally engaged with me on, or even what the EFF said in its own post.

You 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?

It'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).

I 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?

Not 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.

> 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.

> if you disagree with me on the other stuff

This part is too broad.

Hierarchical values are just that. Not wholesale. We call that nonsense, e.g. I believe pigs can fly, therefore the sky is red. They are making an ontological error.

For a Christian, a top maxim in their value hierarchy would be rooted in Jesus' famous commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind." Now, if you're an atheist, this might be nonsense to you. You might not believe that Jesus was resurrected or that God even exists. To you, these are fundamentally irrational statements ("pigs can fly," etc.). Under your system, if you were an atheist and your opposition was a Christian, you could never possibly build a coalition because there's a disagreement at the top of the value hierarchy.

But this seems wrong because people of different creeds and value systems do stuff together all the time. Or am I misunderstanding your point? What I understand @Brendinooo to be saying is: "we may not share the same moral framework (or value hierarchy, using your term), but we do agree on X, so let's do X."

I think you confuse beliefs with values by placing that at the root.

I'd have a problem with it if my tax bracket were determined by whether I loved the Christian Lord rather than any other deity.

People of different faiths band together because of shared values that actually make a difference as long as they are happy to live and let live on matters of belief.

It is true that a lot of values sit on a foundation of beliefs, via the teachings we think are inextricably associated with our beliefs.

A Christian's values (e.g. "you are born a boy or a girl') might conflict with a trans person's beliefs ("I was not born with the body that matches my gender identity"). Meanwhile another Christian's values ("God has a plan and your body and gender identity must by definition be a part of that plan") might be entirely compatible.

Beliefs are absolutely foundational but all the values built on them are just received wisdom, interpretation etc.

Of course, it is easy to confuse these things, and people who rise to power are often those who do. Keeping an open mind requires time and mental energy. CEOs and world leaders rarely have time to examine their values, and refraining that act as "questioning my beliefs" reframes a rational act into an invitation to have a crippling crisis of faith - which is much easier to tell yourself is a temptation of the devil that you must not indulge.

By shying away from such examination they have much more time and mental energy and deciseness to execute effectively on their agenda.

The obvious downside is that this lack of reflection means the agenda they execute so effectively on is potentially not what they actually would have chosen if they'd really thought it through in a rational way.

You are gravely misunderstanding my point.

You can hold some values as core to your position, your belief. Outside of your beliefs, there is a strict hierarchy of values.

Colors require perception, kinematics breaks down without velocity/acceleration.

Being Aetheist or Christian conveniently doesn't tend to conflict with the general hierarchy of values, which is independent of your particular religious interpretation of them. Your interpretation of the general hierarchy, can cause issues, however.

> So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you can't.

By design. Activists and left-wingers in general enjoy losing and being underdogs and infighting constantly

Funny, how those in a hierarchical system political system struggle so much to understand, hierarchy.

It's per the usual for extremist ideologies, chock full of hypocrisy and nonsense.

Note that, I have no problem with conservative or liberal value systems...

I don't know, I've noticed this in the right as well. I think there's always some degree of purity-testing to any community, though I agree there is more on the current (radical?) progressive end than average.

I guess, to use the terms of your analogy, I don't think people disagree on what blue is. "Don't add backdoors to e2e encryption" is blue; and plenty of people who are coded all over the political/ideological spectrum recognize it as blue and want the wall to be blue.

You seem to be saying that people can't paint together unless everyone agrees on who holds the brush, what brand of brush is used, and what everyone's broader philosophy of painting is.

If people are interpreting this is an analogy, that is probably the issue...

> I guess, to use the terms of your analogy

It is not an analogy, though, it is an example of a hierarchical value.

> You seem to be saying that people can't paint together unless everyone agrees on who holds the brush, what brand of brush is used, and what everyone's broader philosophy of painting is.

But these are not all hierarchical values. You can't paint with a brush unless you know what a brush is. Holding the brush, the brand of the brush, are not values implicit in the hierarchy of what a brush is or how to paint with one.

Your last example "broader philosophy of painting", is an example. You can agree to all use a brush, but if you stare at a wall and call it "painting", you've violated the agreed upon hierarchy.

It's hard not to see this as you just restating your argument.

If "no backdoors on e2e encryption" isn't a sufficient definition of blue, if that's just staring at a wall, then what is the hierarchy, specifically? What do I have to believe, in concrete terms, before my support for digital privacy counts?

> What do I have to believe, in concrete terms, before my support for digital privacy counts?

I think that this is fairly simple. Digital privacy requires digital autonomy, privacy without autonomy is tantamount to a promise without any way to verify (confirming a negative is often difficult if not impossible).

Your beliefs may conflict if you find yourself pro-authoritarian (no autonomy).

So your answer is basically just...the EFF's traditional lane. Digital privacy requires digital autonomy. Sure!

>Your beliefs may conflict

Maybe, maybe not. A libertarian, a progressive, and a paranoid business owner can all fight against encryption backdoors for completely different reasons; if they team up, maybe they can all get what they want. If they think their beliefs preclude cooperation, then their chances of getting what they want in this area are...much smaller.

You don't have a lot of experience, just asking questions, do you?

Whatever you're trying to imply here, it's a personal attack that does not contribute to the discourse.

The 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.

Just 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!

No, 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.

I 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.

EFF 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.

There'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-referre...

Granted, it's from 2020, so there may be updated versions by now.

Then you are doing yourself a disservice by alienating people that agree with you on important issues but disagree with you on others.

Why would you say "this statement shows XYZ" if you didn't believe XYZ was a new piece of information?

My 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.

You 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?

IIUC, "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"

just not twitter censorship

He'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.

The linked blog post specifically states that they're leaving Twitter because they have been silenced by the platform and, as a result, no longer consider it a viable communication vehicle. That it's owned and operated by a nazi is icing on the shit cake.

> 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.

Bluesky 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.

> 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/

Therefore, Twitter must be downranking or silencing the EFF's account. Unless you have a better explanation?

That's what the comment is stating, but I disagree with the statement. This is perfectly in-line with the EFF's mission.

Keep in mind that X only has ~500 MAU, putting it in the same league as Pinterest or Quora.

A free and open society is a prerequisite for the rights EFF fight for. We cannot enjoy the freedoms of digital privacy in a an authoritarian regime. The rights to fight for EFFs concerns are currently being threated by the fascist turn of the USA. Thus, the EFF and other likeminded organizations are very much justified in leaving X.

> There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.

I would rather challenge this image that civilization is declining, independently of the political forces in power. This is a common motif in facism; I'm reading from your comment something along the lines of: "once we had noble organizations that were pure and didn't bother with ideology -- now things are worse, and in fact those guys are dirty for engaging in politics". What's really happening is that power in the US has been seized by fanatics and you fucks (respectfully) are letting them get away with it.

Disagree with so much here. But if, in your mind, the US is turning authoritarian, this is a "cut off your nose to spite your face" move. They should be taking the fight where it most needs fighting. They should not be making donors like myself question whether we still share objectives.

You are completely correct in your analysis. Reading some of the responses here - people who think the EFF should only fight for some rights for some people and only on corporate platforms instead of across society at large - would be shocking if I hadn’t already seen how willing rich tech bros are to overlook everyone and everything else for their own personal gain.

What are you talking about? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills reading these comments.

Do you not see that civil rights are being infringed _right now_, by the republican administration in our government? Protecting those civil rights will require criticizing and acting against republicans because the fascists on the right are trying to turn our country into an autocracy.

Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but you can’t be that fragile if you want to live in a free nation. The EFF taking a stand here is fighting EXACTLY the fight they need to be right now.

This is an important point and it feels odd that the entire discussion seems to not be able to engage with it, but on another level it might be the same problem. As a long term financial support of the eff I'm starting to get the same awkward feelings that made me question my financial support for Mozilla and Wikipedia. Any time someone views the world through a single lens, it highlights some things and ignores others and it seems like a net loss to the world that everything is being forced into a being judged along a single (increasingly polarised) axis

I 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.

But what is the cost of posting on X? Why do they even have a blue tick?

More than the cost of not posting on X.

That cost should be $0, so that's not the issue.

That cost being $0 would be the most extreme case of the issue.

It 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.

Its 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.

Yes but they say the cost is not worth it due to the impressions they get, not that's it about politics.

What is the cost of posting to X in addition to Tiktok, Bluesky, and Facebook? If it's not effectively $0, it should be.

This is completely performative, and I personally don't think it's the best move.

freedom 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

That's explicitly not the logic EFF is using; they come close to outright rejecting it.

> ... when the amount of impressions are no longer worth doing it for

> The Numbers Aren't Working Out

I don't know. That's front and center. Can to share how that's an "outright rejection"?

They explicitly say they're staying on other platforms whose ideologies they don't agree with.

Because there's enough people there to be worth it

It's like how the Soviets and the Americans were allies in world war II, the pros outweighed the cons

Was it costing a lot of money or resources to say on X? If they got few impressions what does it matter? You can write the content once.

> Was it costing a lot of money or resources to say on X?

Yes.

> If they got few impressions what does it matter?

Because, it was costing a lot of money or resources to stay on X. Kind of an odd follow up to your previous question.

> You can write the content once.

Pretty sure they know how to write content considering we are reading it.

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t fit with the founders intention.

“We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”

Apparently X.com doesn’t fit in that world anymore.

Yes.... because..... "the amount of impressions are worth doing it for"

You can't just ignore complete sentences because it hurts your narrative.

"They explicitly say they're staying on other platforms whose ideologies they agree with."

Why would you say that? That's a lie?

Oh wait... it sucks when people just remove important parts of what you say. Don't lie. It's not good.

What exactly has Elon done to limit your freedom? For me, Elon has increased my freedom because I can read about certain viewpoints that were previously censored on Twitter.

You are being, and have been, played. What is happening to the left now is exactly what you thought was happening to the right before Elon.

"Thought was happening" is an interesting way to put it when they most certainly were being censored, and we know that we're even colluding with the FBI to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Not to say that they're not doing the inverse now, but to paint it as some misconception that the inverse was happening before is just disingenuous.

Bro. He's still censoring viewpoints. He's also boosting his ideological viewpoints, which diminishes the reach of everything else.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-elon-musk-uses-his...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/23/business/elon...

Which is the issue? That’s he’s censoring, or that he’s sharing his own viewpoints? Your argument that the latter causes the former is not convincing, as there are plenty of opposing views on Twitter that get exposure.

The fact that my post got flagged (edit: now unflagged) is maybe indicative that the differing viewpoint is the concern.

I don't even see the option to flag a users post. is it some HN elite option?

It's not available to new users (I think there is a "karma" threshold but not sure about the exact number) and you need to to a direct link to the comment (e.g. click the time in the comment header) to see the option.

The first article merely states that Elon has some fairly common concerns, which are amplified because he is popular. It's deceptively framed as if he has the finger on the scale.

That plus journalists have a strong bone to pick with X because they aren't given preferential treatment over the rest of the userbase with VIP blue checkmarks like they used to.

Back in the day if you saw a blue checkmark they were either celebrities, politicians, or journalists. And they were always featured heavily in the old Twitter trending algorithm. The checkmark also made their Tweets standout among the plebs.

He ran DOGE and illegally destroyed science and arts funding across the US government. [0] He continues to interfere in elections, committing what is likely fraud. He silences viewpoints that disagree with him on twitter and routinely interferes with grok’s training to promote his own viewpoints.

Oh and he begged to visit Epstein’s child sex slavery island. [2]

I get that your moral compass might not be fully functional, but I draw the line at fascism, treason, and pedophilia.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...

[1] https://www.thebulwark.com/p/yes-elon-musk-vote-buying-is-ag...

[2] https://people.com/emails-reveal-that-elon-musk-asked-jeffre...

Which viewpoints?

I mean any conservative view points? Immigration, DEI policies, euthanasia, pro life, gender roles, trans sexuality..

Discuss any of these on Twitter would get you banned, until Musk took over. It still does on many left leaning platforms, including Youtube, Twitch, BlueSky, etc.

HN is the only platform I've participated in that tends to allow opposing view points (albeit more left leaning).

If EFF wants to declare that it's now a Left leaning activist entity and doesn't like to engage wit other people, that's fine, I'd rather they just say that instead and be honest.

You can discuss all of those things just fine, both now and then. I have, and never got banned for any of them.

The problem is online/MAGA conservatives don't want to discuss those things. I've never talked to any online conservative who had anything new or interesting to say about any of those things.

“A man can never be a woman” and “ok dude” got people banned on old Twitter.

Well the first is just plain old bog-standard bigotry. What was the "ok dude" in response to?

If anything not in agreement with far left viewpoints is "bog-standard bigotry" and gets you banned then that's the opposite of being able to discuss those topics.

No ‘a man can never be a woman’ is a fact and mainstream view. Disliking your sex isn't an innate characteristic and you have no right to force others to believe your illusion or participate in your gender performance.

More to the point you just claimed discussion of these matters wasn’t ever suppressed and then attempted to suppress discussion of them by claiming this was bigoted.

You're denying the existence of a marginalized group and claiming, "there is no bigotry here!" You see that that is risible, right?

People with gender dysphoria exist. THey are not marginalised: they have the same rights as every other person has. It is not bigotry to not participate in their gender performance, because gender performance is not an innate characteristic, as already mentioned to you in the comment you're replying to.

And in soviet Russia you can criticize the government all you want --- as long as you're criticizing the American government.

I don’t think your argument holds, or at least, there is missing data. We have a different administration now, and I suspect it significantly reduced the number takedown requests, maybe by an order of magnitude. I would expect that the remaining requests are for unambiguous legal issues and therefore have a higher rate of granting them.

> freedom is intersectional

What is your working definition of freedom? I'm interested in replying but I'd like to engage with you on your terms.

> 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-lawsu...)

> the point is don't pretend leaving is a moral stance when it's just a preference

So I'm not free to assert moral reasons for my actions?

Nobody claimed that. The person you’re replying to quite clearly stated you shouldn’t pretend a preference is a moral stance.

I think that's the point. The owner of X as well as most of the remaining denizens are actively working on taking away the freedom of others to believe in their own views and make them adhere to their beliefs.

That works until that person is influential enough to sway political and social conditions drastically

so the argument is that someone is so influential their tweets are basically mind control, but also you need to leave the platform to stop them? if musk is that powerful, your absence from x isn't doing anything. and if he's not that powerful, then you're just mad about a guy you disagree with having a big megaphone.

"freedom is intersectional" is a fancy way of saying "I only support freedom for people I agree with." and the impressions line at the end is basically admitting it was never about principles, it was about clout. you didn't leave the platform because of ethics, you left because the algorithm stopped paying you for it.

>"freedom is intersectional" is a fancy way of saying "I only support freedom for people I agree with."

That is the exact opposite of what that means. It means freedom should be supported for all, especially for the oppressed. Those who stand for oppression in one way serve to benefit other forms of oppression

What? Freedom of association implicitly means freedom not to associate. It is not at all incompatible with freedom to say, "I don't want to hang out with those guys because they suck."

I believe in freedom of speech for people that I don't want to talk to. There is no contradiction in that.

that's fair, but nobody here was arguing you can't leave. the point is that the original post framed leaving as some grand moral act of defending intersectional freedom when it's just choosing not to hang out somewhere. you're allowed to do that. just don't dress it up as activism.

Universality of human rights is a great principle that breaks down horribly the moment it makes contact with people who do not want you to have those rights. Like, even if you're a single-issue free speech maximalist, it is entirely self-defeating to argue that censorious tyrants should be afforded the benefits of free speech. The only purpose tyrants have of free speech is to use it to amass power to destroy free speech.

And yes, to be clear, Elon Musk is a censorious tyrant. All the big tech leaders are, both because some of them started out as outright fascists and because the rules of the tech CEO game are, in the Nash equilibrium, unfavorable to liberal ideals.

Dehumanization is another common tactic of tyrants. You look at the group of dissidents you want to censor, identify those who are weak enough to silence, and use your control over society and government to make them pay for not being on their side. Rinse and repeat until you've salami-sliced away every dissident's rights. The only effective means of stopping dehumanization is to render it ineffective by making lots of friends who understand and defend against these attacks. [0] The interminably dense social justice literature uses jargon terms like "solidarity" and "intersectionality", which seem almost calculated to piss off the unenlightened into reflexively opposing social justice because we might as well be wizards chanting Latin curses at people to sound smart. But the idea is simple.

So yes, freedom is intersectional - because it it ultimately comes from the people as a whole exercising their power to check the power of tyrants.

[0] "Apes together strong", in case HN doesn't render emoji correctly.

"the only purpose tyrants have of free speech is to use it to destroy free speech" says who? you? so you get to read minds now, know exactly why someone wants to speak, and preemptively decide they don't deserve to? that's just you picking winners not defending free speech

and you didn't call every tech CEO a fascist but you did call them all censorious tyrants who operate against liberal ideals. which is a fun thing to say on a website where you're freely saying it. if the tyrants are this bad at tyranny maybe they're not actually tyrants.

That's circular nonsense. It makes you someone who doesn't want others to have speech. It's not self defeating, it's the entire point of defending universal rights, especially speech.

You throw around terms like "Dehumanization" while referencing people you specifically disagree with using names like "tyrants".. without even hint of irony.

Fallacies, like the paradox of tolerance specifically, is a paradox expressly because it makes the invoker guilty of the very thing they justify their actions on. Even as a flawed and useless concept (in a free society at least) it was only ever meant to be used theoretically as a last ditch emergency response. And certainly not simply as means to control unfavorable or illiberal thought.

Worse yet, it's all predicated on the claims that "they would have totally did it to me if i didn't do it first" Which brings up the other flawed aspect of the concept.. It becomes a race to silence the other side first.. Of course that's assuming it was the intent of both to begin with. Not used merely as a tool of political oppression.

Yes 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.

They would also leave TikTok and Instagram as well if it would be pure ideological reasoning.

Did the CEO of TikTok and Instagram also do a Nazi salute on stage?

Not that I know of. But if you look at how TikTok and Meta impacted our society, you could argue they did worse.

What do you mean by "also"?

"ideological concerns"

Well done trivializing being against white supremacy.

Where 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.

> Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.

Clearly EFF is now more interested in virtue signaling than the privacy mission.

Where you do you see this insinuation being made? I don't see anything like that.

The rise of fascism is EXACTLY what I think the EFF should be concerned about. Don’t you see the connections? Digital privacy, government market manipulation, free speech, these are all core concerns of the EFF and they are all of even greater importance under fascism.

And 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?

Encouraging people to use X drives money into the hands of fascists.

Cross posting content isn't really encouraging people to use it.

If they want to make some principled stand against toxic social media, then have at it. This is pure pandering to a very specific group.

Twitter, 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.

True fascism: your twitter account getting locked

Not true fascism: when the government murders people in the streets of Minneapolis

Got it, thanks. Really lays bare your priorities.

"murdered": someone interfering with law enforcement and threatening severe bodily harm or death with a 4000 lb SUV is met with lethal force by a person fearing for his life.

Not murdered: literally everyone else in the entire state

My priorities are many, one of which is free speech. Another of which is law enforcement and equality under the rule of law. It's a shame she was killed but it's a dangerous game to threaten law enforcement like that. It's hardly ICE going out and randomly killing people as is being characterized.

What are your priorities? Defending people who abuse children and cross borders illegally? I assume it's not. So why not support ICE who is stopping that from happening?

It'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.

If this is their rationale they should say so, so they can fade into obscurity as soon as possible and leave room for sensible people.

I completely agree. Calling X ineffective when they get 10k views per post there, but staying on BlueSky and Mastodon, where there is no way they see those numbers, is absurd on its face. Meanwhile they are happily on a platform hosted in China and legally answerable to the CCP, so they can’t admit it’s for ideological reasons because how would they explain how their ideology embraces that regime.

It'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".

Ah yes, a non-profit reaching out to a broader audience for its activism is clearly a "certain ideological concern" separate from their core mission.

This is the exact opposite of reaching out to a broader audience.

It's not even ideological concerns about the platform but about the userbase. TikTok and Instagram have a lot of left-wing people on them, as they've alluded to, regardless of who owns those. Twitter users are too right-wing for them.

So just talk to the people who you think already agree with you?

I 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.

How is it insane for a news source to endorse political candidates? This has been a routine function of newspapers for over a century.

It's insane for them to do it and also claim neutrality. They could just be honest and say they're a Democrat party newspaper. Yeah a lot of papers were guilty of this, and those were trash too.

You need to relxa

You mostly jest here i think but that seems to be the actual strategy and logic of progressive activist types so often. I mean all side tend to stick with their groups but progressives seemed to have created an argument that demands disassociation and disengagement with people they deem transgressive to the approved opinions and positions on so many issues.

There are a lot of right wing people who support the (classical) EFF mission. I’m one of them! I’ve donated to them in the past, but probably not if they are turning hard left

I 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.

Check out the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, they support anonymity, privacy and free expression:

https://www.fire.org/

They also mention that tweets today get far less engagement than they once did.

* _their_ tweets

Right. Those are the only tweets that are relevant here.

Should they care that tweets from NazisRule88 are doing better?

Agreed. 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

You’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.

I still see links to X quite often. I don’t think I have ever seen a link to Threads.

I've also never seen a link to Facebook or Instagram but I wouldn't deny they're extremely popular. (last time I saw a link to Facebook was probably when Carmack was blogging there)

DAU 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.

> I personally know no one who uses Threads

Real ‘I don’t know anyone who voted for Nixon’ energy here.

That'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?

> 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.

Sorry 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.

Threads is extremely ‘normie-coded,’ I don’t think there’s much overlap with HN demographics.

Twitter seems to be more popular in reddit too

https://old.reddit.com/domain/threads.com/top/

https://old.reddit.com/domain/x.com/top/

There's not much overlap with any demographics.

Wow I never thought the org I’ve donated to all these years to fight for digital rights would find the need to use the phrase “queer folks”. What a toxic mess.

Please stick to your charter my friends.

I don’t even see them using that phrase in the linked thread? What’s wrong with it anyway?

I 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.

That quote is in the linked EFF statement, which you clearly didn't read.

True, I was looking at the linked thread as mentioned not the article.

Remind me again what the Q in LGBTQ stands for?

How 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"?

Would 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.

Another victim of the long march through the institutions.