EFF is leaving X

Re:EFF is leaving X by bcantrill on Thursday April 09, 2026 @02:38PM (#47707776)

I was recently asked about our (Oxide's) disposition to Twitter on the Peterman Pod[0], and the rationale for why we're no longer active there is pretty simple: the platform has become a cesspool of hate -- and it's antithetical to promoting a business (or any message, really). Aside from the morality of it (which is significant!), the hate itself is repugnant; it's not something that normal people want to be a part of in the long term.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhSL-5GtmQM#t=1h9m57s

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Re:EFF is leaving X by sequin on Thursday April 09, 2026 @04:08PM (#47709088)

https://web.archive.org/web/20131201044200/https://www.joyen...

All of this misery started when psychopaths like you started ruining peoples careers just for fun, Bryan Cantrill of Oxide.

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Re:EFF is leaving X by hananova on Thursday April 09, 2026 @05:57PM (#47710754)

Bryan did not hold him at gunpoint and forced him to click reject, he did that himself. Empathy is a core value of engineering.

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Re:EFF is leaving X by WatchDog on Friday April 10, 2026 @05:13AM (#47715463)

Fantasizing about having someone fired, making no effort to try and understand the viewpoint of the object of one's contempt, does not seem empathetic to me.

As a side note, I found it ironic, that Keith's email that Bryan linked to making the argument that "Empathy is a core engineering value", uses the word "retarded", which by 2013 was already something you could get "cancelled"(or at least chastised) for, because it's not empathetic to the mentally disabled.

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Re:EFF is leaving X by solid_fuel on Thursday April 09, 2026 @11:28PM (#47713257)

I appreciate you and other industry professionals taking a stand. The silence from so many of our colleagues is deafening.

Especially now, with the republican party fully embracing fascism, the impact of the digital world is surfacing in our own. Technology is enabling mass surveillance, suppression, and propaganda to an extent we have never seen before, and many in our own industry who should know better are standing by or worse - contributing.

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Re:EFF is leaving X by WatchDog on Thursday April 09, 2026 @11:40PM (#47713329)

Twitter does have a significant amount of racist content, the antisemitism comment is interesting, because while it does exist, at least in my experience twitter seems to be the most supportive platform on Jewish and Israeli issues at the moment.

> [video] It's not free speech

It is though.

Of course it's your choice if you want to post your content there or not, but objectionable speech, _is_ free speech, and if you believe in free speech, then you should protect the speech that you don't like, because one day someone might decide they don't like your speech, and you won't be able to object to it without being admonished for the obvious hypocrisy.

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Re:EFF is leaving X by bcantrill on Friday April 10, 2026 @10:14PM (#47726581)

You're taking me slightly out of context there, but my intent was: it's not about free speech. That is, I strongly support free speech (they have the right to be as racist as they want!), but that isn't what this is about: this is about consequences of deplorable (but non-criminal!) behavior -- and just as people have the right to be hateful, we have the freedom to not want to be associated with the racist biker bar that is what Twitter has become.

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