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.