They're the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Of course they're ideological. That's the whole point of their existence.
Anyway,
> Twitter was never a utopia. We've criticized the platform for about as long as it’s been around. Still, Twitter did deserve recognition from time to time for vociferously fighting for its users’ rights. That changed. Musk fired the entire human rights team and laid off staffers in countries where the company previously fought off censorship demands from repressive regimes. Many users left. Today we're joining them.
If you’re citing Matt Taibbi as a trustworthy source, man, I don’t know. He’s up there with Bari Weiss for “they’re either intentionally bad faith, stupid, or both” levels of nuance.
I not only read what he wrote, I read the screenshots of OG twitter. And what he said mirrored what they said. They were incredibly one sided an censorious as hell. Your post is basically just an ad hominem. A fallacy.
For something to be an ad hominem, one needs to be 1) addressing or responding to an argument 2) by attacking the character of the person making the argument rather than the substance of the argument.
Even though OP didn’t provide them, I can think of many supporting examples for their assertion that Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi are either intentionally operating in bad faith, or stupid, or both. So this does not at all meet the definition of ad hominem.
Put another way: “you’re wrong because you’re stupid” is an ad hominem. “You’re wrong, and I think you’re stupid because [reason]” is not. This holds even if the person making the argument does not explicitly give the reason.
> For something to be an ad hominem you simply need to address the speaker rather than what was said
No, this is a common misconception. Addressing the speaker is part of it but is not sufficient by itself.
People who are quick to claim “ad hominem!” have been getting this wrong basically forever, so please feel free to educate yourself by reading this excellent post: https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
“It is not a logical fallacy to attack someone; the fallacy comes from assuming that a personal attack is also necessarily an attack on that person's arguments.
Therefore, if you can't demonstrate that your opponent is trying to counter your argument by attacking you, you can't demonstrate that he is resorting to ad hominem.”
It was very interesting because it came to light the administration in power at the time, trump, leaned heavily on Twitter to promote what they wanted and hide they wanted hid. Meanwhile Biden's campaign requested revenge porn be removed and Matt and friends got extremely upset about that and called it government overreach (Biden wasn't in office at the time, of course).
You're equivocating. Biden camp and DNC was requesting and demanding that politically negative comments be removed. If you're going to tell a story tell the whole story.
> Of course they're ideological. That's the whole point
Yes, but their ideology _was_ free-speech absolutism. This move, and this statement, suggests that they're moving away from that ideology to one of selectively free speech.
what are you even talking about? they arent suppressing free speech, they are leaving a platform. this might be the most bot-like response ive ever seen, if youre not a bot then go outside, read a book, just log off my goodness.
They said the EFF’s ideology use to be free speech absolutism.
From the EFF post linked to that we are discussing here:
Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.
<snip>
neither is pushing every user to the fediverse when there are circumstances like:
<snip>
Your abortion fund uses TikTok to spread crucial information.
You're isolated and rely on online spaces to connect with your community.
That very much makes it sound like the EFF values free speech, but only if that speech is speech they agree with.
What about if your anti-abortion fund uses X to spread crucial information. What about if you’re isolated and rely on X to connect with your community?
What if you’re not a young person, a person of color, queer, an activists, nor an organizer?
The EFF used to be free speech absolutists, it’s evident they be taken over by progressive liberals who favour free speech they agree with.
Look in to the history of cases they have litigated. There’s definitely at least some where I disagreed with the content of the speech, but agreed with the right to say it and that the EFF were correct in supporting the case.
>> Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.
> What if you’re not a young person, a person of color, queer, an activists, nor an organizer?
People who aren't young, of color, queer, activists, or organizers, use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day, too. There's no good reason for an organization to have a presence on every social media platform under the sun, but there is one for limiting the overhead you have to do (and also for minimizing social media usage in general).
> lines like this that make the agenda far more clear: "Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day."
What does that make clear?? Stop hinting and just say what you mean...?
It's not some big secret. You're trying to invent a conspiracy when there is none.
There's one particular website that they don't like, and they see declining engagement from, so they leave. There's other websites that might have less engagement, but they do like it, so they stay there. Then there's other websites that might have similar ideological disdain for, but they get very broad reach from, so they reluctantly stay.
I really don't see what the big deal is with trying to reach a broad audience.
It's not that conservative opinions are censored. It's that bad opinion with zero merit to any reasonable person, such as insults, racism, sexual harassment, etc, are censored.
Unfortunately that means that most conservative opinions are censored.
Or, at least, the ones that matter said by our most popular politicians.
Rephrased, think of it this way: if I talk like Barack Obama at work, I'm fine. If I talk like President Donald Trump, I'm getting sent to HR on my first day. And that has nothing to do with their political leanings.
As though HR are suddenly The Arbiters of Truth and that declining birth rates and increasing isolation are helped by people at working fearing being sent to HR if they make a mistake or say something non-approved.
I mean, yeah, those stats are being helped by HR, but not in the direction any sane person would favour.
You don't have to be "Arbiter of Truth" to say "hey, you're making women uncomfortable, three women have complained about your language, you're fired"
The only people who consistently have issues with HR are pieces of shit.
What I'm trying to say is that Donald Trump says things like "grab her by the pussy" and "[Haitians] are eating dogs and cats" and that's why talking like him would get you censored.
You can be conservative and not racist, or not sexist, or not a piece of shit in general. Most conservatives cannot manage that, no matter how hard they try. At least - most conservatives currently in power in the US.
So, if that's your baseline or your inspiration, then yes, you will PREDICTABILITY be censored. And I garauntee nobody gives a single fuck.
Yeah they're not anymore. Woke opinions were getting shoved until that abruptly stopped a bit before Trump's second term. Which is weird because this didn't happen in his first term. Now we've got Amazon promoting the Melania movie.
On Twitter in particular, the woke shoving stopped the moment Musk took over, replaced with it shoving whatever Musk is saying. They're doing less censorship now but are also heavily promoting him.
Since the person you responded to got flagged/dead, I want to make sure they and everyone else who might think like them listens to this (an hour long, so yay attention span)
"As the Senate debates the SAVE America Act amid unfounded claims of voter fraud, Jon is joined by Georgetown Research Professor Renée DiResta and Platformer editor Casey Newton to examine what actually threatens our elections. Together, they investigate how algorithms are engineered to push users toward platform owners' preferred ideologies, explore the incentives driving Silicon Valley's rightward shift, and discuss how Republicans have weaponized disinformation to undermine electoral trust and rewrite voting rules in their favor."
One topic they cover is the manner in which the Biden admin was communicating with big tech about mis/dis-information, and the multiple ways the Right has either blown it way out of proportion by not getting the facts right, and the way the Trump admin has been doing as much or worse than Biden admin ever did.
I can't edit any more, but for all those saying "they got banned for saying 'men can't get pregnant'", I can guarantee 9 times out of 10, there was some imagery of a trans person hanging themselves in the comments.
That's how far-right opinions work. A small wedge to normalize the violent message that comes next. A "man getting pregnant" didn't hurt them, but the deluge of death threats from the stochastic response sure hurt a lot more people.
I've spent way too much time on twitter. That site is a cesspit but you cannot reasonably try to say "they're just opinions". It was organized. "influencers" received money to stoke harassment campaigns. Without moderation, aka cutting off the people stoking the harassment flames, it becomes a Nazi bar, just like it is today.
Here is an example of what the bans were trying to prevent, look at the comments of someone's last tweet. They killed themselves. The replies are who complained about censorship: https://x.com/burntfishie/status/1918223771313561872?s=20
Of course not. Those platforms have 1A rights. In some cases, the US govt violated those rights by pressuring them to take down viewpoints, hence what I said about "1A violation on the government's side."
In other cases, the platform did it all on their own. That's perfectly legal but is also rightfully seen by users as political censorship, something the EFF claims to fight even when it's not from the govt.
I did look through this, and it absolutely corroborates people, including sitting politicians, were banned for believing and stating objective facts about human biology. Sorry that facts get in the way of the narrative.
You're presumably referencing Missouri v. Biden, to which the EFF did file an amicus[1]. In it, they note,
> Many platforms have potentially problematic “trusted flagger” programs in which certain
groups and individuals enjoy “some degree of priority in the processing of notices
> Of course, governmental participation in content moderation processes raises First Amendment issues not present with non-governmental inputs
With their overall opinion being something like "content moderation is normal, the government flagging content is also normal, and there are instances where the government's flagging of content moderation can be fine & not run afoul of 1A, but there are instances where it can, and we urge the court to think"
Note in this case, the platform was removing the content. The government was, in one respect, merely asking. (There were assertions that in other instances, such as public statements, the case was less so.) The court eventually ruled, and the ruling I saw from the 5th circuit seemed reasonable. (I think that was a preliminary injunction. AIUI, the case as a whole was never ruled on, because the Trump administration took over.)
claiming there was rampant "censorship of conservative opinions" is about as honest as claiming that the Romans were being persecuted by first century christians.
They also banned NY Post for publishing that Hunter Biden laptop story. Which as much of a nothingburger as that story was, it's insane to get banned for that.
Yeah, I remember when the "Twitter Files" were being released and it turned out that Twitter was illegitimately censoring leaked nudes of Hunter Biden. Whyever would non-consensually posted nudes be taken down other than the suppression of conservatism?
They were also censoring Biden's ties to Ukraine. If you'd actually read any coverage on it that wasn't left wing, you would have known that instead of spinning up this strawman version of what happened.
I'm not making a strawman, there were specific post IDs cited by the Twitter Files as being illegitimate suppression, you could stick them into the Wayback Machine and see that they were literally just photos of Hunter Biden's dick.
This Hunter Biden shit is a good example. It was all over the place all the time. I don't even live in the US and kept stumbling on people talking about it in social media.
Conservative talking points are everywhere, even when I try to avoid them myself (for example, on fucking YouTube I am often recommended right wing bullshit when I view anything more political).
Right wingers are always very soy. For people that for years complained about oppression olympics they can't seem to stop crying about being oppressed even when in power.
> [group of people] are evil and don't deserve to be happy"
Most of the times I’ve seen such statements on Twitter, the [group of people was one of: men, white people, straight people, cisgender people. Something tells me those statements were not made by conservatives…
Yes, EFF is a civil liberties group and always has been, which makes it a purely ideological movement.
Let's be honest and look at the engagement numbers of the post announcing this:
X post: 124 comments, 79 reblogs, and 337 likes
BlueSky post: 245 comments, 1400 reblogs, and 6.2K likes
Mastodon post: 403 reposts, 458 likes
These numbers, combined with the facts that Mastodon and BlueSky are aligned with internet freedoms while X is strongly aligned against internet freedoms, make for a clear-and-cut case that it's past time to leave the platform.
Just one example, but having to be logged in to view most content on there was a recent change that made it pretty hostile to the openness of the web platform.
You can find links to other criticisms of twitter in TFA:
Surely if you read the article you read the “But You're Still on Facebook and TikTok?” section and don’t need me to explain what it said - but i can summarize:
Twitter is un-aligned with their goals, and has dismal reach. Facebook and instagram are unaligned with their goals and are how they reach a lot of new people.
Not super complicated, tho if i am reading between the lines - calling out the numbers feels like a call to action for other orgs. Suggesting they run their own numbers, and get off twitter.
Banned third party clients and interoperability. Use their software to access your data on their servers, on their terms, or get shut down. Hard to think of anything more anti-internet freedom. I left when they did that, years ago.
They would not be able to enforce it on desktop computers, short of banning every user one-at-a-time, but they can easily blanket-ban it on mobile phones by requesting Apple and Google remove unauthorized third-party clients from their app stores. (Which they will do. Apple even lists unauthorized clients for services controlled by other parties as against the rules. Whatever that means.)
Probably not, and I've never used any of those, and never will. X used to, and then stopped, so I left. Not interested in using a service that asks you to put your effort into it and then tries to turn its control against you. Especially when there are other options.
I don't like it and I haven't used it since before the whole nazi salute thing. I feel gross just accidentally following links to that place. Why would I support it or the people who use it?
That's a great reason for people like me to not use it, and I assume for people like you also, but it's not the question that organisations like the EFF need to ask.
No, the relevant questions for the EFF are the ones that the EFF put into their blog post to explain why they're not on X despite remaining on e.g. Facebook, which may or may not be the same as this tweet (I don't read tweets but did read the blog post): https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eff-leaving-x
He says here about an interface change. I've noticed this change. The sites are opening in a kind of sub window with the feedback UI still visible. I found this annoying but now I see the point.
- Greater user control how is any of the other platforms they have no problem with any different than twitter?
- Real security improvements where is end to end encryption on all the other social media? And why do they need end to end encryption to broadcast a message to the public?
- Transparent content moderation wait, the EFF is now calling for more censorship?
The first two points are clearly nonsensical, only the third one has at least some logic. Though if the EFF has turned pro-censorship, I am having bad feeling for having given them money in the past.
What does it say? EFF has not bothered to engage with basically anyone that replies to them on X the platform at least since Dec 1, 2025. Searching for EFF replies from older posts also shows that they basically never engage with X users, apart from using it as an advertising firehose.
If they spent any appreciable amount of time replying to people and not just themselves, their X impressions would be considerably larger. X themselves has been clear that engagement weights impressions/recommendations/algorithmic display, and EFF has done none of that.
It looks to me like a people at EFF problem, not an X problem.
> EFF has not bothered to engage with basically anyone that replies to them on X the platform
Huh wow, that almost sounds like the interactions on X are low quality and not worth replying to. I can't tell because I don't have an X account and you can't view replies without one anymore, but every time I have seen the replies to posts on X they're always flooded with hate, bots, and scams. Seems like a good reason to leave.
>then say they will still be on BlueSky and Mastodon then you know it's purely ideological.
Both Bluesky and Mastodon are open/federated networks, which aligns more with EFF's values. So, yes, but I don't think for the reasons you're hinting at.
Yeah, I'm confused. Why say one thing when you mean another?
Maybe I need to re-evaluate some of the youtube people that I stopped watching because they were so carefully neutral, not wanting to offend the nazis, I thought. Perhaps that's just american culture to try to avoid politics at all cost and I shouldn't view it like they sympathize with that camp?
(To provide context, I'm from the Netherlands. I know we sit, ehm, 'far right' on the honesty spectrum but I hadn't the impression that American culture was very different in that regard, at least if you adjust the scales of pleasantries and exuberism to our usual range, which this EFF post has none of)
Edit: what u/ceejayoz said downthread <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706961> could be the answer: it is about the numbers, but you have to offset them for how many other people think you're an ass for being there. Nobody thinks you're an ass if you're on Mastodon, you're just posting to whatever server you think fits your niche best, so even if that were only a few thousand views per post then that math might work out to better publicity than ten times as many views and hanging out on X.com
Which is fine but just be honest about it.