I just checked their Facebook and X page. The X page is getting much more eyes. For instance, they posted their article "The FAA’s “Temporary” Flight Restriction for Drones is a Blatant Attempt to Criminalize Filming ICE" to both accounts. The results:

X: 1,500 likes, 50 comments, 846 shares.

Facebook: 58 likes, 8 comments, 22 shares.

Bluesky: 94 likes, 3 comments, 51 shares.

Interesting indeed. The story doesn't seem to be radically different on TikTok. It goes up to 15K views, that's still 3 times less than X.

Seems clear while their reach has decreased over time, it's still the highest on X.

I do agree with the decision, but declining reach is not the primary reason, it is merely what got them over the line.

I think it has been proven again and again that these "engagement numbers" are a mix of bots, social media company itself trying to inflate the numbers, and real engagement. Unless there is an impartial third party, these numbers are there to attract advertisers. In this situation, I would trust the source themselves, i.e. account holders.

Yeah, the idea that this is simply, mostly or even partly about engagement/eyes is bunk on it's face. I'd even argue it a bad faith position to defend.

You realize these numbers are meaningless right?

Even if you assumed there isn't some Elon "like multiplier" being applied to these numbers, the amount of bot activity on X is staggering.

You have no idea how many humans are being reached without metrics about links being followed.

but the article opening with a paragraph saying "The Numbers Aren’t Working Out".

One can't justify quitting because the number is falling, and claims the number does not matter at the same time. or can it?

Much fewer bots on X than Facebook. I think you are completely wrong.

Likes are obviously correlated with the number of views a post gets. I am not sure what point you are trying to make.

That assumption is only true if there is no manipulation of likes. I believe that the presence of bot farms has been extensively documented by now, which should disprove the usefulness of likes on any social media platform nowadays.

You are making lots of assumptions when evaluating GitHub projects that you aren’t writing here.

GH stars can indicate: which of many forks of a repo might be the most active, which of many projects in a category might be the most used/trusted, the growth trajectory of a projects (stars over time).

But it's worth their time to stay on platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon? Something isn't adding up.

You can just look at the numbers. They're seeing 15x more engagement on BlueSky, and even more engagement on Mastodon compared to X:

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

There's more ROI posting on BlueSky or Mastodon, even ignoring the fact that BlueSky and Mastodon are projects clearly more aligned with internet freedom than X is.

(edited for clarity)

Which post are you looking at? I just posted the numbers for the first post I could find that was the same across X, Bluesky, and Facebook (a little hard since the feeds for all three are different). The X post had 16 times the number of likes as Bluesky and 26 times the number of likes as Facebook. The X post had 17 times the number of comments as Bluesky, 6 times the number as Facebook.

Your post made me randomly spot check another one from a month ago ("The U.S. government on Wednesday..."), the numbers aren't quite as drastic but X is still ahead. Likes/comment shares:

X: 280, 4, 172.

Bluesky: 182, 2, 98.

Because of the algorithms I wouldn't be surprised if you'd be able to cherry pick some Bluesky post that's ahead. But a casual browse through both feeds makes it look like X gets much more engagement.

The people on BlueSky and Mastodon aren't the people they need to convince in the correctness of their message.

If you actually care about getting your point across, hostile environments are exactly the place that you need to be broadcasting. Especially when they haven't put up any barriers for you.

EFF leadership just totally doesn't get it.

Unless the goal isn't what they say it is and they just need the cheerleading squad to make it look like their fundraising is effective.

If an organisation had any serious chance of moving the needle by staying on X, musk would simply find a reason to ban them. X leadership isn't interested in fair and balanced discussion.

An online argument has NEVER EVER EVER changed anyone's mind.

Source: I've argued with strangers on the internet since the mid-90's.

Don't feed the trolls was the rule back then when trolls were just actual people arguing for the sake of getting a reaction - and now the trolls are either a piece of software connected to a language model or paid to argue in bad faith. Like WOPR says: the only winning move is not to play.

This just fundamentally isn't true. What people see online massively influences how they think, to the extent that entire media conglomerates have been bought and sold to do exactly that.

I specifically said "online argument". You talking to someone online, in text format. You can change people's minds in video calls, sometimes. No amount of 1-on-1 online discourse has ever changed anyone's mind on anything.

The general sentiment people observe online definitely changes how they think, it moves the Overton Window considerably. And that's exactly what the bots[0] on Twitter and other platforms like TikTok do, they argue about whatever they get paid to argue for in bad faith, endlessly.

People see this, not knowing it's all artificial, and go "ooh, MANY PEOPLE think like this" and start thinking it's normal to think like that.

[0] I'm using "bot" as shorthand here for bad faith actors, usually the first level is just spamming static canned arguments, stage two is some kind of smart system that responds to the replies somewhat in context and stage three will ping an actual human who will come in with VERY specific deep-cut arguments.

Source: I argue online a lot for fun and relaxation.

So how do you know you've never changed someone's mind? Also, the opposite is just retreating to echo chambers where everyone agrees?

I personally don't care if EFF leaves X. However the message in the article does not line up, it's a bad decision and not justified by the reasons cited.

TBH echo chambers are just fine as long as you know you're in one.

I have peeked outside of my curated chamber and the people in there are completely batshit insane. Like objectively not following any sane logic or reason. And no amount of online discourse will not make them change their ways unless they WANT to change.

They're still on youtube with low hundreds of views. Surely video content requires more effort to boot.

cant they just copy an paste the same messages? like are they trying to manage critical 'seconds' and the eff?

And the EFF is also looking at conversion rates for those views. Are you convinced that the Elon-pilled still on X are interested in donations to the EFF compared with the weirdos on Mastodon?

This is on point but someone is taking offense by being called a "weirdo" (thus the down votes, I think). Yes, we are weirdos on alternate social media, just like we are weirdos who use Linux, Emacs, write Lisp, etc.. It's weird, i.e.: Unusual. "Geek" might have been a better term to use though.

Geeks and weirdos donate to EFF. :)

On average, they're getting <9,000 views per post on X. With 100 - 150K followers on both Bluesky and Mastodon, I'd expect their impressions to beat those X numbers.

But as they say in the article, their reason for leaving isn't solely the low impressions. It's the low impressions, plus "Musk fired the entire human rights team and laid off staffers in countries where the company previously fought off censorship demands from repressive regimes," plus X's unwillingness to give users more control, consider end-to-end DM encryption, or offer transparent moderation.

So the real reason is Musk, hidden amongst some platitudes to make the political motivation less obvious.

Its wild that we've gotten to the point that 'allows tyrants to silence users on their platform' is no longer something we're allowed to dislike without it being a 'political' stance. Some time in the last 30 years acting like a reasonable and decent human being became a political statement.

This is BS to be honest, they don't like Musk, which is ok, I have no problem with that. And they are reconstructing a reason to leave.

Musk fired 90+% of Twitter, not just the human rights team.

Bluesky and mastodon are the direction the EFF would like the internet to take, so their presence there is not tied to effectiveness in the same way.

The reason to leave ex-twitter and the reason to keep using lesser platforms may not be the same reason.

Probably the reason EFF keeps using mastodon/bluesky is not for reach, but to support federated platforms.

As an activist organization EFF needs reach people, but also it needs to show people alternatives to surveillance capitalism exist and encourage their use.

There's presumably engagement on those two.

It's better to have a smaller core of highly engaged people than a mass of disengaged eyeballs glazing over.

"...and we win by putting our time, skills, and members’ support where they will have the most impact. Right now, that means Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube"

So pretty much all major sites except X. They are saying LinkedIn is more important to reach people than X, really?

Does it have to be either/or?

Volunteer your time to do a dual strategy with content that fits both. Comms takes time, the EFF is adapting its comm strategy.

Surely copy-pasting a short text and possibly a link is not actual work that takes time.

All they would need to do is set up some cross-posting pipeline and the work would be pretty much zero.

They could even drive people to click on mastodon/bsky links this way if they wanted people to go to the decentralized web.

This take is not valid.

Pushing messages out to multiple platforms is a solved problem. Parent said

> It's better to have a smaller core of highly engaged people than a mass of disengaged eyeballs glazing over.

which to me, it's better to spew a message out into the ether with the chance that someone might happen upon it rather than close things off entirely.

Retreating into smaller and smaller echo chambers where they get their way?

They're also still posting on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube (in addition to BlueSky and Mastodon). It's silly to suggest that anything outside of X is an echo chamber, or that one must communicate on a platform dominated by white supremacists to expose your ideas to a diverse audience.

Well, perhaps it's time to reconsider your perception of Bluesky and Mastodon.

Worth the time? Can you not just use some automation or tool to post your stuff to multiple platforms including X?

I find it really hard to believe that even with lower views on X than the past, that it's literally not worth the tiny about of effort to get their messages posted there.