[Members] Re: Removing the XSF presence on Twitter/X

Good day everyone, The topic has come up in the xsf@ chatroom, and it has been suggested that we take this topic to the mailing list, so I will be doing just that. Twitter was never a spotless social network (is there any?), but it did allow at one point somewhat global communication; nowadays it is mostly a far-right echo chamber [1][2], that its owner (a man who is very used to racist dogwhistles [3][4], transphobic discourse [5], and other ways [6] of denying the humanity of a sizeable portion of the world’s population, essentially a 4chan troll, which is quite clear for anyone who has seen him tweet) is using to propel his nazi or nazi-adjacent champions [7][8][9] across the world in the hope that they win elections. My personal opinion is that staying there is not taking a neutral political stance., if that is something the XSF is interested in. Moreover, and this might be of interest to people all over the political spectrum (in a way that supporting human rights is sadly not anymore), the reach that the platform could allow is simply gone, because all the features and algorithms have been tweaked over the year to promote clashes, insults, and divisive content [10], something I do not believe the XSF wants to engage in. We are already on mastodon, with much better numbers (and probably more actual people), and if we are not on BlueSky we can either use a bridge to appear there, or open an account there and hope it will also be a decentralized network one day. I assume this needs a decision by the board or a member vote, so here I am. The topic came up last year [11] but I do not believe a decision was reached. I know the topic can be somewhat divisive, but I believe the mailing list can be a better venue to discuss it than the chatroom. Regards, Mathieu [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/15/elon-musk-twitter-blue-checks-verificat ion-disinformation-propaganda-russia-china-trust-safety/ [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/04/elon-musk-x-trump-far-rig ht [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) [4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/21/the-gesture-speaks-for-it self-germans-divided-over-musks-apparent-nazi-salute [5] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/elon-musk-twitter-transgender-hate-speech -b2351923.html [6] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/17/business/elon-musk-reveals-his-actual-tru th/index.html [7] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kez8d2dygo [8] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/01/10/on-x-elon-musk-no rmalizes-the-german-far-right_6736904_4.html [9] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/elon-musk-turned-x-trump-echo-cham ber-rcna174321 [10] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1elddq34p7o [11] https://logs.xmpp.org/xsf/2024-03-07#2024-03-07-3bb85c8d4955ac0d