On Fri, 24 Jan 2025 at 09:16, Mathieu Pasquet <mathieui(a)mathieui.net> wrote: that we take this topic to the mailing list, so I will be doing just that. 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. am. reached. There was some support last year for not disrupting things in a knee-jerk reaction, and the conclusion was to "wait and see". I think all we've seen is more reason to leave. I remain of the opinion that the value of being on that platform has been small or negative for quite some time, and has been decreasing for years. I won't be sad to see the XSF leave it. As pointed out in the chat, I think there are many reasons to leave, and I think these days anyone would struggle to find a reason to remain. Regards, Matthew

I fully agree to all of this. I'd prefer for the XSF to postpone the political discussion as long as possible (not very optimistic how long that will be, open technology is becoming more political fast). Fortunately we don't need the political discussion right now: the platform degraded so much that the case is clear cut. And feel free to ask my personal opinion if you are in for an hour of ranting... Winfried On 24 January 2025 15:51:55 CET, Dave Cridland <dave(a)cridland.net> wrote: First, the boring bits: I don't think this needs a vote at all - though if it gets one, it's binding. Outside of a vote taking it out of their hands, it's a decision for the comms team. Second, my opinion as Board Member: For me, it comes down to cost/benefit. The-social-network-formally-known-as-Twitter has always had the not-insignificant cost, for the XSF, of being a closed platform that we don't support, condone, or promote anyway. Yet we've been on it, as an organisation, for years, because it was a useful mode of outreach. If this outreach has dropped significantly - or indeed if we no longer have the data to know - then its utility is at an end. But I would also not rush into ditching it without having a replacement outreach in place - and I'd love to see that being one or more gateways from something we do want to support, condone, and promote. (Mattermost? Movim?). As for Musk's behaviour, this also pushes a thumb on the side of the scales marked "cost". I don't think the XSF particularly needs a public opinion on whether he was deliberately mimicking a Nazi salute - the decrease in the utility of the platform is quite enough reason. There's plenty of places banning links to the platform, now, and these things mean that actively engaging on the platform has significant downsides. However, that all said, we should shutter, not close, the account to avoid anyone else from obtaining the name - and if the platform is actually useful to us, we should continue to use it. So first and foremost, I'd like to hear from the Comms Team operating the account, and I'd support a Board-level vote to act as an umbrella for any political fallout from this - though as I note, this is not a political decision but one based on utility alone, even if politics almost certainly has had an effect on utility. Third, my personal opinion: So, you'll note I'm being cautious of stating my opinion in terms of how I think the XSF should act. You may from that be drawing the conclusion that I am some kind of Musk fanboi. I shall now disabuse you of this notion - but still, in general terms I do try to keep my personal opinions away from what I think the XSF should do. I always thought Musk was a twat, and have long refused to consider one of his products for that reason alone, but he really seems to have gone off the deep end now. Either he's accidentally managed a Nazi salute, in the style of Hitler at a rally, or he's done so deliberately - either way he's avoiding apologising, and making it clear that's not what he meant, and condemning Nazism. Instead he's smirking and being "edgy". What a fucking pillock. Dave. On Fri, 24 Jan 2025 at 09:16, Mathieu Pasquet <mathieui(a)mathieui.net> wrote: 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-verifica… [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/04/elon-musk-x-trump-far-ri… [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) [4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/21/the-gesture-speaks-for-i… [5] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/elon-musk-twitter-transgender-hate-speec… [6] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/17/business/elon-musk-reveals-his-actual-tr… [7] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kez8d2dygo [8] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/01/10/on-x-elon-musk-n… [9] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/elon-musk-turned-x-trump-echo-cha… [10] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1elddq34p7o [11] https://logs.xmpp.org/xsf/2024-03-07#2024-03-07-3bb85c8d4955ac0d -- Normally there is some text here, bragging about the new phone and excusing for the brevity. That is insane: if this phone was really that great, I would have sent a decent mail.

On X specifically, if we would decide to stop posting there, we should definitely not close the account. There is a lot of historic discussions there, and I'd hate to see that disappear.

On Sat, 25 Jan 2025 at 00:55, Travis Burtrum &lt;travis(a)burtrum.org <mailto:travis@burtrum.org>> wrote: On 1/24/25 10:40 AM, Ralph Meijer wrote: should discussions They have already disappeared, can you link to one that doesn't require logging in with a twitter account to see? Then it doesn't exist. Another good reason why we should stay off silos so that we don't have future important discussions that disappear. That argument is dubious, since if "you need to log in" is a gating factor, then email, Mattermost, and indeed XMPP are all problematic. If you mean "an account on a specific silo", then it's simply a restatement of your first argument.

On Samstag, 25. Januar 2025 22:07:16 MEZ Goffi wrote: But should we keep it in order to avoid someone else registering the same name and use it for bad purposes? I am sure we can't control all places where this is linked as the XSF's Twitter account.

Hello all, Thank ypu for the input. I have been reading the entire discussion and summarized as: * a majority in this thread advocates to leave the platform for multiple reasons * we should not delete the account due to control and archive I would like to add that if we leave the platform for political reasons, we will in my opinion also need to abandon the use of for example LinkedIn, Google Summer of Code, GitHub and YouTube. I think such a political position does also not allow other certain activities. That is not a good step in my opinion. In the end I will not take the decision here and make this to at least board or a member vote. Last but not least I also critizise the discussion and tone around this topic. This got worse in recent years and I am very sick of many people not being able to reflect their own behavior, their own media consumption while blaming others where they can. Cheers, Eddie 5 feb 2025 14:16:15 Ralph Meijer &lt;ralphm(a)ik.nu&gt;nu>: > On 03/02/2025 17.33, Jonas Schäfer wrote: >> On Samstag, 25. Januar 2025 22:07:16 MEZ Goffi wrote: >>> I'm not even in favor of maintaining an account as the archive can't be >>> consulted without registration. Instead, any tool to dump the archive should >>> be used, and we could display it anywhere. >> But should we keep it in order to avoid someone else registering the same name >> and use it for bad purposes? >> >> I am sure we can't control all places where this is linked as the XSF's >> Twitter account. > > Yes. > > In my opinion, removing past posts from X (whether we keep the account or not to prevent squatting) does not serve a clear purpose. Those who do not want to be there will not look there. I appreciate that people in our community may have stopped using X for whatever reason. Individual posts remain available without logging in, but I agree that not being able to see all of our posts in one view is regrettable. > > However, I personally remain a user of X as one of many sources of information and a way to communicate with other users (still) there. Removing past information there (I guess for any account), including its original context and responses, is a significant loss to me. I am sure I am not alone in this. > > I have been surprised and disappointed by the labeling of people using certain social networks in this thread. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but that does not mean that others have to agree. If we want to be a truly open organization, this has to include difference of opinion and choice. > > Separate from my personal use of X or my private (!) opinion on particular individuals, I do not think the XSF should take a stance in that debate. Staying there does not mean that the XSF, its members, or the XMPP community in general, somehow validates other people's (mis)behavior there. It is not up to the XSF to arbitrate which platforms are "ok" and which are not. > > As I said before, if there is utility in letting people in other circles (than those who want nothing to do with X) know about what we do, then we should continue to post on X (too). I personally think there is. If none of the current individual Comms team members want to be part of that, we can figure that out separately. This might also be a good time to point out that we have not posted to X since 9 November 2024. > > Just like last week, I will happily discuss my personal opinions over a beverage. Or something else entirely. > > -- > ralphm

Hello all, Thank ypu for the input. I have been reading the entire discussion and summarized as: * a majority in this thread advocates to leave the platform for multiple reasons * we should not delete the account due to control and archive I would like to add that if we leave the platform for political reasons, we will in my opinion also need to abandon the use of for example LinkedIn, Google Summer of Code, GitHub and YouTube. I think such a political position does also not allow other certain activities. That is not a good step in my opinion. In the end I will not take the decision here and make this to at least board or a member vote. Last but not least I also critizise the discussion and tone around this topic. This got worse in recent years and I am very sick of many people not being able to reflect their own behavior, their own media consumption while blaming others where they can. Cheers, Eddie 5 feb 2025 14:16:15 Ralph Meijer&lt;ralphm(a)ik.nu&gt;nu>: > On 03/02/2025 17.33, Jonas Schäfer wrote: >> On Samstag, 25. Januar 2025 22:07:16 MEZ Goffi wrote: >>> I'm not even in favor of maintaining an account as the archive can't be >>> consulted without registration. Instead, any tool to dump the archive should >>> be used, and we could display it anywhere. >> But should we keep it in order to avoid someone else registering the same name >> and use it for bad purposes? >> >> I am sure we can't control all places where this is linked as the XSF's >> Twitter account. > Yes. > > In my opinion, removing past posts from X (whether we keep the account or not to prevent squatting) does not serve a clear purpose. Those who do not want to be there will not look there. I appreciate that people in our community may have stopped using X for whatever reason. Individual posts remain available without logging in, but I agree that not being able to see all of our posts in one view is regrettable. > > However, I personally remain a user of X as one of many sources of information and a way to communicate with other users (still) there. Removing past information there (I guess for any account), including its original context and responses, is a significant loss to me. I am sure I am not alone in this. > > I have been surprised and disappointed by the labeling of people using certain social networks in this thread. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but that does not mean that others have to agree. If we want to be a truly open organization, this has to include difference of opinion and choice. > > Separate from my personal use of X or my private (!) opinion on particular individuals, I do not think the XSF should take a stance in that debate. Staying there does not mean that the XSF, its members, or the XMPP community in general, somehow validates other people's (mis)behavior there. It is not up to the XSF to arbitrate which platforms are "ok" and which are not. > > As I said before, if there is utility in letting people in other circles (than those who want nothing to do with X) know about what we do, then we should continue to post on X (too). I personally think there is. If none of the current individual Comms team members want to be part of that, we can figure that out separately. This might also be a good time to point out that we have not posted to X since 9 November 2024. > > Just like last week, I will happily discuss my personal opinions over a beverage. Or something else entirely. > > -- > ralphm

Sorry seems i sent this privately instead of list for some reason. I apologize. Correct me if I am wrong, but the platforms you mention: - Do not have an owner that is a nazi and does nazi salutes on national television - Have adequate moderation so that conspiracy theories, racism and anti-semetism don't spread. So this argument sounds to me like it misses the point of why people want to leave Twiiter. I urge Trung, Ralph, you and the whole XSF membership really to think on that and also read https://aftermath.site/god-is-a-geek-calvin-robinson-nazi-salute-elon-musk Which says how the entire writing team of a news site quit their job because the owner did also a nazi salute on national television. And reflect why don't we follow the same example and stop associating with platforms and people who are fine with nazis. Let me also point out (I become a broken record a bit I know) that our CoC is explicitly against racism and also implicitly against transphobia that Twitter doesn't seem to care about https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0458.html#pick-your-words So I also urge the XMPP membership to consider (and speak up please :) ) about following our own CoC and principles. MSavoritias E.M. kirjoitti 10.2.2025 klo 22.35: > Hello all, > > Thank ypu for the input. I have been reading the entire discussion and summarized as: > > * a majority in this thread advocates to leave the platform for multiple reasons > * we should not delete the account due to control and archive > > I would like to add that if we leave the platform for political reasons, we will in my opinion also need to abandon the use of for example LinkedIn, Google Summer of Code, GitHub and YouTube. I think such a political position does also not allow other certain activities. > > That is not a good step in my opinion. > > In the end I will not take the decision here and make this to at least board or a member vote. > > Last but not least I also critizise the discussion and tone around this topic. This got worse in recent years and I am very sick of many people not being able to reflect their own behavior, their own media consumption while blaming others where they can. > > Cheers, > Eddie > > 5 feb 2025 14:16:15 Ralph Meijer&lt;ralphm(a)ik.nu&gt;nu>: > >> On 03/02/2025 17.33, Jonas Schäfer wrote: >>> On Samstag, 25. Januar 2025 22:07:16 MEZ Goffi wrote: >>>> I'm not even in favor of maintaining an account as the archive can't be >>>> consulted without registration. Instead, any tool to dump the archive should >>>> be used, and we could display it anywhere. >>> But should we keep it in order to avoid someone else registering the same name >>> and use it for bad purposes? >>> >>> I am sure we can't control all places where this is linked as the XSF's >>> Twitter account. >> Yes. >> >> In my opinion, removing past posts from X (whether we keep the account or not to prevent squatting) does not serve a clear purpose. Those who do not want to be there will not look there. I appreciate that people in our community may have stopped using X for whatever reason. Individual posts remain available without logging in, but I agree that not being able to see all of our posts in one view is regrettable. >> >> However, I personally remain a user of X as one of many sources of information and a way to communicate with other users (still) there. Removing past information there (I guess for any account), including its original context and responses, is a significant loss to me. I am sure I am not alone in this. >> >> I have been surprised and disappointed by the labeling of people using certain social networks in this thread. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but that does not mean that others have to agree. If we want to be a truly open organization, this has to include difference of opinion and choice. >> >> Separate from my personal use of X or my private (!) opinion on particular individuals, I do not think the XSF should take a stance in that debate. Staying there does not mean that the XSF, its members, or the XMPP community in general, somehow validates other people's (mis)behavior there. It is not up to the XSF to arbitrate which platforms are "ok" and which are not. >> >> As I said before, if there is utility in letting people in other circles (than those who want nothing to do with X) know about what we do, then we should continue to post on X (too). I personally think there is. If none of the current individual Comms team members want to be part of that, we can figure that out separately. This might also be a good time to point out that we have not posted to X since 9 November 2024. >> >> Just like last week, I will happily discuss my personal opinions over a beverage. Or something else entirely. >> >> -- >> ralphm

On Wed, 12 Feb 2025 at 12:27, MSavoritias &lt;email(a)msavoritias.me&gt; wrote: Let me also point out (I become a broken record a bit I know) that our CoC is explicitly against racism and also implicitly against transphobia that Twitter doesn't seem to care about https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0458.html#pick-your-words It's certainly intended to be explicitly against both. But to be horribly accurate, it's intention is to be against either being a factor in not being welcoming. Point is it's about actions not labels. Effects, rather than causes. People are biased and prejudiced in all manner of ways, and I certainly include myself there. But we should all strive to be welcoming nonetheless. So I also urge the XMPP membership to consider (and speak up please :) ) about following our own CoC and principles. The XSF doesn't use Twitter X in any way that contravenes the CoC, and nor should it. If the site's stated purpose was for racist and/or transphobic remarks, then that would indeed be an issue, but it's not. As I've said before, I'm absolutely fine with ceasing to use the site if we're not getting useful engagement. I'd imagine the most likely reason for not getting useful engagement is Musk right now, but that's a cause, not the effect, and it's the effect we should concentrate on *as an organisation*. Dave.