Personally, I think that the discussion around this will evolve as the news spreads, but I agree with Robert on this one. Sure, X/Twitter has become a less welcoming place than before, but shutting out a significant portion of your community without seeking their input first isn’t a sensible move for such a foundational open source project.
Nah, I think I’m cool if Debian doesn’t respect the input of Nazi sympathisers.
Yeah, that section is bad.
For one, it’s has classic vibe “if you want to keep the nazis out, you’re the one who’s exclusionary”.
But also, how is refusing to engage on a platform “shutting out a significant portion of [the] community”? That sounds backwards to me. Blocking people from engaging with Debian on its own platforms would be shutting them out. The implication in the article is that Debian is obligated to be unconditionally present on every social platform its users might be on.
The other twist is, unlike Xitter, you don’t have to create an account on Mastodon to be able to read their feed. You can access it like any other website. So nobody is getting shut out. They’re just posting elsewhere, where anyone can read it.
You don’t even have to go to the website. Every Mastodon feed can be accessed via RSS. You just have to add “.rss” to the end of the URL.
So Wayland?
Came here to make this joke. Was an hour too late…
Care to explain?
Does Wayland has its own Mastodon instance? If yes, they could do a funny.
They can be found on Mastodon here: @debian@framapiaf.org
In case that link doesn’t load for some users: https://framapiaf.org/@debian
For now that was just a bot mirroring posts. I don’t think they’ve said whether they’ll use that going forward.
It’s mirroring micronews.debian.org, not Twitter.
Good riddance. Stop using Nazi platforms and join the fediverse instead.
When it forces you to log in to view stuff, it’s usefulness as a platform for announcements is substantially lessened.
I’d even say, the usefullness is fully gone.
Wild that so many are still hanging out at the Nazi bar
Yes, I’m sadly surprised by many open source projects still posting on that cesspool
The problem is for organizations it’s harder to leave because that is where the people you want to reach are. That’s the only reason any org or company is on social media in the first place. If they leave too soon they risk too many people not seeing the things they send out to the community.
It’s more an individual thing because so many people just have social inertia and haven’t left since everyone they know is already there. The first to leave have to decide if they want to juggle using another platform to keep connections or cut off connections by abandoning the established platform.
That doesn’t explain why they don’t start a transition by posting to both the new platform and the old. And not including links to their new account on their websites.
Doesn’t Twitter directly suppress such links? I remember there was a crackdown on people linking their mastodon accounts a while back.
And external links in general get a huge suppression in the algorithm because Twitter does not want to recommend tweets that take you off the site.
The platform actively fights you if you want to move elsewhere (which should really be a telltale sign for you to move), so I get why some orgs struggle with that decision. Doubly so if your job relies on the platform’s outreach.
I’m talking about posting on their website a link to alternative social media accounts.
Because they allow smoking
Everyone who have use Twitter in the past 2 years is a nazi.
That’s a very silly take
shutting out a significant portion of your community without seeking their input first isn’t a sensible move for such a foundational open source project.
Ironic when X shuts out anyone who isn’t logged in and shuts out anyone who doesn’t pay for a blue checkmark from having visible replies.
Having an X account isn’t consequence-free - if it becomes where updates occur, people have to sign up for an account and subject themselves to nazis everywhere and all manner of crypto spam just to see updates. And they have to pay Elon tribute to be heard in response. It’s crazy that anyone sees it as being friendly to users.
Agreed. Notably, Bluesky doesn’t require an account to read posts.
Yet
I don’t know enough detail about ATproto, but I wonder if it’s technically possible to block access to posts without also blocking federation. From what I’ve heard the functionality is more modular than Activitypub (content indexing being a separate service from content hosting) so I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t possible.
Kinda wondering who in that community is going to bat for Elon Musk after the last two weeks.
Nazis.
Were they using Twitter to provide exclusive updates not available anywhere else?
My impression from the post is that they are publishing the exact same updates in multiple locations, including mastodon at https://framapiaf.org/@debian …so just because they were publishing in that one extra site to make it accessible to a particular subset of people does not mean all other people were being shut off from receiving updates.
However, I do agree with the move, but only because Debian being a FOSS initiative should stay away from proprietary platforms and promote FOSS.
I keep making the incorrect assumption that everyone has already left X. Just seems common sense we’ve hit all hands abandon ship
It’s just Debian, always behind.
Never underestimate the network effect and how reluctant people are to move to another social network. The masses just follow the crowd, so every big account moving out from there helps take more users away.
It’s a shame I haven’t seen more YouTubers leaving X, they all seem to use it to talk about whatever they do. Not that I watch a lot of YouTube these days but my family does, younger ones especially watch those minecraft SMP types. Its arguably the most toxic social media but “everyone’s on there”.
I liked this article about the whole ordeal so I’ll share it here: Why You’ll Leave X as well as instagram and all other private platforms
I keep making the incorrect assumption that everyone
Nicely concise description of bubble-dwelling.
There are lots of brands and people still on X and try to justify it with hand waving.
I still use it. For that which I engage, or who I engage with, it hasn’t changed for me. Almost 100% for metal bands. Tours, album releases. We have a pretty cool metal community going. People I’ve been speaking with for many years now.
Leaving a platform you don’t like, or the reasons you don’t like it, isn’t “common sense”.
I’m happy you’ve found a place to talk with people. I hope that space doesn’t get invaded by assholes
I don’t mind, actually everyone should ditch Twatter.
& all the US-based corporate social media… Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Reddit, Discord, LinkedIn, & GitHub.
The VC-funded ones too like BlueSky
all of the corporate social media tbh. federation is the way out of this cycle.
Nail on the head… it isn’t about one particular service or protocol but the philosophy of federation
In any case, RSS should be enough.
“640k should be enough for anybody”
I think Bluesky can be an exception. I think it’s way better than Mastodon from a UX standpoint. And it’s still open.
People just don’t learn.
And it’s still open.
It like chromium, control by for profit vc company.
No.
It costs literally hundreds of thousands of USD per month to run your own node. If it isn’t accessible to the masses, it isn’t revolutionary. De facto centralization due to prohibitively expensive costs is effectively centralization—same reason we should not trust a platform like Matrix.
Bluesky is just another startup grifting with open washing. It has all the same VC-funded trappings where the history of Twitter will literally just repeat itself—like we didn’t see what happened with it the first time around.
Mastodon can improve its UX but some of these platforms are rotten to the core. Or also use something on ActivityPub that does have a UX you like since they can all intercommunicate—or XMPP PubSub Social Feed since it has stricter governance to prevent it from getting too messy.
I’ve managed to ditch every single one of those except LinkedIn. We simply CANNOT get new clients without it. The lockin to that platform is truly terrifying. LinkedIn is a crime against humanity.
Question: how is LinkedIn useful to you?
For me it’s just a non-stop swarm of recruiters from India who want me to kindly listen to their offer of a job that pays less than I’d make picking up garbage, utter sociopaths dredging up some psychotic hustle culture nonsense, and previous people I’ve worked with/for asking for favors, which of course means free.
Is it somehow more useful for an actual business?
Microsoft bought these social media platforms like LinkedIn & GitHub for this very reason. They want you stuck in their ecosystems …then train their proprietary AIs on your communications, then sell it back to you when you were the one that made it.
I didn’t really need another reason to love Debian more but here we are… I’m donating to Debian today
Debian continues to be one of the best distros ever made. If I had the means, it would get funding every time I run apt update.
Oh I like that rhythm.
"I’m lock up, no way Corps and hearsay Brought me to jail FOSS not too late
All I say is I’m donating to debian today"
shutting out a significant portion of your community without seeking their input first isn’t a sensible move for such a foundational open source project.
It actually is a perfectly sensible move, and it doesn’t “shut out” anyone. If anything, prioritizing twitter is what shuts users out. They linked to two-three alternatives. What’s the argument here, exactly, from the other side?
I think the argument is that those alternatives already existed before. Twitter was not being prioritized, it was essentially mirroring the content already available in RSS, mastodon, etc. So effectively, there’s now one less place where the news will be visible.
However, I do agree with the move, but only because Debian being a FOSS initiative should stay away from proprietary platforms and promote FOSS, even if it means effectively “shutting off” a portion of users who don’t wanna leave the twitter bubble.
… Debian was on twitter??
My town’s subreddit just started a policy to disallow links to X for similar reasons.
There is a movement to avoid the platform.
As it turns out, having an account on a social media platform full of Nazis, violent racists, and child diddlers is not good for business.
The reasons (summarized using Copilot):
- The platform no longer aligns with Debian’s values, social contract, code of conduct, and diversity statement.
- Concerns over X becoming a place where people they care about don’t feel safe.
- Abuse on the platform happening without consequences.
- Issues with misinformation and lack of moderation.
bad bot
Did it make a mistake?
Doesn’t look like it… It’s ‘AI bad’.
AI is bad!
We don’t need to use all this water and energy just to avoid having to click on news articles.
I wonder where you draw the line of when the use of resources for technology is okay and when it isn’t.
Ah I see. This is getting ridiculous.
The lesson is to just not cite when you use AI.
