Those concerns have evolved away from their original mission. Not an unusual situation for organizations like this as a they shrink and lose relevance.
This does not address the substance of the comment you are replying to. In fact, that comment was itself replying to a comment making the same argument you are making, explicitly explaining why it is non-sequitur.
You discussed two distinct groups: "certain ideological concerns" and "the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about". I think you're getting this type of response because many of us can't see any actual difference between those two groups besides your own politics and assumptions.
It's an association fallacy - Musk may be a radical extremist on the right, and a technology mogul, you may find yourself aligning with some of his world views (not all of them, remember he is an extremist relative to yourself).
So when people support EFF's technological goals (freedoms for users on technology platforms), if they are themselves possibly on the right, they project their own values onto the organization or system (which here is the EFF).
Never-mind if some of those values are incompatible with the values you think you hold (being authoritarian generally is incompatible with being not being authoritarian about technology). When someone points out the (otherwise obvious) contradiction to you, you're surprised that your set of values is incongruous.
Now this can happen to anyone coming from any political starting point, they agree with something but find it doesn't quite fit with their world views. If you are deeply religious about it, you tend to hold on for dear life and either decide to "pick" on set of values over another (suddenly you realize, actually, yes you would like to enslave everyone) or engage in some form of hypocrisy or another (authoritarians are good, but for some reason or the other I'm going to make an exception for technology).
I dunno. My understanding of coalition building is "we disagree about a bunch of stuff, but we agree on this one thing, so let's work together on it". You seem to be saying: "if you disagree with me on the other stuff, your agreement on this thing is rooted in a contradictory value system you haven't fully examined".
Values have a hierarchy. You can't (effectively) agree to painting everything the color blue, if you can't agree what the color blue is.
And you will run into a very similar issue when everyone starts objecting to the pink you have spread everywhere, despite supposedly agreeing to the color scheme.
I guess, to use the terms of your analogy, I don't think people disagree on what blue is. "Don't add backdoors to e2e encryption" is blue; and plenty of people who are coded all over the political/ideological spectrum recognize it as blue and want the wall to be blue.
You seem to be saying that people can't paint together unless everyone agrees on who holds the brush, what brand of brush is used, and what everyone's broader philosophy of painting is.
But then you go on to describe exactly what @Brendinooo described, just under the guise of your system of "value hierarchy." The problem is that you can always default to "our values are hierarchically misaligned" and then never have to do any coalition building ever.
So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you can't.
Hierarchical values are just that. Not wholesale. We call that nonsense, e.g. I believe pigs can fly, therefore the sky is red. They are making an ontological error.
For a Christian, a top maxim in their value hierarchy would be rooted in Jesus' famous commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind." Now, if you're an atheist, this might be nonsense to you. You might not believe that Jesus was resurrected or that God even exists. To you, these are fundamentally irrational statements ("pigs can fly," etc.). Under your system, if you were an atheist and your opposition was a Christian, you could never possibly build a coalition because there's a disagreement at the top of the value hierarchy.
But this seems wrong because people of different creeds and value systems do stuff together all the time. Or am I misunderstanding your point? What I understand @Brendinooo to be saying is: "we may not share the same moral framework (or value hierarchy, using your term), but we do agree on X, so let's do X."
I don't know, I've noticed this in the right as well. I think there's always some degree of purity-testing to any community, though I agree there is more on the current (radical?) progressive end than average.
I can't definitively give you a top three and honestly don't see any value in ranking them like that. I would simply describe them as the ACLU for technology and the Internet in that they fight for general civil liberties. X and more specifically Elon Musk have shown that they are on the opposite side when it comes to many of those civil liberties even if they all agree on some other issues. Online censorship (both explicit and through algorithmic bias) is the most obvious example that bridges your two distinct groups. Musk might claim he agrees with the EFF on that, but through his and X's actions, it's clear he doesn't.
EFF has basically only succeeded in defending Section 230, which makes me wonder if the people who talk in this article and the people elsewhere on HN denouncing Section 230 know about each other.
There's been a lot of misinformation around section 230 in the last several years. This might be helpful, either as something to give out or to receive, depending.
Just noting that I saw this, but I don't really see a point in replying outside of this comment at this time because I don't feel the need to prove myself to you, and I don't know how I could change what I'm writing to satisfy you personally anyways.
> I think you're getting this type of response because many of us can't see any actual difference between those two groups besides your own politics and assumptions.
I think that is why, yes.
I also think the differences are really obvious, and I genuinely can't understand why so many people here can't see that.
This might be the most interesting insight I gained by commenting here today. I expected people to be on board with it; I didn't expect people to be so acclimated to it that they don't even see how others might notice it.
My original comment did not claim that they were not ideological and it did not claim that that they do not do political activism, so a reply of "[o]f course they care about ideological concerns" makes no sense to me.
You said the "statement pretty clearly shows that they have certain ideological concerns..." like you were uncovering some hidden truth or gotcha in between the lines here. Was that not what you intended to write?
And then like what is the point of your original comment if you agree that what you could only deduce earlier is now an obvious truism?
IIUC, "clearly shows" doesn't apply to "they have certain concerns" but rather to the part that you replaced with "...". In other words "the statement clearly shows that they value [their certain concerns] more highly than the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about"
He's saying that they have ideological concerns beyond the ideological concerns you would tend to associate with the EFF (digital privacy, open source, patent trolling, etc). I for one am sad to see that this is the case. There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.
The linked blog post specifically states that they're leaving Twitter because they have been silenced by the platform and, as a result, no longer consider it a viable communication vehicle. That it's owned and operated by a nazi is icing on the shit cake.
Where do you see that? All I see is a claim that it no longer makes sense from a financial standpoint (but no comparative numbers provided for the other platforms they are keeping, which is sus, especially given their presence on very niche platforms like Bluesky), and vague justifications based on identity politics and "community care" loci, which is either nonsense or deep argot unsuitable for the intended audience.
This is an important point and it feels odd that the entire discussion seems to not be able to engage with it, but on another level it might be the same problem. As a long term financial support of the eff I'm starting to get the same awkward feelings that made me question my financial support for Mozilla and Wikipedia. Any time someone views the world through a single lens, it highlights some things and ignores others and it seems like a net loss to the world that everything is being forced into a being judged along a single (increasingly polarised) axis
A free and open society is a prerequisite for the rights EFF fight for. We cannot enjoy the freedoms of digital privacy in a an authoritarian regime. The rights to fight for EFFs concerns are currently being threated by the fascist turn of the USA. Thus, the EFF and other likeminded organizations are very much justified in leaving X.
> There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.
I would rather challenge this image that civilization is declining, independently of the political forces in power. This is a common motif in facism; I'm reading from your comment something along the lines of: "once we had noble organizations that were pure and didn't bother with ideology -- now things are worse, and in fact those guys are dirty for engaging in politics". What's really happening is that power in the US has been seized by fanatics and you fucks (respectfully) are letting them get away with it.
Disagree with so much here. But if, in your mind, the US is turning authoritarian, this is a "cut off your nose to spite your face" move. They should be taking the fight where it most needs fighting. They should not be making donors like myself question whether we still share objectives.
You are completely correct in your analysis. Reading some of the responses here - people who think the EFF should only fight for some rights for some people and only on corporate platforms instead of across society at large - would be shocking if I hadn’t already seen how willing rich tech bros are to overlook everyone and everything else for their own personal gain.
What are you talking about? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills reading these comments.
Do you not see that civil rights are being infringed _right now_, by the republican administration in our government? Protecting those civil rights will require criticizing and acting against republicans because the fascists on the right are trying to turn our country into an autocracy.
Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but you can’t be that fragile if you want to live in a free nation. The EFF taking a stand here is fighting EXACTLY the fight they need to be right now.
Those concerns have evolved away from their original mission. Not an unusual situation for organizations like this as a they shrink and lose relevance.
My sibling in sin, I have an EFF tee from about 2001-2002 that reads, in boldface, “FREE SPEECH HAS A POSSE”. They have always been broadly political.
This does not address the substance of the comment you are replying to. In fact, that comment was itself replying to a comment making the same argument you are making, explicitly explaining why it is non-sequitur.
Sad to hear. Can you help me understand its shrinkage and loss of relevancy?
What makes you think they are shrinking and losing relevance, other than feels?
[dead]
Where in my comment did I claim otherwise?
You discussed two distinct groups: "certain ideological concerns" and "the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about". I think you're getting this type of response because many of us can't see any actual difference between those two groups besides your own politics and assumptions.
You might be right; I don't know what the broad populace thinks of what EFF does.
I'll ask you then: What are the three main areas of advocacy where you think the EFF has been the most visible and/or effective?
It's an association fallacy - Musk may be a radical extremist on the right, and a technology mogul, you may find yourself aligning with some of his world views (not all of them, remember he is an extremist relative to yourself).
So when people support EFF's technological goals (freedoms for users on technology platforms), if they are themselves possibly on the right, they project their own values onto the organization or system (which here is the EFF).
Never-mind if some of those values are incompatible with the values you think you hold (being authoritarian generally is incompatible with being not being authoritarian about technology). When someone points out the (otherwise obvious) contradiction to you, you're surprised that your set of values is incongruous.
Now this can happen to anyone coming from any political starting point, they agree with something but find it doesn't quite fit with their world views. If you are deeply religious about it, you tend to hold on for dear life and either decide to "pick" on set of values over another (suddenly you realize, actually, yes you would like to enslave everyone) or engage in some form of hypocrisy or another (authoritarians are good, but for some reason or the other I'm going to make an exception for technology).
I dunno. My understanding of coalition building is "we disagree about a bunch of stuff, but we agree on this one thing, so let's work together on it". You seem to be saying: "if you disagree with me on the other stuff, your agreement on this thing is rooted in a contradictory value system you haven't fully examined".
Is that correct?
Not exactly.
Values have a hierarchy. You can't (effectively) agree to painting everything the color blue, if you can't agree what the color blue is.
And you will run into a very similar issue when everyone starts objecting to the pink you have spread everywhere, despite supposedly agreeing to the color scheme.
I guess, to use the terms of your analogy, I don't think people disagree on what blue is. "Don't add backdoors to e2e encryption" is blue; and plenty of people who are coded all over the political/ideological spectrum recognize it as blue and want the wall to be blue.
You seem to be saying that people can't paint together unless everyone agrees on who holds the brush, what brand of brush is used, and what everyone's broader philosophy of painting is.
> Not exactly.
But then you go on to describe exactly what @Brendinooo described, just under the guise of your system of "value hierarchy." The problem is that you can always default to "our values are hierarchically misaligned" and then never have to do any coalition building ever.
So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you can't.
> if you disagree with me on the other stuff
This part is too broad.
Hierarchical values are just that. Not wholesale. We call that nonsense, e.g. I believe pigs can fly, therefore the sky is red. They are making an ontological error.
For a Christian, a top maxim in their value hierarchy would be rooted in Jesus' famous commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind." Now, if you're an atheist, this might be nonsense to you. You might not believe that Jesus was resurrected or that God even exists. To you, these are fundamentally irrational statements ("pigs can fly," etc.). Under your system, if you were an atheist and your opposition was a Christian, you could never possibly build a coalition because there's a disagreement at the top of the value hierarchy.
But this seems wrong because people of different creeds and value systems do stuff together all the time. Or am I misunderstanding your point? What I understand @Brendinooo to be saying is: "we may not share the same moral framework (or value hierarchy, using your term), but we do agree on X, so let's do X."
> So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you can't.
By design. Activists and left-wingers in general enjoy losing and being underdogs and infighting constantly
Funny, how those in a hierarchical system political system struggle so much to understand, hierarchy.
It's per the usual for extremist ideologies, chock full of hypocrisy and nonsense.
Note that, I have no problem with conservative or liberal value systems...
I don't know, I've noticed this in the right as well. I think there's always some degree of purity-testing to any community, though I agree there is more on the current (radical?) progressive end than average.
I can't definitively give you a top three and honestly don't see any value in ranking them like that. I would simply describe them as the ACLU for technology and the Internet in that they fight for general civil liberties. X and more specifically Elon Musk have shown that they are on the opposite side when it comes to many of those civil liberties even if they all agree on some other issues. Online censorship (both explicit and through algorithmic bias) is the most obvious example that bridges your two distinct groups. Musk might claim he agrees with the EFF on that, but through his and X's actions, it's clear he doesn't.
EFF has basically only succeeded in defending Section 230, which makes me wonder if the people who talk in this article and the people elsewhere on HN denouncing Section 230 know about each other.
There's been a lot of misinformation around section 230 in the last several years. This might be helpful, either as something to give out or to receive, depending.
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
Granted, it's from 2020, so there may be updated versions by now.
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Whatever you're trying to imply here, it's a personal attack that does not contribute to the discourse.
The OP is coyling spraying half baked questions across discussion in an effort to do who knows what. It is an attack on the delivery, not the person.
Just noting that I saw this, but I don't really see a point in replying outside of this comment at this time because I don't feel the need to prove myself to you, and I don't know how I could change what I'm writing to satisfy you personally anyways.
Have a nice evening!
No, nothing of the sort is happening. There is no reason to assume bad faith in those questions. The questions are not "half-baked".
I make such dismissals because if I merely expressed doubt, it appears that you would make the same accusations against me.
The burden of proof is on you; what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence; etc.
> I think you're getting this type of response because many of us can't see any actual difference between those two groups besides your own politics and assumptions.
I think that is why, yes.
I also think the differences are really obvious, and I genuinely can't understand why so many people here can't see that.
This might be the most interesting insight I gained by commenting here today. I expected people to be on board with it; I didn't expect people to be so acclimated to it that they don't even see how others might notice it.
Why would you say "this statement shows XYZ" if you didn't believe XYZ was a new piece of information?
My original comment did not claim that they were not ideological and it did not claim that that they do not do political activism, so a reply of "[o]f course they care about ideological concerns" makes no sense to me.
You said the "statement pretty clearly shows that they have certain ideological concerns..." like you were uncovering some hidden truth or gotcha in between the lines here. Was that not what you intended to write?
And then like what is the point of your original comment if you agree that what you could only deduce earlier is now an obvious truism?
IIUC, "clearly shows" doesn't apply to "they have certain concerns" but rather to the part that you replaced with "...". In other words "the statement clearly shows that they value [their certain concerns] more highly than the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about"
just not twitter censorship
[dead]
He's saying that they have ideological concerns beyond the ideological concerns you would tend to associate with the EFF (digital privacy, open source, patent trolling, etc). I for one am sad to see that this is the case. There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.
The linked blog post specifically states that they're leaving Twitter because they have been silenced by the platform and, as a result, no longer consider it a viable communication vehicle. That it's owned and operated by a nazi is icing on the shit cake.
> they have been silenced by the platform
Where do you see that? All I see is a claim that it no longer makes sense from a financial standpoint (but no comparative numbers provided for the other platforms they are keeping, which is sus, especially given their presence on very niche platforms like Bluesky), and vague justifications based on identity politics and "community care" loci, which is either nonsense or deep argot unsuitable for the intended audience.
Bluesky might have be niche in terms of users but it's an open platform like activity pub so it's at least quite aligned with the EFF mission.
This is an important point and it feels odd that the entire discussion seems to not be able to engage with it, but on another level it might be the same problem. As a long term financial support of the eff I'm starting to get the same awkward feelings that made me question my financial support for Mozilla and Wikipedia. Any time someone views the world through a single lens, it highlights some things and ignores others and it seems like a net loss to the world that everything is being forced into a being judged along a single (increasingly polarised) axis
That's what the comment is stating, but I disagree with the statement. This is perfectly in-line with the EFF's mission.
Keep in mind that X only has ~500 MAU, putting it in the same league as Pinterest or Quora.
A free and open society is a prerequisite for the rights EFF fight for. We cannot enjoy the freedoms of digital privacy in a an authoritarian regime. The rights to fight for EFFs concerns are currently being threated by the fascist turn of the USA. Thus, the EFF and other likeminded organizations are very much justified in leaving X.
> There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.
I would rather challenge this image that civilization is declining, independently of the political forces in power. This is a common motif in facism; I'm reading from your comment something along the lines of: "once we had noble organizations that were pure and didn't bother with ideology -- now things are worse, and in fact those guys are dirty for engaging in politics". What's really happening is that power in the US has been seized by fanatics and you fucks (respectfully) are letting them get away with it.
Disagree with so much here. But if, in your mind, the US is turning authoritarian, this is a "cut off your nose to spite your face" move. They should be taking the fight where it most needs fighting. They should not be making donors like myself question whether we still share objectives.
You are completely correct in your analysis. Reading some of the responses here - people who think the EFF should only fight for some rights for some people and only on corporate platforms instead of across society at large - would be shocking if I hadn’t already seen how willing rich tech bros are to overlook everyone and everything else for their own personal gain.
What are you talking about? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills reading these comments.
Do you not see that civil rights are being infringed _right now_, by the republican administration in our government? Protecting those civil rights will require criticizing and acting against republicans because the fascists on the right are trying to turn our country into an autocracy.
Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but you can’t be that fragile if you want to live in a free nation. The EFF taking a stand here is fighting EXACTLY the fight they need to be right now.