Comment by takoid

9 hours ago

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.

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

  • 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.

  • 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?

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.

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.

  • 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.

> Something isn't adding up.

Yes, it’s your inability to do even the most basic verification of the data underlying your understanding before making claims.