The Free Software Foundation Europe deleted its account on X
29 comments
·December 4, 2025throw0101d
catapart
You only need a placeholder if you think the platform matters enough to hold space for. For example: they don't have a placeholder on MySpace.
But if your goal is to prevent other people from having the name altogether, the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked. That forces them to hold your account only to prevent anyone from using it, lest you might sneak back in and say something "harmful" like "stonetoss is hans kristian graebener".
latexr
> the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked.
Interesting idea. What did you do?
> say something "harmful" like "stonetoss is hans kristian graebener".
What that it?
GaryBluto
> the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked.
So you think the FSF should've used the account representing them to troll?
Xylakant
Haven't tested lately, but at least for a while you could get your account blocked by publicly suggesting people follow you some other place.
conartist6
Why help Twitter be a safer more trustworthy platform when Twitter doesn't seem to want to be a safe or trustworthy platform?
verytrivial
I agree. Park the handle with a polite "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" note and a suggested list of other places for more fruitful discussion.
0xcb0
I congratulate you to that decision. Twitter is really a breeding ground for racism and hate. Nobody should be on that platform.
GaryBluto
Why does everybody I see complaining about modern Twitter say the exact phrase "Nobody should be on that platform."? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your point, just curious if there was some manifesto going around or if everybody suddenly started using the same phrase.
Is it just me or have people started using the same phrases more often and faster than before? Reminds me of when everybody started saying "God forbid" a few months ago.
HtmlProgrammer
We want X to exist to contain these people.
The same situation applies to League of Legends and their wonderfully toxic player base
davidw
I don't know about the phrase, but I share the sentiment. The owner is a racist promoting racist things. It's not a 'public square' because he controls the algorithm, so it'll never be a 'fair fight' for those who disagree with him.
GoblinSlayer
It's a straightforward solution to the monopoly problem.
user34283
From my experience, Twitter/X is doing just fine. I don't even see politics on my feed.
Compare that to Reddit, where my 'Home' is flooded with far-left politics.
As for content moderation, I am not convinced X is especially bad. Content glorifying terrorist groups such as the Al Qassam brigades can stay up for many days on Reddit, for example. I had to personally fill the special form for content illegal in the EU, and even then it took a long time to be removed.
Personally, I am not convinced the complaints against X are fair and unbiased. I suspect a lot of it is politically motivated, coming from liberals who typically hate Musk and would like to see conservatives banned from online discussions.
HtmlProgrammer
There are plenty of people who love FOSS and terminally on X. Yes they are crazy, paranoid and racist but thats cutting off one of your key markets lol
quotemstr
Note the word "Europe":
> In the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation in which Richard Stallman has a leading position
https://fsfe.org/about/fsfnetwork.html
These guys are entitled to use or avoid any social media platform they want. I'm entitled, as well, to judge them for putting on purity tests in unrelated domains above their commitment to free software and thereby rendering themselves ineffective in their primary mission.
Irrelevance is their choice.
jrm4
Bad idea.
Love it or hate it, Twitter (yeah, I choose to be stubborn here) is still probably overwhelmingly the most impactful platform in this way.
While I respect the idea of the "boycott" in the abstract, perhaps the most wrong thing people think about it is "Because it's controlled by so-and-so, everyone who uses it is brainwashed and it's impossible to do good there."
Nope. Look, a lot of good people are still there. I personally also wish they would all leave and we all go elsewhere -- but that's not the present reality.
As such, people who insist that you must leave and no good can happen through staying ring the same to me as "IF SO AND SO GETS ELECTED IM LEAVING THE COUNTRY."
yokoprime
I don’t think leaving a platform you don’t enjoy has much, if anything, in common with physically relocating. I left X, but I have an account i use to log in about once a week to see if there’s anything worth while. I haven’t really found an alternative to X, things are fragmented now. Where I used to be able to follow most people I were interested in on Twitter, i now have some on bluesky, some on mastodon, some still on X, a bunch at instagram and YouTube… it’s a mess
Devasta
Nah, fuck that. If Stormfront had half a billion daily users that doesn't somehow compel you to participate; anyone willing to stay on Twitter isn't worth talking to even if they are personally nice to you.
m-hodges
Pretending you’re going to emigrate from your home country is not similar to actually logging off from a website you hate.
mac-attack
Good on them. It always feels like " But other than that, Mrs Lincoln enjoyed the play" watching people rationalize why they are still on Twitter or use Grok
guywithahat
Except now the just have less reach? I didn't follow them, so perhaps they had 10 followers and no reach to begin with, but this seems foolish if you have a mission you care about.
registeredcorn
I found myself wondering the same thing. Do they genuinely expect people who have never heard about FSFE to be using a decentralized social platform? That sounds scary. Normal people don't use scary sounding things.
They're certainly welcome to do whatever they think is right, and it sounds more "on brand" for them, but it seems ridiculous to say something like "[Using Twitter was] important for reaching members of society who were not active in our preferred spaces for interaction." but then end with "Follow the FSFE on Mastodon and Peertube!" I am very tech literate and I've never even heard of Peertube. There is very little chance they are ever going to reach even a single set of ears this way.
At that point, they might as well just send random fliers in the mail to strangers.
rvz
> What initially intended to be a place for dialogue and information exchange has turned into a centralised arena of hostility, misinformation, and profit-driven control, far removed from the ideals of freedom we stand for.
Always has been.
orwin
The issue is the new algorithm I think. It's the same on thread. You're more likely to get a view by responding to outrage bait than by promoting your own work, while before it was 50/50: responding to bait was great to reach a new audience, but for people who already followed you, you could still reach them by posting 'normally'.
Do you follow any content creator anywhere? Before 2019, you basically _had_ to be on Twitter to follow updates. Then the media diversified, but by 2023, even people still on X will rather use discord to have update on content creator they follow (or, weirdly, Instagram it seems? At least my favourite vulgarisation content creator seems to think so)
baiwl
Yes, but now it's the wrong side controlling it.
rustaceanU32
It's a good idea to leave X, considering the values of the Free Software Foundation and how they don't exactly align with X's profit-driven model, and the spread of internet garbage.
scottyah
That's a lot of words with not a lot of substance. I suppose their whole identity is announcing that they're superior to other people and branching off, while asking for money for what looks like mostly sending people to talk at events (which are probably mostly more fundraising).
> "In the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation[sic] in which Richard Stallman has a leading position."
I do wish more people would try to fix things from the inside, and I get there's a point where it's no longer possible, but in this case it sounds like they didn't like people calling them out on X and had no way to control the narrative. What other gain would there be for a group trying to spread information in as many channels as possible?
While I'm not against people not-using Twitter/X (or any other platform): would it have been better to keep the account as a 'placeholder' so no one else can grab it? Have a post saying "We do not monitor this account." or some such?