Debian is Ditching X (Twitter) Citing These Reasons

Ship ship ship!

Fuck X.com, all my homies use wayland.social

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.

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.
Kinda wondering who in that community is going to bat for Elon Musk after the last two weeks.
- Nazis.
Agreed. Notably, Bluesky doesn't require an account to read posts.
- Yet

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.

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.

My town’s subreddit just started a policy to disallow links to X for similar reasons.

There is a movement to avoid the platform.

Good riddance. Stop using Nazi platforms and join the fediverse instead.

Good, now if only OpenSource devs switched from Discord to let's say Matrix/XMPP

We'd be partying

go back to forums. Support in discord is awful. Discord is not as searchable as a forum public on the internet
- Yeah, forums please. I hate the idea of troubleshooting information being locked behind some stupid software we can't easily index and search. Forums can be put on archive.org, you can literally print a page, or save it as a PDF for reviewing later. You can make use of bookmark software like Linkwarden to archive things.
  
  Discord? Not so much. You can use third party software to scrape it and save information, but no search engine can index it. Community building is great, but I loathe having to trawl through tonnes of blithering blathering conversation BS just to figure out where to find firmware for a particular chip I have is.
  
  Makes me want to projectile vomit all over the place, throw my computer out the window, and move to convent.
- https://forums.debian.net/ exists for Debian
- I want to move my music discord to a forum platform. Can anyone recommend a good FOSS forum with good iOS/mobile app support? Some of the musicians are going to resist if there isn’t a decent, usable, mobile app. It’s been a long time since I set up a forum. Last one I installed on a server was phpBB!
- I may sound too radical, but I'd go so far as to support a common Logseq knowledge graph.
Having worked on a couple of Matrix deployments over the last year, that shit needs to be simpler and easier, yo? Once the Matrix server exists, it's easy enough to get people to use it.

Contrast it's ease of deployment with Mumble for example.
God I hope I live to see the day. Discord at first appears like a good IRC wrapper, but the XP of actually using it is fucking gross.
If we're swapping out discord, please just go with Zulip... It's FLOSS, and has a solid company backing it that actually cares about FLOSS (They even bought the product back, after it was sold to a company that was enshittifying it)/
- Zulip sounds neat!
  
  Shoutout to https://revolt.chat/ as a Discord alternative too.
- How is it feature wise? Parity with xmpp/matrix? Better?
Just remove matrix from the alternatives and I 100% agree, long live xmpp😊

Meanwhile one can use: slidcord
- What's wrong with Matrix ? Well there's SimpleX & GNU-Jami as well as Revolt
Matrix and XMPP don't even pretend to be Discord replacements.
- But they are replacements

god, the replies to their tweet are awful...

Why politicize everything?

Simps for X (formerly twitter)
Those replies are why they are leaving. And good riddance to such a godawful platform.
Blue checkmarks...
- This is to me one of the major reasons Twitter discourse is completely ruined and the platform is mostly useless for seeing what people think now.
  
  When the only people who get to be at the top of discussions are people who pay for twitter, the only opinions that get shared are those that are pro Twitter, pro Elon, etc. Because they have a direct stake in the game.
  
  And that's if the accounts posting aren't all bots that pay for a checkmark to boost engagement, which is almost all I see when I occasionally have to check Twitter these days.
  
  So glad more people are leaving it. There's nothing to gain from it anymore.
Sounds like bots
- Honestly I had the same thought. But on the other hand, internet outrage talking points have also become extremely formulaic...
That first reply highlights a major difference in how people approach the world.

Speaking very generally, conservatism and right wing politics seen to attract those who see everything as a competition and that dominating other people is what it means to be a good person. Funny that it also leads to frustrated, angry, isolated people.

So if we want to switch to using a website that doesn’t promote hurting/killing 2% of the population, we are now BOWING DOWN to the minority some of us would not rather murder.

It’s the same reason they hate DEI so much.
It is depressing, but I try not to forget we are seeing a sort of survivorship bias of stupidity on the former Twitter at this point. The cohort of remaining posting accounts is dumber and dumber on average. And this dynamic is magnified in the replies, because they are paid blue accounts at the top. Eg, self-selected losers. (The top account has likely just hidden their checkmark)

Edit: PS, are you still using Nitter? I thought it had died?
- There are still a few nitter instances alive
  
  https://status.d420.de/
The replies illustrate the problem nicely.
Ah, that captures such a stark answer to why people use xitter though.

It's not "so I can hear from you" it's "So YoU cAn HeAr FrOm Us!!!11oneone"

Walled gardens? More like prison yard. Lol

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"

Wild that so many are still hanging out at the Nazi bar

Its that social inertia, and I get it.

I ran a neighborhood group's social media, and even after FB turned openly shitty, I had to stay on there, because thats where people are.

I mean, I could have pushed the org to drop them, but then we would have lost the eyeballs of thousands of neighbor's we're trying to work FOR.

Same deal with Twitter, they've just gotten to the point where most NPOs lose less by leaving than they would by staying.
- That's beginning to wane. The fewer major posters there are, the fewer people will look to the site for information. And the fewer people on there looking for info...etc.
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.
Everyone who have use Twitter in the past 2 years is a nazi.
- That's a very silly take

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?

This is a great example of where linking to a blog post about an announcement is better than linking to the announcement itself:

after digging a bit deeper, I discovered that there was originally a longer, more detailed announcement that was later scrapped. I found it in a GitLab commit made by Jean. [Link to GitLab comment in article]

Good job, itsfoss.com

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.
Yeah what the fuck is with that.

It's a very twitter centric view of the web. If you're not on xitter you're "shutting out a significant portion".

The thing is, it's not simply that Musk has an ideology that is disparate from my own, he has an agenda that is egregiously contrary to the stated values of the Debian project.

You'd consult with the community over a new logo or blog layout maybe, but on whether to assist Musk in his far right agenda there's not really any decision to be made honestly.
Last time they seeked input they ignored it and shoved systemd anyway...

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.
- https://wayland.social/

citing concerns over values and diversity.

Sigh. It's always for the dumbest reasons that people leave these abusive platforms.

Drag values not being a Nazi and X doesn't. This isn't a dumb reason to stop using it.
- You're just supporting whichever platform censors what you don't like.

... Debian was on twitter??

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.
- In any case, RSS should be enough.
- 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.
- I think Bluesky can be an exception. I think it's way better than Mastodon from a UX standpoint. And it's still open.

They can be found on Mastodon here: @[email protected]

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.

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.
- ok, that's just hilarious :P
  
  The equivalent of IE being the last one to move to the fediverse lol
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.

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.

Great news, Thank you Debian community!

Yeay, Debian user here who also left Twitter/X for similar reasons. I was already on Mastodon and Bluesky but didn't make a habit out of it. Leaving the bad platform entirely (and having my data archived and searchable) helped a lot.

Glad to hear they moved on!

I don't like how people are trying to stir up dissent and drama around this. The message posted is short and on point, it includes all the important bits. There really isn't much more to add.

Oh but look at this deleted draft PR release that was committed that doesn't really say anything spicy and was later sharpened up to reflect the intentions of the author.

Good for them. It's an organisation's free choice to pick the platforms they post and interact on, if any. Their presence is a service in itself while there are plenty of other ways to follow or reach them if needed.

The reasoning behind this move is said to be X/Twitter not being in line with Debian's shared values

Unfortunately the accounts listed under Social network accounts of Debian teams and Social network accounts of Debian contributors are almost exclusively Twitter accounts.

They were still on Xitter?

Now I wish they had an ARM Qualcomm distro. Been hoping for a Linux distro for my Snapdragon X Elite machine. Now Debian had taken a stand for something they will probably be my distro once there is Linux support for my machine!

Debian already has an ARM version. Do you mean some Qualcomm drivers are missing? There are already Ubuntu ROMs for Android phones, so this shouldn't be an issue, right?
- There are ARM distros, yet the SnapDragon X Elite SOC is not yet supported fully. The drivers are a mess. They are progressing, but slowly probably due to the small number of people who would use it.
- Arm is insanely fragmented, every device must be have dedicated drivers and hardcoded specific configuration in the kernel. And sometimes even separate kernel builds. Also Snapdragon X devices are not even fully supported upstream in the most recent kernel yet. Which means they are many years away from being supported in Debian. Unless someone makes a fork of Debian with latest kernel and not yet upstreamed Qualcomm specific patches (which how these "arm distros" are usually made).

L M A O

party rock is in the house tonight
- Everybody just has a good time

i am keeping a record of what just what it took, before people got off.

Imagine being so fragile you can't tolerate opposing viewpoints.

Imagine being so fragile you get shook by people leaving
I don't respect Nazis
I don't mind opposing views. I do mind views that say some of my family members or some of my friends should kill themselves. I have no business on a platform that allows such hateful conduct, end of story.

It's a matter of basic decency and respect.
Imagine your view point is aligning with Musk one... You're either a billionaire or a dumb looser thinking is a part of a club he isn't in