The Twitter Problem

Community Engagement
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I’ve been hesitant to open this particular can of worms … but it’s been sitting there, waiting to be opened since I joined as Executive Director two months ago.

As a Canadian, I completely understand the sentiment conveyed within the community that some would prefer we not use Twitter/X and other social media platforms which are problematic in specific countries. This preference led to the decision in late 2024 to stop posting to Twitter.

However, as a decade-long resident of India, I also understand that this decision wasn’t culturally or racially balanced. Since joining as ED, I have been posting to LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon (variably). Each has its own audience, but the response on Twitter tends to be from users in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinental region, including Nepal.

A quick look at https://nepal.gnome.org/ and one will notice that there is a single social media platform listed on contributor profiles: Twitter.

There is a real safety risk for certain at-risk users on Twitter and I would never suggest we encourage GNOME contributors to use it (or any specific social network). But it is also not our place to tell contributors or users to avoid certain social networks, either. It is apparent that we are alienating an entire region of our global community by refusing to post updates there.

It is my intention to revisit this 2024 decision, and the broader policy of avoiding specific social networks as an act of governance, with the Executive Committee. But I wanted to raise this thread for others to comment in the meantime.

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Nitpick - it should be 2024 :nerd_face: (sorry)

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Nitpick - it should be 2024 :nerd_face: (sorry)

Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out. :slight_smile:

1 Like
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The fear of words or speech is a deadly disease which currently plagues humanity. Cancel culture, what a vibe…

This comment is not helpful — or relevant.

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I think it’s a mistake to use X/Twitter for official GNOME communications. Local user groups can, of course, do whatever they want to reach local members, but GNOME exists at the cross-road of multiple nations and groups, and most of them are impacted by the actions of X/Twitter as a company, as well as the actions of the remaining audience left on that accursed platform. GNOME as a project should very much take a stance on what kind of substrate we ought to favour in order to grow our community, and X/Twitter is far too toxic to do so, especially because it lacks any of the moderation tools necessary—unless we also pay for a verified account, which would be terrible for optics.

It is entirely not worth it just to have some nebulous reach that may or may not disappear with the next social media platform.

The GNOME community pushed to drop X/Twitter, so I’d expect a similar effort to go back to it, instead of a top-down fiat from the executive committee.