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:

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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.

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I think overall, a lot of these projects are better off avoiding volitale platforms like Twitter simply because of the damaged reputation.

Perception is a very powerful tool, and I know that I personally do not like how people would just stick to a platform and put all their eggs in that basket. It’s great the GNOME is also everywhere else, such as Mastodon, Bluesky, and its own website and personally I think that should be enough.

If there is an audience that we are worried about leaving behind, then let’s work on onboarding them to different platforms so that they can participate as well.

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As discussed elsewhere, let’s all please try our best to avoid language which others parts of our global community — particularly underrepresented groups, such as the regions and people who are the topic of this thread.

Thanks!

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If done properly (in terms of influence), maybe being present on bad social networks might be beneficial.

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While it would be great to reach out to the underrepresented groups, I worry about the message it would send about the ongoings of how Twitter is ran. It’s one thing if a particular user or maintainers wants to use it, but as a foundation I believe it would be a mistake.

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I can appreciate the complexity of this topic, but I don’t think being on X is the right move. Ultimately, what we’re talking about here is whether or not to lend legitimacy to a platform that allows Nazi ideology to flourish, and to me that’s a very easy no. We have to trust that the GNOME community can continue to grow without needing to be directly connected through a site like X (it’s not Twitter anymore).

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I understand the point of view of those who are against the use of X.

We need to take in account all that happened, and is happening, to the Foundation itself too.

There is a line where the Foundation stops to be a community and starts to be an entity that has to pay salaries to keep the project running.
X is an important platform to get data and traction to involve sponsors and allow the GNOME project to continue to exist.

We should take in account that there are actions required to allow the Foundation to continue their mission.
Every social platform can be dangeours. It all depends on how we use it.

It’s not that easy. You can explain advantages, reasons, etc but then you still have to consider the culture and the reason these individuals are on other platforms.
For me, in Italy, Mastodon is used exclusively for FOSS projects.
Everyone else is on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X and Linkedin (based on their profession and age). Most didn’t even hear about Mastodon and the Fediverse.
Adding a social, just because a project I follow encourages it, it’s more complicated than it looks to be.

We, as an open source and community project, are already enforcing the use of Matrix, making more difficult for newcomers (used to Telegram and Discord) to join because they have to learn a new tool where none of their daily friend is.
On my phone I have something like 5 instant messaging apps already…

While I agree that having too many platforms may be difficult to manage (the Foundation already struggles today), if we aim to reach most of the planet, share knowledge, remove barriers: we should include those who are happy to get the information we have to share on the platform they already use.

notice: this is a personal opinion, none of my words have to be interpreted as any of the projects I’m involved in, including GNOME itself.
English is not my primary language.

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I don’t think you’re right, companies are actively pulling out from Twitter, since they don’t want their ads be next to a tweet saying “Hitler was right about Jews”.

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Thank you for ponting this out, I’m going to do some research.
I’m totally open to discussion!

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I do want to preface that I absolutely understand the need for the foundation to pull money and get sponsors, but first I need to go into more detail about why I think having the GNOME foundation on Twitter is a bad idea.

Ever since Elon Musk bought the website, and especially since the US 2024 election, tensions have been high. I cannot speak for those who live outside the US, and I cannot assume that they would understand US politcs but at this point, Twitter as a platform is being used to control narratives and divide communities. Elon Musk was doing the nazi salute and he has many followers who believe in such dangerous ideology that would be harmful to those in GNOME.

Even ignoring all of that, Twitter has become an AI hellscape with Grok calling itself Mecha Hitler which brings harm to marganalized communties, citation: The Grok chatbot spewed racist and antisemitic content : NPR

All of this is to say, I do not mind if members or contributors want to promote GNOME on twitter, to those friendly people who are not involved in the deeper mess, but it would be a horrible mistake for the foundation itself to be promoting itself on that platform. To bring in a similar parallel, it would be like if the foundation was trying to promote itself on 4chan’s /b/ fourm. It makes no sense and brings more harm than good.

As for the funding issue, I think it would be better to take the KDE approach to get more fundraising efforts from people who already use the software. I myself have already pledged to donate 10$ a month for the forseeable future to help keep cash flow. We don’t need to seclude ourselves to only open source platforms, but we shoudl still continue to adovcate for their use. I don’t suspect Discord or Telegram users to like Matrix, but there are always going to be a couple of people you will be able to pull onto the new platform, and it doesn’t mean you can’t use those platforms.

Just, avoid Twitter. Facebook would even be a safer bet but Twitter would put community members in danger.

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I think reinstating a Twitter/X account is Ok, but it should be a one way communication only with clear links to other places. Allowing comments on posts or trying to have discussions there will quickly turn things into a cesspit.

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Mm yeah, this

Shouting messages into the void is one thing (and perhaps not particularly objectionable, other than cases where GNOME will be promoted next to objectionable content), but interacting with the people on Twitter is another. Who’s going to moderate that space?

Anyway, if it’s about letting our comms reach users where they are, it’s one thing. But engaging on Twitter means engaging with everyone on Twitter. And, some quick Googling indicates that there’s not even a good mechanism to moderate the contents of replies under your posts? This is not good, to say the least, and so the best way to avoid it is to not have any posts

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To add onto this, I’ve seen no indication that this is going to change anytime soon either. Everytime I hear anything about what is going on in Twitter from my friends who use the platform, it’s about how moderation is getting worse and worse.

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Have you heard about MechaHitler incident? That was insane. Grok also wrote a lot of other alt-right things (what I saw was in Polish tho).

I’m not sure how much my voice matters here, I’m not even Foundation member, but please, just no. Even if it was possible to moderate comments under tweets (its not), even “shouting messages into the void” is bad, because its just gonna promote the platform. Twitter always had problems with moderating alt-right communities, but since Musk took over it’s straight-up nazi bar. Everyone there just started to play in a competition called “Who can make themselves look like NSDAP member the best”.

It sucks that there are large groups of people left out due to this, but maybe its just better to show them that better alternatives (i.e. alternatives not owned by person who really enjoys doing nazi salutes) exists.

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Yup. I even cited a source for the incident a few posts above.

I will gladly volunteer my time for GNOME community outreach, but the more I think about it the less reason I see for the foundation to be on that unmoderated, hostile platform.

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sorry, i didn’t read that comment :frowning: