Re: Debian's Presence on Twitter (X)

[Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org>]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 10:07:04AM -0500, Paul Tagliamonte wrote:
> 
> > That said this was based on the assumption that those platforms were
> > "safe"[1] both for the users and for the Debian contributors that would administrate
> > the accounts there. If there are no sanctions for people behaving badly
> > on those platforms, if mis-information cannot be stopped, then those
> > platforms are no longer safe and should be avoided.
> 
Twitter was *never* a place that was objectively "safe". It was a place
where certain people with certain beliefs and convictions (call this
group A) were safe and where certain other people with different beliefs
and convictions (call this group B) were not safe.

> Very much agree. As I put it in my private email to the publicity thread
> after being solicited for thoughts:
> 
> | Twitter is a place where people I care about don't feel like they can be
> | without ongoing harassment, so I don't particularly want to be there,
> | even if I don't get harassed.
> 

When group A was safe, it would seem that many (or perhaps most) in
Debian were willing to tolerate the connection to a non-free platform
because it served our objectives as a project becuase we cared for group
A in some way. The fact that group B wasn't safe didn't seem to be much
of an obstacle in this case (perhaps because people in the project
largely felt that group B *shouldn't* feel safe, but even if that wasn't
the case we didn't care for how group B fared).

Now things have changed, group A no longer feels "safe", and group B
feels "safe". This is apparently not acceptable to a lot of people
within Debian. Fine, whatever.

Let's just not pretend that there is some objective notion of "safe"
that we are pursuing, because Mastodon, the fediverse, and whatever, are
*exactly* the same as Twitter in this regard. Some people will feel
"safe" and others will not, and we just want to go where it's the people
we don't care about who are the ones that don't feel "safe".

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez