The WordPress hacking/plugin security issue has been a solved problem for well over 10 years now if you're even basically competent. Especially if you're using something like WP Engine or Pantheon for hosting.
The author seems to think that there's only one type of user of these tools. Namely people who use NeoCities. They're all that matter to him.
Way back in 2015 I was building a large static site using Jekyll and Wordpress CMS as a backend. We had 30+ content editors using it, writing Markdown and I had Jekyll Generator that would execute a SQL query against the Wordpress database to build static content. Every new post would build and deploy the whole site in 2-3 minutes. Over 50k pages of content. This powered a very large marketing website straddling multiple top 10 Google Ad keywords. Business was bringing in several hundred million in ARR.
I knew of at least 3 other similarly large businesses doing this. All the way back in 2015. My current company today builds a static site from a Wordpress backend and I was totally uninvolved in this work (or even suggesting it). The user that this author thinks is a fable is very very real. There is absolutely a market for a CMS backend for an SSG.
Not that I as a developer would have used it, but if my employers could have paid a company for what I built in a nice box instead of paying my salary, they would have.
> disclaimer: anti elon, very pro-LGTB+, pro-EFF aside from weird political snipes
I'm actually with you on basic philosophy but the weird political snipes undercut everything they're doing and I can't support any nonprofi who stonewalls questions about what they're doing with my money.
And while I respect everyone on it for their achievements, from their own bios and other political work they're involved in you can clearly tell which stated goal is in service of another.
I've met and spoken to at least half of them and...yeah.
John Gilmore is gone. Brad Templeton is gone. John Perry Barlow is dead. The civil libertarian bent that the organization began with is long gone.
Your first sentence is key. Most people don't look behind the green curtain, but it's often where you find who the really important people in the org are.
The people on BlueSky and Mastodon aren't the people they need to convince in the correctness of their message.
If you actually care about getting your point across, hostile environments are exactly the place that you need to be broadcasting. Especially when they haven't put up any barriers for you.
EFF leadership just totally doesn't get it.
Unless the goal isn't what they say it is and they just need the cheerleading squad to make it look like their fundraising is effective.
If an organisation had any serious chance of moving the needle by staying on X, musk would simply find a reason to ban them. X leadership isn't interested in fair and balanced discussion.
An online argument has NEVER EVER EVER changed anyone's mind.
Source: I've argued with strangers on the internet since the mid-90's.
Don't feed the trolls was the rule back then when trolls were just actual people arguing for the sake of getting a reaction - and now the trolls are either a piece of software connected to a language model or paid to argue in bad faith. Like WOPR says: the only winning move is not to play.
This just fundamentally isn't true. What people see online massively influences how they think, to the extent that entire media conglomerates have been bought and sold to do exactly that.
I specifically said "online argument". You talking to someone online, in text format. You can change people's minds in video calls, sometimes. No amount of 1-on-1 online discourse has ever changed anyone's mind on anything.
The general sentiment people observe online definitely changes how they think, it moves the Overton Window considerably. And that's exactly what the bots[0] on Twitter and other platforms like TikTok do, they argue about whatever they get paid to argue for in bad faith, endlessly.
People see this, not knowing it's all artificial, and go "ooh, MANY PEOPLE think like this" and start thinking it's normal to think like that.
[0] I'm using "bot" as shorthand here for bad faith actors, usually the first level is just spamming static canned arguments, stage two is some kind of smart system that responds to the replies somewhat in context and stage three will ping an actual human who will come in with VERY specific deep-cut arguments.
Source: I argue online a lot for fun and relaxation.
So how do you know you've never changed someone's mind? Also, the opposite is just retreating to echo chambers where everyone agrees?
I personally don't care if EFF leaves X. However the message in the article does not line up, it's a bad decision and not justified by the reasons cited.
TBH echo chambers are just fine as long as you know you're in one.
I have peeked outside of my curated chamber and the people in there are completely batshit insane. Like objectively not following any sane logic or reason. And no amount of online discourse will not make them change their ways unless they WANT to change.
Moral grandstanding is much better then vice grandstanding. Moral grandstandings are good, especially in a world that think being moral makes you a looser.
I'm a former EFF member and donor and have an X account. Their engagement problem isn't with X or X's members. It's with the EFF itself.
A decade ago they lost the plot. They pulled some bullshit and lied to their entire membership in order to boost their cronies/friends at the Library of Congress. They framed efforts to keep the LoC under loose Congressional/Presidential oversight and free to do as they want as some Anti-Trump fight. Requests about why they would do this went completely unanswered to the membership.
The EFF Board serves their own goals and believe themselves unaccountable to their membership, so they no longer get my money and I no longer entertain or signal boost their message.
I've had the fortune/misfortune to be directly or peripherally involved in nearly a dozen situations that made it to press and there isn't a single case where the story represented in the article wasn't blatantly misinterpreted from the facts. In nearly every case what was mentioned in the article was the complete opposite of what actually happened. Biggest/Most-egregious offenders were Vice and Vox Media but included are the NYT, WaPo and Time.
One can only narrow the things they care about to those they can verify (or personally affect them) and go after primary sources themselves and form their own conclusions. I'm no longer convinced that modern journalism is good for anything more than starting bonfires.
can you give some examples? I'm very interested in this. (after all we had about a decade of crying "fake news" - and as far as I understand the verdict was that big traditional outlets get the basic facts right - who what where when - but are absolutely clueless about or intentionally spin the "why".)
No meaningful ones that I'd want to reveal without doxxing myself. I can give you one of someone else's that can be independently confirmed.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/sugar-weasel-the-clown-escor... This article by Vice is 100% bullshit. Vice basically published this PR piece for the guy as a favor. A lot of articles that you read are really coordinated press releases -- like the initial Blake Lively v Justin Baldoni NYT hitpiece. Yes, I know this is dumb and totally entertainment and not "news", but this article actually harmed the business of the actual guy that Weasel ripped his shtick off from. Aaron Zilch used to rant about this guy and how bullshit this article was for years. There's a small clown kink/BDSM community in Vegas and those in it at the time this was published all called it out for the bullshit it was. Asked Vice for a correction/retraction and they did nothing.
Somebody handed them a clickbait story and they published it for the clicks.
Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy: "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge."
See also, Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
Most reporting is garbage once you get into the details.
Impeccable? Carreyrou's articles and eventual book are built largely off of the deep investigative work done by Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis and Dr. Eleftherios P. Diamandis and a listserv with thousands of participating doctors...who aren't mentioned in the book once...Similarly-omitted are Softbank/Fortress and their eventual patent-holding shell company Labrador Diagnostics LLC...
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