Re: Debian's Presence on Twitter (X)

In my experience you break this into parts. This is for all services
regardless of proprietarieness...

1. Brand / Trademark management.
2. Industry announcements
3. User/Developer interaction

In 1 you maintain an account on all services to watch for misuse or
dangerous content associated to the brand.
In 2 you may announce releases or events
In 3 you respond to and interact with all users/developers.

In my day-to-day I call these proprietary platforms "Walled Gardens" as I
can not open the links to content on them without signing in.

So my opinions on your queries
* yes, I would suggest limited user interaction on platforms that are
walled gardens like Twitter(X)
* Brand / Trademark protections must maintain accounts regardless
* Industry announcements to raise awareness are always a good thing but
maybe they don't go to all platforms.




On Wed, Jan 22, 2025 at 9:22 AM Yashraj <[email protected]> wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> This discussion has been in the back of my mind since I decided to
> delete my personal accounts on some proprietary platforms, this was
> brought up again in the last meeting [1], and I think it warrants
> enough of a discussion to bring it to a place where I think the whole
> community can engage while taking their time.
>
> Mostly the discussion centres around Debian's existence on Twitter(X),
> not only does it exist as a proprietary platform in the face of a FOSS
> alternative that is open and decentralised in nature (The fediverse/
> Mastodon where we also have a presence), it's policies for moderation
> and its leadership structure has caused several "waves" of exodus from
> the platform, as from my personal experience I have seen people on the
> social margins get pushed off of the platform or be forced to live in
> the shadow of this platform not being for them.
>
> Twitter still remains the largest with our platform following, it is
> 22 fold bigger than our following on the smallest platform (Mastodon),
> Though I would weigh outreach to statistics, it remains that for
> Debian, and for other Linux distributions, F/OSS projects, and other
> projects/volunteer groups, Twitter is still the most accessible
> and easiest to account for social media that can be used to easily
> spread information and to put the public eye on issues or stories.
>
> A few things I would want everyone to keep in mind, would be:
>
> -	Aforementioned migration of users to other platforms
>
> A not insignificant amount of users have decided to move away and the
> trend can only be seen to continue with Facebook and its subsidiaries
> continuing policies that have caused tension within Twitter, causing
> even more of an exodus from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads (which
> also federates with the fediverse) Though we are not on these
> platforms, this seems to be a general trend in the industry that I
> do not think will reverse any time soon.
>
> -	Towards other "proprietary" platforms
>
> A lot of the people leaving have headed towards a federated service
> running FOSS software, but a lot haven't, with BlueSky so far having
> grown a lot, though it purports to be open and federated, it remains
> mostly centralised around the main instance on bsky.social. (Though
> from my understanding there is progress towards changing this)
>
> -	Who is making this decision?
>
> Even though I have a very firm opinion the issue, I am personally for
> leaving the decision making to the Publicity team delegates, it is
> under their mandate that we joined the platform, I think they are
> competent enough as a group to continue to make their decision under
> their mandate, though I still believe we should all voice our opinions
> here and make sure to discuss the nuances of the work after either
> decision is taken, if there is a difference in between the two, as it
> has been discussed in the irc channel, we are at a time where FOSDEM
> and FOSSASIA provide great platforms for DDs and DCs to come together
> and discuss this face to face and air their opinions.
>
> -	Leaving, How?
>
> An important part of the discussion if we leave, would be how does
> Debian leave, would we simply stop pushing our articles to the
> account to allow it to exist as an archive, should we leave with a
> statement, one explaining our reasoning? If account deletion, should
> we leave "@debian" open for someone to take and use for unofficial
> purposes, or leave behind an empty account to reserve the handle?
> Nuances yes, but I think these are worth discussing.
>
> I am sure we all have encountered our fair share of incorrect,
> purposefully uninformed, misinformed, demeaning, or alarming posts,
> decisions, and news from Twitter, and I do not think that will be
> changing any time soon, though I do not see the status quo changing
> too drastically from any decision, I still believe, while we (I) may
> not care much for brand recognition and association, other groups of
> other sizes and shapes who do, might care if there was an active
> reminder from people and projects leaving for moral reasons, when
> they are reminded that who they are being left behind with.
>
> ---
> While most of this was written at an earlier time, I will interject
> and mention a sense of urgency that has developed since the events
> of January 20th, where these concerns were raised to a new bar, I
> will like for the seriousness of this to be high, and that we should
> take decision quickly.
>
> -------
> [1] https://meetbot.debian.net/debian-publicity/2025/debian-publicity.2025-01-08-16.00.log.html#l-240
>
> Warm Regards,
> disaster2life
> --
> I would like to put a funny signature for this email here but,
> this seems way too serious and uptight of an email for me to do that.
>
>

-- 
- Andrew "lathama" Latham -