Paul Cantrell
A chronic problem with nonprofits and advocacy orgs is that they can become so hyper-focused on the world as viewed through the narrow lens of their mission — noble though the mission may be — that they start to lose context, perspective, and common sense. And then they start doing stupid carp, stepping on fingers and walking into walls.
I think this has happened to the @eff.
https://mastodon.social/@eff/113801429396283911
Rich Felker
@inthehands @eff That's a very generous interpretation. I think they have a few cryptofash insiders or influential donors they're taking direction from.
Paul Cantrell
To be fair, I at least applaud the self-correction here. Other orgs could learn something about how to say “oops” when they fuck up and coddle somebody / something horrible because the horrible thing appeared to resemble the org’s mission for two seconds.
Still, this was an embarrassing unforced error on the EFF’s part. They should have known better.
Paul Cantrell
Oh, I’m highly confident that they always have awful people trying to whisper garbage in their ear. What I described in my post is how those voices get in the door; a well-anchored organization is resilient to that exposure. And a poorly anchored org…well, it lets them take over — as with the ADL for example.
Rich Felker
@inthehands @eff A lot of this is a holdover from old times when there were arguably 2+ legitimate political sides and libertarianism hadn't been debunked as a front for fascism.
Now there are clearly only two sides: fascism and antifa(scism).
Paul Cantrell
I feel like the ACLU has actually pulled out of it somewhat over the last decade, while the EFF has gotten worse. But maybe that’s just what I’ve happened to hear about and not hear about.
Greg Whitehead
@inthehands @eff 100% this! I’m a longtime supporter of both EFF and ACLU and they both have fallen into this trap, but are still a net positive
ShadSterling
@inthehands while that update is an improvement, and maybe better than some other orgs, I wouldn’t go so far as to applaud. I can’t quantify how much the bad post decreased my perception of how much good they do, this followup has increased it from there but not as far as back to where it was
Paul Cantrell
@ShadSterling
It’s hardly the first time they’ve screwed up this sort of thing either.
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