Hacker News Reader

Comment by crims0n | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand, does it cost them something to copy/paste their posts to X?

Brand reputation. Every brand that chooses to use X implicitly supports X, even if they're not verified & paying X money.

Going against the network effect out of principal doesn't seem to be a winning strategy when the goal is to raise awareness about issues.

Does anyone seriously think EFF posting to X yesterday tarnished their brand? Be real.

Yes, people do in fact judge others for their associations.

If you don't that is fine but I imagine you would also hold the view that not posting on X shouldn't be controversial then either.

My neighbor blares Fox in their kitchen every day. I view them with the same flavor of suspicion as someone who posts there.

I do, yeah. Hope that helps!

The advertisers that evaporated and left behind a lot of no label dropshipping scams seem to think so. Did a lot of them eventually come back because there is some audience to squeeze numbers from? Sure, but I also wouldn't negate that many didn't and aren't coming back because it is Elon's playground now.

Yeah, I do. People & brands having a link to an X account is a huge red flag. It's a public statement that you support child pornography and the end of democracy in the US. That's going to tarnish a brand pretty majorly.

Twitter has become a lot better since people who say truly insane things like this have left. What on earth does Twitter have to do with child pornography? What kind of misinformation have you been reading?

https://www.law.com/therecorder/2026/03/18/xai-sued-over-all...

Yes.

I applaud the move and only wish they would have done it sooner.

Yes, absolutely. The CEO of X did Nazi salutes and promotes white genocide narratives, Grok has created posts praising Hitler, and when people used Grok to publicly generate CSAM for free, they fixed it by putting it behind a subscription platform. The only people I know and respect who are still on X are sex workers, because X is still the most porn-friendly social media site.

When you say "Be real", you're pleading with people to take your statement more seriously. But it's simply the case that people have very strong and negative opinions about nazis and child pornography.

That is idiotic.

> Brand reputation

They said nothing of this in TFA, all they talked about was decimated view count. The obvious conclusion is X is censoring them, like they pretty much do to anybody that Elon feels like censoring.

I've coded a 3rd party tool that could post to mastodon/twitter at the same time around 2020 (plenty of idle time during covid). I lost twitter API access, never bothered to try to make it work again (i hate working with interface clickers). to be clear, i don't really post on social media, it was just an experiment because i had faaar too much time and thought at the time that this kind of product could be interesting.

But i would bet social media managers use similar tools, and the fact that no one can access twitter API might add just the little bit of friction you want to avoid.

No, they even would get money for the engagement they get. This is purely moral grandstanding disguised as something else.

Not sure this is true anymore. X is now just pay to play. Organic engagement is completely dead there. It's all a virality game now.

Moral grandstanding is much better then vice grandstanding. Moral grandstandings are good, especially in a world that think being moral makes you a looser.

That being said, there is no disguise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com