Withdraw official presence from X/Twitter and Meta platforms

ACK

I think this is long overdue, frankly. The FSF has been advising against relying on networks like these for years, and actually advised open source projects to move away from Twitter back in 2021!

* https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/new-changes-to-twitter-make-it-even-...

Almost 4 years ago!

Strong support

As the person who created and set up the @drupalcommunity Twitter account for the Drupal Community Working Group back in 2016, I would be favor of deprecating that account in lieu of other channels that are more aligned with the project’s values and principles and code of conduct.

As for @drupal, @drupalcon, and other accounts, I believe those are run by the Drupal Association, and they would be the ones to make the decision whether to stop using them or not. I think there probably is value in keeping those accounts active at some level to protect the trademark and avoid having bad actors take over the namespace, but would in general agree that they should not be primary communications channels for the project or community.

Indeed, the FSF suggest open source communities might keep their accounts, but only use them for sign-posting to an official blog or another service. I did this with my company two years ago, I think? Closed Facebook entirely (because it was pointless anyway), kept the X account but pinned a post saying we're now mostly on Mastodon with a link.

+1 I don't think it's appropriate for any Open Source community or foundation to engage in any platforms that foster hate against vulnerable groups. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/09/meta-moderation-transgender-women-hate

Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

— Paulo Freire

Just a note that https://drupal.community/ Mastodon instance is a welcoming and community-run space for any Drupal-related accounts (events, associations, people, companies...) and it fully embraces and respects the Drupal code of conduct and governance.

Hi everyone,
I find this discussion very important as I’ve personally spent a lot of time reflecting on the use of social media. I’ve deleted my personal accounts on X as well as the company account for erdfisch. Facebook will also follow shortly.

Currently, I’m still using Instagram for both business and personal purposes, but I’m increasingly drawn to platforms like Mastodon and bluesky, as they align better with my – and our – values. Ethics, privacy, and sustainability should play a role in choosing our communication channels.

I believe it’s crucial for us as a community to explore alternatives that reflect Drupal’s values. Platforms like Mastodon or bluesky could be good options that maintain our reach while offering a stronger ethical foundation.

I understand the concern about losing (necessary) reach – I share this concern regarding our Instagram accounts. Still, I believe it’s time to take a stand.
Perhaps it doesn’t have to be a hard cut: we could create accounts on alternative platforms and run them in parallel. The additional effort is manageable. We could also regularly post pointers to the new alternatives on the existing accounts to facilitate a transition.

I support the proposal to reconsider Drupal’s presence on X/Twitter and Meta and am happy to share my experiences with alternative platforms. I’d also love to hear what platforms or approaches you see as viable options for the future.

It would make sense for the CWG / Community / ... to draw up a set of values / ethical requirements that social media platforms must adhere to, similar to and derived from the CoC and the Drupal project's values.

Having an such an "ethical checklist" could be a clear and objective instrument to drive the decision on which platforms to (remain) active, especially if platform policy changes automatically trigger a review on our side.

It seems a bit daft that the https://drupal.community/ on Mastodon would decide to not federate with Threads but the Drupal Project and DA are using it. Seem like they need to specifically address their use of the platform or stop using it.

I haven't used Twitter in at least a year. So whilst I can't say that it's a good or bad (or right wing) experience I can say that I'm opposed to any platform that is owned, operated, and controlled by a narcissistic racist who has a track record of being lackadaisical with personal data. That goes against our own CoC and although I can't control what other people do, I have chosen not to use Twitter for myself or any account I have access to (eg. the North West Drupal User Group).

I don't think we should be requiring platforms to adhere to the Drupal CoC. Not that it wouldn't be good to see them opting into the CoC; it's just getting them to agree to it will be impossible. Even if we did somehow get them to agree to it, the big problem is that Twitter and Meta have essentially no protections for users now so there is little hope in them policing it even if they were to adopt it.

Rolling our own platforms in the case of https://drupal.community/ is a good plan here as it's a platform that we can enforce the Drupal CoC on. We should encourage primary use of that platform.

That being said, if we stop using Twitter and Meta because of ethical concerns then we should also be taking long look at how Pantheon operate. They have a track record of hosting sites that promote hate, bigotry, right-wing, and anti-science propaganda (see https://nohostforhate.org/) as well as financing some dubious politics (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/12/san-francisco-tech-billi...). They have doubled down on hosting these sites and are often given primary sponsorship slots and appear on a lot of DA emails.

Ultimately, if we don't use these platforms it should be because the audience isn't there, rather than requiring them to adhere to a CoC that we don't really enforce or adhere to ourselves within our own community. If the DA is prepared to meet those standards in how it promotes companies and how it accepts sponsorship money then, yes, let's start having those conversations about selecting the platforms that meet the Drupal CoC.

Separate from the ethical considerations (which should be enough in their own right) - twitter and facebook have become more and more hostile to anonymous viewers. As someone who ditched facebook and twitter several years ago, I cannot tell you how irritating it is to get linked back to their platforms from elsewhere on the web to be immediately bombarded with authentication forms so those platforms can try to fingerprint my traffic and sell what little data they have about me.

Hell yes. And YouTube as well. Please use Fediverse platforms and support opensource software!

I've long since left both out of a need for personal safety.

There's other alternatives which maintain control, and respect privacy. In addition to mailing lists, and RSS, there are options on the Fediverse such as drupal.community and phpc.social.

Hi, I don't use either of those because it's not moderated consistently at all. I've been on the fediverse since 2018. That's home now.

Yes, get off of both. Seeing as how Twitter and Facebook now allow activity that is in violation of D.O's own code of conduct, this shouldn't even really be a discussion.
https://www.drupal.org/dcoc: →
Specifically:

• "Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or exclusionary statements, regardless of intent",
• "Intentionally misidentifying, misgendering and/or “deadnaming” an individual"

to name a few

I see both sides of this. Does anyone remember how quickly the community was willing to trade our freedoms and data ownership for the UX polish and emojis Slack offered? Many of us bleed GPL, but we fell for the allure of Slack.

I enjoy Mastodon. It reminds me of the early days of Twitter, but I don't hold using a platform that doesn't align with my personal morals against someone else.

At this point in the Drupal arc, we have to reach out to people where they are. A PHP CMS isn't enough of draw to ask people to create yet another social account to prove they are worthy of our replies, reposts or likes.

I'm not very active at @kreynen@fosstodon.org, but I'm more active there than Xwitter.

Agree, the platform is no longer relevant.

If anything the idea of a global public square, hosted by a single for-profit entity was always problematic.

This is a great opportunity to join and participate in the new generation
open social networks!

leave meta, create a bluesky account and be more active on both mastodon and bluesky.

Thanks

Is this where we still +1? Ah, good times. Would favor the community-run social media channels ceasing activity (but possibly keeping placeholder accounts) on both Twitter and Facebook and stating the reason why (that these platforms explicitly allowing code of conduct violations, and naming them; being propaganda platforms for reactionary politics and hate i also think are important and related reasons but may be out of our wheelhouse), and pointing to fediverse and other accounts.

Not sure what to add here, other than I hope that the Drupal community will choose not to participate in a social space owned by a literal saluting nazi. Seems like the lowest possible bar to clear for a community of people who hopefully think genocide is a bad thing that shouldn't be supported.

Thank to everyone who is speaking up!

I’d like to add a personal story. My mother was born in a displaced person’s camp in Aachen, Germany just after the WWII ended. Her parents, my grandparents met while living in a slave labor camp. So, I feel quite strongly we should have nothing to do with a site owned by literally a nazi. For anyone who wants to try to defend him as oh, he’s autistic; so am I, and I have never accidentally or intentionally saluted to fascists. https://thedailytism.com/the-autistic-guide-to-waving-exuberantly-withou...

social space owned by a literal saluting nazi

I have never accidentally or intentionally saluted to fascists

@mikemccaffrey @johne He is making it so very hard to spend time or $$ on anything he is involved in. It's to the point I question whether doing the most outrageous things to anger your customers and still make money isn't the 1% equivalent of a TikTok challenge. Elon won the rocket/barge golf challenge and isn't going to let Matt Mullenweg win the latest challenge with his silly "wordpress.org is mine" and "Automattic is shifting 95% of our dev time to closed source, commercial projects" statements to a FOSS community that made WP so successful. Elon's response is going full Nazi? I'd say we live in strange times, but people are still driving Fords.

It's amazing how far a mind will go to justify reactivating a Starlink while living out of a van each summer.

Thank you all for sharing your perspectives. I really appreciate everyone's willingness to tell their stories. The Drupal Association shares concerns regarding proprietary social media platforms - for promoting hate speech, restricting data sovereignty, limiting access, or controlling narratives advantageous to the proprietor. We try to balance the need to disseminate information and reach our constituency where they are with the importance of upholding our code of conduct and supporting our open source values. We believe we can achieve that balance by using proprietary social media platforms as outbound marketing channels and open source social media platforms for community engagement and marketing/promotion. Our goal is that no one has to be on a proprietary platform in order to get the Drupal news.

@jr_kthor, thank you for sharing the DA's point of view.
Is this the DA's full and official position?

@jpoesen - This is not the full position because we are still determining next steps to best move our goals forward but this is our approach as things stand today. We will adapt our position over time, and are monitoring this closely. To be absolutely clear, we don't want to support these proprietary platforms in any way, but we do want them to be a funnel for moving people to our owned and open channels.

Thanks @jr_kthor.

I understand decisions like these take time, and rightfully so.

On the other hand, this is not the time to spend weeks and weeks determining what action to take. The US is dragging the world into its crisis mode, and Musk and X are right at the center.

The community needs Drupal Leadership to have an open discussion and take a position.
This thing is only going to get worse. Watching from the side lines is not an option.

Continuing use of these platforms and continuing to put information into those platforms will never move people away or funnel them to other communication avenues. That will not provide any incentive whatsoever for anyone on those platforms to stop using them. Why use something else when you can continue to get the same information on the same service?

Continued use of these platforms is an endorsement of them, nothing changes that. Lip service about not sharing the values of these platforms or wanting to move away is just that, lip service. Offical Drupal communications on hate speech platforms only reinforces and normalises the use of these platforms to the people who are still on them, or to people interested in the project.

"We want to get our message across even if we don't like the services" is for the ambitious marketers the Drupal project seems so keen to court these days. It's engagement at all costs, profits over people. If the Drupal project actually believes in it's code of conduct and community values, now is the time to actually live up to them.

Edit: added a link to a personal post on ethical vendor selection criteria as a starting point to constructively move forward.

Edit: change title to be more solution-oriented.

For your consideration.

To provide context to @neurer's comment:

When you encounter a Server 500 error, you are pointed to the @drupal_infra X/Twitter account to learn more about the status of drupal.org's infrastructure.

This indicates that @drupal_infra on X/Twitter is Drupal's official infrastructure-related communication channel.

However, since the link is to the X/Twitter account (and not to a specific status tweet), visitors are redirected to X/Twitter's login before they get to see the @drupal_infra feed.

No mention of the team's active @drupalinfra@mastodon.social account though.

--> this one seems to have an easy solution: update the error message and point to @drupalinfra@mastodon.social instead.

Any other concerns aside, I would agree that Drupal.org should not point people to any service that requires a user to create an account in order to view vital information like system status.

jpoesen's suggestion to update this error page (and any others like it) to point to an open platform or service like Mastodon sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks for the research in #31/32 and for the explanation in #33.

+1 to swapping out that error page to a service that is visible without having to log in. Mastodon seems good. If someone can help advise on how to embed a mastodon feed that might help move this along. Absent that I guess just linking to the Mastodon feed is better than linking to an inaccessible service.

For what its worth, the Drupal Security Advisories are now broadcast in 3 places: x.com,
bluesky, and the drupal.community mastodon instance. I don't have data about which service is most valuable, but you can compare engagement (RT, likes) to get a rough sense of which is most valuable.

I recently automated auto-posting of the security RSS feeds to bsky and mastodon, which has no cost other than the time to configure it (which was relatively low). I believe we use a commercial service for Twitter due to the cost of their API (I don't administer that servce, so not sure of the details).

Drupal Infra:

🐛 drupal.org error 500 page twitter widget is unusable Active is the specific page about the 500 error page, it goes back a bit. I think that in line with @jr_kthor above, that would need to be moved off of not embedding an X feed anymore for sure. Since Drupal infra is on mastodon too, please post any easy ways to embed that feed there in that issue :)

Drop is moving

I manage @dropismoving on these social medias. These are current follower counts:

• Bluesky: 93 (only been running for 2 months, I ran it earlier for a year, but did not work out, trying again now)
• Mastodon: 216
• LinkedIn: 423
• X: 2362

So only looking at this may make people believe X is super valuable. At the same time X engagement has been going down rapidly either way. Eg the Drupal 11.1 announcement looks like this:

It has not really been replaced by Mastodon sadly. Eg. the same post on Mastodon:

Bluesky is even less. What I found working REALLY WELL for Drop is Moving is LinkedIn. Same post there:

Not sure if the same is true for other types of Drupal social media, but this is how Drop is Moving works. I would not remove the account from X as per above to keep the namespace / pointer, but it has not been providing much value for a couple years now either way.

I've updated https://www.drupal.org/project/infrastructure/issues/3372242 🐛 drupal.org error 500 page twitter widget is unusable Active , referenced this issue and propose using https://mastodon.social/@drupalinfra.rss in addition to removing the link to X/twitter.

I already see enough content on Bluesky - also posts which are done with API: https://bsky.app/profile/drupal-news.bsky.social

On X I see mainly company ads - so for social media DX, Bluesky seems already better.

I also went through "followers" and account we follow on X. 1/3 or more are zombies. These user and organisation accounts have been inactive for long time. Many have come inactive during 2024.

There's some great feedback here (thanks everyone!), but it seems clear that the CWG is unable or unwilling to participate in this discussion, with the exception of @gdemet's comment on not linking to members-only social networks.

I wouldn't have thought it would be so hard just to have *a conversation* about whether sticking with X/Twitter is a thing the Drupal project should do. If this isn't the place for that discussion, we'll hold it elsewhere.

I was just made aware of this discussion today. I expect this issue to come up at a Community Working Group meeting in the near future. Speaking for myself, I think a good case has been made for not relying on X/Twitter and Meta for official communications. I also think it is very likely that if we leave those platforms completely bad actors will open accounts in our name and use them maliciously. For that reason I think the Free Software Foundation is wise to recommend that we maintain our presence on those platforms even after we have replaced them with other communication channels.

Thanks @darrren-oh. I contacted a few people when I created this issue, was told it had been mentioned informally, and would likely be discussed at the next CWG meeting. Unfortunately it seems two monthly meetings have come and gone since then.

I do agree that the account names should be retained to prevent cybersquatting and/or abuse. Having those accounts signpost to new accounts elsewhere makes a lot of sense.

@jpoesen This has been added to our agenda for our next all-hands meeting. We meet quarterly, so the next meeting will be in April after DrupalCon.

@volkswagenchick: Thanks for acknowledging this issue. I'm looking forward to hear the CWG's point of view and recommendation on this.

To recap:

- leaving X/Meta properties, but in a wider context and to avoid having this discussion when Bluesky inevitably goes the X/Twitter way: transparent ethical criteria / rubrics for evaluating community-oriented tools.

- ceasing activity (including message mirroring) on bad platforms but maintaining presence and signposting to new alternative hangouts.

As a nice to have it might also be nice to indicate which accounts are active vs unattended mirrors so people don't get frustrated by lack of response. One-way channels are fine if they're marked as such.

Dear members of the CWG, dear members of the DA,

I am extremely disappointed with the CWG's lack of willingness to even discuss this issue.

I was told several times this issue was being discussed internally and was going to be addressed "during the next quarterly CWG meeting", which presumably took place sometime in April.

We're now four months after the issue was initially created, and neither the DA nor the CWG have responded in any official capacity. If this issue was discussed during April's CWG meeting, the outcome has not been shared.

This issue was time-sensitive then, and has become even more pressing today.

The political situation in the US is deteriorating at an even faster rate than predicted, and X/Twitter is worse than ever (e.g. GrokAI is now casting doubt on the Nazi holocaust while pushing the false narrative of Black-led genocide against white South African farmers).

It seems none of you - not a single person - want to respond to this constructive call for an ethical vendor selection framework, nor participate in a dialogue on Drupal's presence on various social media channels.

I wonder why.

• Maybe you don't find this issue worth your time.
• Maybe you don't feel there's anything wrong with X/Twitter, that everything is just fine.
• Maybe you've been instructed not to engage, in an attempt to avoid another #DrupalDrama.
• Maybe you've been instructed not to engage, in an attempt not to rock the political/economical boat, given Drupal is used in so many US government websites built and maintained by the largest US Drupal agencies.

Maybe none of the above. Maybe all of the above.

Nobody knows, since the CWG is not responding, and the CWG does not openly publish its meeting agendas nor its meeting notes. (I'd check the Drupal Association's board meeting notes if I could, but none have been published so far this year.)

I am angry, sad, and extremely disappointed by the CWG's silence and unwillingness to even engage. Whether it's out of strategy, indifference, or some other motivation, only you can say.

What is clear to me, however, is that in this issue the CWG is showing a total lack of respect for the people who voiced their opinion - and for the larger Drupal community.

I see now that, not unlike the US Democratic Party, being polite and patient and trusting the process doesn't get you very far.

Does a stink really need to be raised for this issue to be taken seriously?

Moving forward
Let's take some constructive steps forward:

1. Does the CWG feel itself qualified (in the procedural / organizational sense) to weigh in and offer their point of view?
2. If so, can the CWG offer a timeline for response to:
1. the appropriateness of Drupal being present on X/Twitter
2. the idea of an ethical vendor selection framework to guide similar discussions
3. If not, can the CWG direct us to a body or entity they think is qualified?

Thank you.

Just noting that reaction (or the lack of it) will show what are real values here. Business and money goes first.

It's like this until CWG and DA takes position. Talk the talk, now it is time to walk the walk.

Just see for example:

https://x.com/drupal
https://x.com/acquia
https://x.com/thedroptimes
https://x.com/drupalcon

I apologize for not updating this issue after the last CWG meeting. We did discuss it, and have action items to set up accounts on alternative platforms and put notices on the old platforms about where to find updates. I think the next steps would be to draft an official policy on selecting communication platforms, and create reports on which platforms we do and do not consider to be safe and reliable. I have created a public Google Doc so the participants in this issue can directly engage in the drafting process. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E6lEx7wbk5xGDC_eImiPHPAxAevApfrafMo6...

Thanks @jpoesen for being persistent in this matter. And thanks for being polite and constructive.

Thanks for the update, @darren-oh. Much appreciated, and great to know things were indeed happening.
Is any the CWG or DA taking any position or publishing any thoughts on this?

And many thanks for inviting us to add our voice to the Google doc.

The CWG and DA have not put together a position on this. The Google doc will serve as a starting point. I will pass it on to the CWG to polish up and turn over to the DA.

Probably relevant that the DA has recently endorsed the UN Open source principles:

1. Open by default: Making Open Source the standard approach for projects
2. Contribute back: Encouraging active participation in the Open Source ecosystem
3. Secure by design: Making security a priority in all software projects
4. Foster inclusive participation and community building: Enabling and facilitating diverse and inclusive contributions
5. Design for reusability: Designing projects to be interoperable across various platforms and ecosystems
6. Provide documentation: Providing thorough documentation for end-users, integrators and developers
7. RISE (recognize, incentivize, support and empower): Empowering individuals and communities to actively participate
8. Sustain and scale: Supporting the development of solutions that meet the evolving needs of the UN system and beyond

See https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/the-drupal-association-endorses-... →

From the endorsement

be resilient to a changing world and not controlled by a select few.

Hi all,

This is Ryan from the DA. Thanks for raising this - we agree that this is an important issue. We are working on this and will provide an update by the end of next week.

@pcambra: viewing this through the lens of the UN Open source principles is a great idea. I think this will be useful especially for formulating an ethical vendor selection framework as the underlying framework for social media presence (if it ever gets that far).

@ryan_witcombe: thanks for taking the time to join this discussion and confirm that the DA is actively discussing this. Looking forward to the update.

Alright, here's my promised update:

The Drupal Association appreciates the community's engagement in discussing our social media presence and how it reflects our values.

We've been reviewing our social media strategy for the accounts we control, and after analyzing our engagement metrics and audience reach, we're implementing a tiered approach (see below).

This approach balances our commitment to Drupal's values of openness, inclusiveness, and digital freedom with our responsibility to grow the Drupal ecosystem and serve our global community effectively.

Preferred platforms

LinkedIn will be our preferred platform. It is our strongest performing platform with good engagement and professional audience alignment. This will receive primary focus for community announcements and growth efforts.

Emerging preferred platforms

We're actively building presence on Mastodon and Bluesky, platforms that align with our open-source values. We’ll give it 6 months of effort and see if we can grow audiences, and then re-assess.
If either platform reaches 5,000 followers, we’ll promote them to being a priority platform. We’d love to see them become our preferred platforms.

Strategic use

We'll maintain selective engagement on Instagram and Facebook for specific campaigns, announcements, and event promotion where these platforms can effectively advance Drupal adoption.

Transitioning away from X

Our existing X/Twitter presence will point our 65K followers to our preferred platforms (LinkedIn, Mastodon and Bluesky), facilitating community migration while maintaining our established audience connections.

-------
This approach ensures we can maintain effective community communication and product marketing while being thoughtful about platform alignment. We'll continue to assess and adjust based on platform performance and community feedback.

Thank you Ryan for this update. Great first step.

Personally I am glad to see a move away from X/Twitter. Will this be announced like many other FOSS projects did, or will this be a silent change? I expect the Drupal project to take a stand, not just quietly update its social media policy without ruffling any feathers.

Will Drupal's website also be updated to remove the X/Twitter logo? Keeping the logo in place still amounts to endorsing it as a legit communication channel.

Lastly: while I'm happy this issue is moving forward, I feel this is only a half measure: Bluesky is showing cracks, Meta properties are still questionable, and the next new platform is probably around the corner. To avoid having this conversation again and again for months, I feel it would be beneficial to work on objective criteria, reviewed periodically.

I understand we can't do everything at once, but we can build on this first step and work towards a transparent and objective process going forward. Would the CWG be the right WG to work with on this, or would you suggest a different route / WG / ...?

Thanks again for the follow-up, Ryan.

Update from the core community account "The Drop is Always Moving" that I shared data about 3 months ago above too. This was never on Meta platforms. I did not post the latest UX Manager news this week to Twitter already. Posted this just now there and updated the bio too to reflect it.

We'll update our X account to point to the preferred platforms, and pin a post that says the same thing. D.org will be updated to remove X as one of our social platforms (that may take a little while as there is a backlog).

As to building an ongoing process, I believe the community working group would be a good place for this.