“We have to be where the media is.” We have also said this to continue using the services that exist in the antipodes of the values that we want to promote through journalism. Living in capitalism inevitably involves managing contradictions. And, unfortunately, the Internet has become an area of constant study, because it has become an oligopoly of a few multinationals rather than people. Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta – the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – and Microsoft have brought together the power of dementia and conditioned the lives of all of us, in part or in part.

When the first social networks were created, we saw them as an opportunity in LUZ and in those first years we showed that, through our work on Twitter and Facebook, we were able to reach many people who did not know our journalism. These beginnings of social networks were very interesting because the independent media sometimes had a beta to break the monopoly of the classic media to mark the agenda, while allowing every citizen to report. The mainstream media talked about the “crisis of journalism,” trying to cover up the fact that what you were really in crisis was your business model and information monopoly. The boundaries soon appeared.

The companies behind these social networks were growing in size, increasingly highlighting their economic and political interests. When we started using commercial platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc. in the 2010’s, we knew that the owners mainly thought about making money because they didn’t hide it. Commercial social networks have become an increasingly competitive field over time, and contradictions have increased for us. We were offered a large area of supposed influence, but those digital spaces that were meant to get to know each other, to organize politically or to have fun, to realize it, have become reactionary spaces full of toxic content.

Despite the contradictions, in order to increase the dissemination of independent journalism in Basque, for some time these networks were useful to us; but every day less and less. That’s why at LUZ we’ve been thinking about how to get out of these toxic spaces in recent times. We've taken a few steps, and now we're going to take a big step: We have decided to stop using Twitter and Facebook. Here are our reasons.

Their business is us

Silicon Valley tech empires like Facebook have publicly acknowledged – for more than eight years – the deliberate inclusion of addictive content in their platform designs. For a very simple reason: The purpose of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. is not to entertain users, nor to contact people, let alone inform them. Their goal is to prevent users from shutting down their app to continue viewing their ads.

Jaron Lanier was one of the gurus of Silicon Valley, one of the patrons of virtual reality, a mentor to Google and Microsoft. On the subject he says: "The basic structures are designed to allow users to spend as much time as possible on the platform. This is their business model. They sell users’ attention and data to advertising companies and other advertising companies. Facebook is a manipulator. And Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram or YouTube work on the same principles." That is, the wheel of madness that we ourselves have entered works like this: first create addiction, then accumulate user data (visited websites, friends, shopping, tastes...) and then sell it to other companies, especially advertising agencies.

As simple and complicated as the following is how the business works at the same time taking Google as an example. A set of Google machines (computers) complements your profile with information provided by yourself in Gmail, Google Classroom, Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Play, Youtube, Google Search, Google Chrome Browser, Android Systems, Chromebooks, Google Meet, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Translator and other services. This same machine compares your profile with those of people who have a similar profile to you. And according to this, YouTube, for example, offers you a specific video order with a specific purpose: to keep watching more videos (including advertising) and not to leave YouTube.

This vicious circle has caused a major political problem in the world, and at LUZ we believe that we should not contribute to increasing this accumulation of power any further.

LUZ technology towards sovereignty

This problem has been going on for a long time, but its harmful effects have been showing up in the eyes of the majority of the population in recent years. In LA LUZ we have been opting for sovereignty for years and, as in all other spheres of life, also in the technological world.

On this path we have already made several decisions, some of the most significant ones are:

• In April 2018, LUZ created its first account on the decentralized social network Mastodon, when the Basque communities did not yet exist. A few months later, several agents began working to create the Mastodon community of Basque language and culture. He didn’t hesitate and took part from the beginning.

• In 2021 we created our own PeerTube instance: bideoak.argia.eus, and we started using the videos uploaded to it on the website instead of the Youtube used until then.

• In June 2021, we removed all Google-related services from our website and transferred them mainly to the use of Google Analytics, widely distributed in the Basque Country, for the management of website statistics. Since then we have been using Matomo free software. More detailed explanations can be found in the article Goodbye Google, hello Matomo: new measures to protect your privacy.

• In September 2023, the working group decided to remove all references to toxic social networks from all LAR media (magazine, website, advertisements, supplements, posters...), in order to avoid free advertising.

So why haven't we gone through toxic networks before?

It seems contradictory that those who want a better society continue to feed toxic social networks, doesn’t it? But getting out is not as easy as it sounds. We have invested a lot of time and work in creating and nurturing communities on these platforms, and their abandonment from one day to the next moves the interiors. It is not trivial to abandon a community of 55,000 people on Twitter and another 28,000 on Facebook. But it is time to overcome this paralyzing logic.

The illusion of virality has blinded us in the belief that we can reach thousands of people, but the reality is that those of us who want to change society are not getting good results.

In this way, LUZ employees have decided to assess our performance on all social media platforms, to make public the contradictions generated by LUZ’s participation in them and the benefits it provides us. And according to this, to make ourselves an attitude that will make us feel comfortable without fear of hiding or losing anything. This is the result.

LA LUZ’s performance in social networks, since February 2025

On Twitter / X

It is not the most widely used network by the public, but it is the most widely used in journalism, activism and politics. It has now become a symbol of the new international wave of the extreme right, a tool used previously to directly tell the story of demonstrations against the extreme right. It has become the refuge of toxic debates and the home of fake news, most notably since its acquisition by the neo-fascist Elon Musk.

Ideologically, we have not found a favorable argument for LUZ to continue feeding this platform. In fact, not even four or five years ago, but in recent years the model of the platform has become more unsustainable.

We don’t see any chance of transforming Twitter from within. Twitter is not a neutral space. Judges, rules and players (bots) are purchased. You have to fight with the tools that give you the chance to win. Twitter is not the case.

The main account of LUZ has about 56,000 followers on Twitter, we also have several other accounts in operation (documentary channel, podcast Too Late and others...). 7% of all our website visits in 2024 ARGIA.eus came from Twitter.

With this in mind, we at LUZ have come to the conclusion that being on Twitter has more negative than positive aspects, so we have decided to stop using all of LUZ’s Twitter accounts.

Twitter is no longer “all people.” There is no “inevitable” need to be there. This is over and with our departure we want to reinforce this idea.

From the Facebook

I read a similar post on Twitter. Ideologically, we have not found any argument in favour of continuing to offer our content free of charge to Mark Zuckerberg’s company. The multinational disseminates values that are contrary to the model of life that we want to promote in LUZ, and even more evident in recent years.

The main account of LUZ has about 28,000 followers on Facebook, and we also have other accounts on this platform (documentaries, Too Late...). 6% of all visits in 2024 ARGIA.eus came from Facebook, but in recent years it is in decline. In 2023 there were twice as many visits from Facebook to LA LUZ, which has been halved in just one year.

We have seen clearly that the algorithm used by Facebook penalizes the dissemination of journalistic works. In recent years there has been a dramatic decline in interactions with readers. Many of our posts have not even been shown to the 28,000 people who follow us, Facebook does not want their use to go to other websites, and the media activity on these platforms is mainly that, to attract people from these platforms to our website.

Light is also on Facebook.

Pictures of Instagram

Instagram has the same owner as Facebook, and behind the algorithm it uses are the same toxic targets. Recently, the Met has reversed its policies of moderation on the eve of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. In short, it is an explicit way to allow homophobia, racism and transphobia, on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

This platform, promoter of infinite scroll, has neglected the social aspect of social networks in the name of the business. It is, however, a platform that brings together thousands and thousands of young Basques. In fact, there are a lot of people who participate in this platform alone.

A few years ago we started to pay attention to Instagram. And yet, despite the obvious contradictions, we have come to the conclusion that it is a useful tool for us to enlarge the community, especially because it is effective for us to reach some people, and we would not be able to reach them by any other means.

So, for the moment, we have decided to continue publishing on Instagram, but we will continue to critically analyze our performance.

Pictures of Bluesky

The new Bluesky platform has appeared for many as an alternative to Twitter. Developed by a Silicon Valley company, it operates thanks to venture capital from cryptocurrency and Big Tech investors. We see a lot of chances that the wrong development on Twitter will happen again.

In any case, many people have gone to this platform, trying to replace the emptiness that Twitter has left. So LUZ has opened an account on the Bluesky platform, but Mastodon will be the tool that we prioritize.

Pictures of Tik Tok

We have tried several times to share our content on the platform of the Chinese multinational, but always Tik Tok has censored our account, mainly under the pretext of videos related to Palestine.

So, as before, LIGHT will not participate in this platform.

From the Telegram

We consider it a very useful tool to be able to send information directly to the mobile phones of the members of our community. Thus, when Telegram offered this option, we immediately approached the option and opened the channel in July 2016. Currently, more than 5,200 people are subscribed. The Huerta de Vida and the Too Late podcasts also have their own channel.

The multinational behind Telegram is not the model we would like for us, and although it offers obvious advantages over WhatsApp in terms of user security, we are aware that Telegram has dark sides.

In any case, today it is a very useful tool for LUZ and gives us a lot of freedom to disseminate content, free of charge and without having to receive advertising in return.

Pictures of WhatsApp

Owned by the owner of Facebook and Instagram, it promotes their toxic lines and values described above. It is the platform with the most users in the world of simultaneous messaging both in the West and in the Basque Country. It is a new opportunity to create information channels on WhatsApp, and by the time it was launched LUZ had already created a dense community on Telegram.

Therefore, since the business model and values of WhatsApp are in conflict with those protected by LUZ, and since we have the channel to receive the information of the moment on the phone in Telegram, we have continued as before and we have confirmed not to open a WhatsApp account.

All the platforms mentioned
so far have one thing in common: they are a business for others. They are vertical systems and a few people decide the rules for the majority, for the users.

At LUZ we are very aware that the best tools to guarantee the independence of our media and content are those managed by ourselves, with the benefit of the readers at the center.

So the time it took us to feed Twitter and Facebook will now be used to strengthen these tools. These are mainly the following three:

1. ARGIA.eus. Everything we do is on the web. It is our main tool, together with the magazine. For this reason, we ask members of the LUZ community to access the LUZ website directly, without intermediaries, as this is the most transparent and efficient way to access information. A bookmark on the browser or a home page can be two automated measures that would help. In addition to continuing to constantly feed the website, we intend to develop new features and sections. In the coming months, we will be making public the projects we have in our hands.

2. The email newsletters. We send a newsletter every night as a collection of content that we have published on LUZ every day. We are going to renew this newsletter with the addition of new looks, contents and functionalities. At the same time, we are launching another larger project, which will be announced in a few weeks.

3. A little bit of fun. When we say "our tools", we do not mean those managed or created exclusively by LUZ. We also feel free tools self-managed by the Basque community. The fedistro is a set of free social networks that communicate with each other and in Mastodo we have the most popular. It has several instances in the Basque Country, created specifically to promote the use of the Basque language, making it a suitable decentralized platform for the Basque media to publish and share content freely and respectfully.

At LUZ we have decided to increase our strength in Mastodon, and in addition to what we have been doing since 2016, from now on we will start sharing content created specifically for Mastodon.

Thanks to the independence

We can make these decisions because we are economically and politically independent. The monthly monetary contributions of members of our community to LUZ are our main economic support, about 40% of our budget.

The goal of journalism is not to reach as many people as possible in one way or another. LARA seeks to influence society through journalism, informing citizens from a liberating perspective in the seven territories of the Basque Country. In Basque and Basque. That is why our content is not adapted to the whims of the giant algorithms of social networks. Our mission is to continue influencing the little one, even on the Internet. Let's go on!