I hope other governments, small and large, start doing this.
tbh - I am not a fan of state-run media, would prefer free market solns where the state has to abide by the rules of the people.
Why not have a state-run instance on an open platform? It’s better than relying on a corporation’s platform. The government is ‘the people’ more than corporations are.
Surveillance with neither a warrant nor probable cause.
A private instance on an open platform, by the state, for the state? Sure. Go for it.
This isn’t that though. Running a federated service instance is more akin to them having to abide by the rule of the people than the status quo where Musk or Zuck could boot them from their platform or hide anything they don’t like without any reason at all.
In the fediverse, they’re choosing to run a self-hosted outlet that can interact with other privately or publicly run services. It’s like them choosing to run their own email servers instead of their officials all using gmail accounts.
The free market solutions have just led to unelected billionaire oligarchs controlling the narrative. With this federated stuff, no single entity can control the narrative (once all the kinks are ironed out like vote manipulation, exploits, etc)
Decentralized yet federated open platforms are part of the free market - and a victory of the free market. Consolidating media into an empire is a problem … but … ultimately … a problem the free market can solve, as long as the role of government keeps a free market free.
imo mastadon wont suddenly become “state-run media” just because Goverment instances exist.
there are .gov email adresses already, and emails are pretty far from state-run.
since there is (afaik) no verification on mastadon, ill assume that theyll use the goverment instances to prove that @official@goverment is legit.
There is verification of sorts for what it’s worth - you drop some HTML on your website, then tell Mastodon to crawl your website to look for it, and if it picks it up, it verifies that your Mastodon account and website are linked.
It helps for all sorts of use cases beyond “this is a famous person”, since people who run smaller projects can also verify who they are on Mastodon - I have 2 verified links on my profile for example.
would prefer free market solns where the state has to abide by the rules of the people
you mean like facebook? haha!
like lemmy! of course.
True free market solutions inevitably lead to the people abiding by the rules of the rich and powerful.
Anything run by the government has to at the very least PRETEND to listen to people who don’t have a financial interest in the enshittification of every part of society.
Just the opposite, I would argue…the role of the state should be to keep a market free so that open & standard-based solutions can replace vertical & proprietary solutions.
You mean fair, not free. The only way to avoid the tyranny of the powerful is regulation restricting their freedom to abuse their powers.
THAT’S what the government is supposed to do to a market: help the small to regular sized fish and cooperation between them by, amongst other things, erecting fences keeping off the sharks that would otherwise immediately eat them.
Also stuff with plants, I guess, but this ocean analogy is probably long and complicated enough already 😂
lol! yes, we likely agree. A free market refers to a market free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies, and artificial scarcity.
Why would a government subject itself to potential censorship of whatever admin is running their instance? It makes perfect sense for a government to host their own instance from where they can freely broadcast announcements.
And the free market has proven to be unreliable. You’re subject to whatever billionaire is ego-tripping at the top of whatever platform you’re using. The will of the people is nowhere to be seen.
Why shouldn’t the state be subject to the same whims as its citizens? How else will the state have skin in the game?
To me, the free market has produced both Lemmy and Mastodon - I wouldn’t count it out just yet.
So Lemmy and Mastodon instances are free market solutions, unless a government does it? I don’t even understand what your point is.
For media, a state platform in order of goodness:
non state (open) platform > non state (closed) platform > State owned platform
most times when the state takes an action it deprives it’s citizens of the beneficial outcomes of that action (skill, monetary).
Which would be better - open instances in each country where the state ( country and regional/s) is a participant along with its citizens?
Or instances where the state and its infinite power is private and above the people the state would govern?
My reaction is not to a state using mastodon nor twitter for that matter. My reaction is to a state running mastodon separate from the people.
I think you’re fundementally misunderstanding the purpose of these state instances. They’re a one-way broadcast channel from the government to the people. It’s not a social platform and no one except the government can create an account.
Why is that a good or better thing?
This is great.
I really wish more news sites set up their own instances. At the start I realize they wouldn’t be getting as many eyeballs, but it seems to make a lot of sense to have a @news@cnn.social or something. Then Wolf could have @Wolf.Blitzer@cnn.social.
Instant “verification” that way, too.
But we’ll see.
Wow. Decentralization as a whole will be a game changer for all corners of media, science etc.
That’s a really great idea. It makes so much sense that it seems weird that it’s not already the way things are done.
I had the same exact thoughts when the first twitter migration happened. I doubt we will see it, but I can dream.
Does CNN already own that domain?
I have no idea. That’s just an example.
Ah, okay, it would make more sense to say something like
social.cnn.comsince they already own and usecnn.com.
The only way they would do that is if they could monetize it somehow.
Yeah totally.
I had the thought that since Threads “doesn’t want politics” on their platform, and Twitter is trash, maaaaybe activity pub could be a thing.
But you are right: they won’t do anything if it won’t make money.
Agreed, not sure how I feel about governments setting up their own servers, but news organizations definitely.
Only employees can have an account on those servers. Registration is not open to the public.
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Its super important that Government info NOT be hidden behind paywalls, forced log-ins or even CloudFlare puzzles. People need to be able to freely click through to the official information.
That’s actually hilarious because the coalition of ruling parties of the Netherlands was so unstable that it fell apart today.
Excellent use case.
Not many governments would have enough tech-savy people to even think of opening a Mastadon instance. Kudos NL and Germany!
This is really fascinating to me. It would be interesting to see each country set up their own Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin/other federated systems and have those instances constantly talk to each other. Like others have commented, It seems like a great way to keep the communication style and interaction of twitter/facebook, while also protecting the validity of the information through private instances. Really smart decision.
The fact that a state government used a commercial service to inform the public is absurd, and this was bound to happen eventually.
Why is it absurd? The best way to reach people is on the platforms they use. People are not going to install some government app or use a special website to see those kinds of messages.
i can get alerts on my phone from the government. plus you could have people sign up for text messages rather then follow om Twitter. I get that Twitter wasca super fast way to get announcements out to the public and it would go to the people that actually care. But itvis bad for vital communication line to be own by a third party that can’t make money since what happens when it shuts down
They could have used a mailing list or an rss feed or half a dozen other solutions that don’t require a special website or government app.
I don’t want my government spamming my inbox with updates. I don’t know how active government Twitter accounts tend to be but I suspect there are plenty of things that are significant enough to announce via some platform but not significant enough that they merit an email.
RSS would be great and I fully support governments using it. But sadly in this day and age it would reach significantly fewer people than Twitter.
“this day and age” is rapidly coming to a close
Governments have been PAYING to inform the public via commercial services for… ever? And requiring citizens to do the same. Have you ever seen a public notice in a newspaper? At least posting on Twitter is free (for now).
At least posting on Twitter is free (for now).
“For now”, is right. That isn’t always the case.
This is the way. Government, Businesses, Celebrities and News organizations should be hosting their own social media presence. They shouldn’t be beholden to corporate interests to regulate their communications. This also breaks the cycle of exclusive content that causes lock-in. Wins for everyone.
Exciting to see this happening. More governments should do this.
Lol that’s awesome! I didn’t think governments would start doing that so quickly.
otvis great news. the use of Twitter by governments is why Twitter got so famous and could really punch above it’s weight class. Now I hope this Gaines momentum
in the future:
“Ireland.ir and Scot.land has defederated from the England.UK.gov. The Prime minister will be addressing his Instance shortly”
Good, other governments should be doing this. (But even if they use threads instead, mastodon users’ll see their updates anyway if mastodon feds with it)
threads will never federate.
You think it was just a fake promise? I haven’t thought about it, but it’s certainly possible.
I think it was posturing to the countries that banned Twitter.
look, you get your own Threads in Iran.
Fun fact: both facebook.com and twitter.com have a Tor site to make it harder to censor them.
This is brilliant. I hope we see more countries doing the same thing :)
Maybe they could make accounts be tied to residency or citizenship, and perhaps have communities that only allow posting to those accounts to reduce bot spam and foreign meddling. Maybe that’s a terrible idea, but it will be interesting to see where this goes, and if activity pub will be sufficient or need extending.
If I understood this correct from my interpretation of the dutch server description this is an Instance for dutch government officials.
At least Germany also has such a mastodon instance too for quite a while now. So people on mastodon know that an account there is officially a government account. The BSI (German Office for cyber security) and other offices post there.
This is not an Instance for “normal people” to register on.
Yeah, this works great for the “speaking officially” context.
I’ve always imagined federation would allow service providers to own their communication channels. Municipalities, state agencies, etc.
This can make it so much more secure for governments than Twitter, it also removes Elon or whoever from being able to bias algorithms in favour of his favourites.
I really think this is going to be the standard for companies and governments
