Imagine a world where every government has its own instance.
“Breaking News: North Korea has defederated from the United States, as well as hundreds of other countries.”
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.
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.
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.
I had the same exact thoughts when the first twitter migration happened. I doubt we will see it, but I can dream.
Wow. Decentralization as a whole will be a game changer for all corners of media, science etc.
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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Not many governments would have enough tech-savy people to even think of opening a Mastadon instance. Kudos NL and Germany!
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Can’t find any sources on this. I’d be wary
Link in post
Yeah there’s a link to the account but no proof it is official
It is literally the government’s website. How official do you want it?
Overheid = government Social.overheid.nl = social.government.nl
See also: https://www.overheid.nl/english
Tweakers.net, which is pretty much the biggest techsite in the Netherlands, has an article about it aswell. You can be sure this is very real.
Im sorry but does tweaker have a different meaning in the Netherlands or is that name on purpose.
It’s along the lines of tuner / or like vaultdweller said tinkerer. The name is from late 90’s. It started as World of Tweaking when overclocking and tuning your pc was seen as destroying your hardware and hacking the plannet (31337 H4X0R).
Site started somewhere 1997 and 1999 or so. By now it’s a very common site in the Netherlands to check hardware and software related stuff, especially since every computer related shop has a presence in the pricewatch the website offers for the Dutch and Belgian market.
The website is extremely comparable to Tom’s Hardware website.
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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.
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Great news!
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Sounds even more 1984 to me than Twitter or Meta as hoster.
I think you misunderstood the purpose of this. This is not for citizens to join it’s an instance for government officials and offices. This is very good practice to prove a account is the official account.
But honestly I have more trust in my government to not exploit on me then I have in meta/Twitter.
Possible. I’d rather call it sceptical.
Can wait to see mass adoption of fediverse over other countries to provide updates
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.
I would love US governments / states to start their own instance on the fediverse. Talk about explosive growth to this community.
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.
