I hope other governments, small and large, start doing this.
Germany (social.bund.de) and the EU (social.network.europa.eu) already have it. I think it’s very likely that other governments, especially european ones, will start to do this.
With the internet being so dominated by american voices, I dont think a lot of people have fully appreciated the sentiment change in the higher levels of european governments. Sovereign control over their digital spaces is something that is actually mattering on the level of nation states. Its a way of thinking that is kind of new to most people, as we rarely think about the sovereign powers of nation states, and even less so in the context of the internet. But now were starting to do that again, and it actually matters.
With the internet being so dominated by american voices, I dont think a lot of people have fully appreciated the sentiment change in the higher levels of european governments.
Absolutely. I was on an instance, run by North Americans, that had blocked European Govt instances because they didn’t trust government agencies spying on them etc. Some German users picked up on this and voiced a lot of frustration over it. There was a clear cultural divide. Even more ironic, I think it was the German department of privacy or something to that effect.
Nonetheless, it was quite interesting to see a tension between the small hacker aspect of the fediverse and the “this is the new internet” aspect and how much the US dominated perspective probably completely missed the mark.
EDIT: European Govt from “European” to clarify I was referring to government run instances.
How does federating two public instances enable spying
ha yeah I remember that, that was fun.
To riff on this a little bit further: its also visible in how little attention in the gazillion conversations about Threads is paid to the fact that the entirety of the EU cannot even access it yet due to the new DMA and DSA.
Or one of the articles I wrote that got relatively low traction, that was specificially about how all of the Nordic countries got an official recommendation to use ActivityPub for their governmental communications. I dont mind that some articles get less traction than others, but it does stand out when you consider how impactful such things are for the long term structure of the fediverse. Lots of EU governments are now talking about needing sovereign public digital spaces, and are actively looking how ActivityPub can help with that. And that matters way more than whatever Elons latest shenanigans are.
ha yeah I remember that, that was fun.
Hey! I was trying to be vague and anonymous!! 😅
But yea … totally with you!!
For those that don’t know, this person is the author of https://fediversereport.com/ and posts here like this.
@fediverse_report@lemmy.ml … you could add more links and what not to your bio here … ?
With the internet being so dominated by american voices,
Europe has to build something new that isn’t a big corp, that isn’t centralized. It has to find its own way, and the Fediverse model is a good beginning. It’s to show we can do something but in the European spirit.
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.
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.
This is great. This is how it always should have been.
Organization of any kind needs a Twitter page or subreddit? No, they need their own official, self-controlled Mastodon instance anyone can see and listen to and interact with, even without accounts on that specific instance. They need their own kbin or Lemmy instance to make and administer their community on and have control over, everyone can still participate even without signing up for accounts on that specific instance.
You don’t see governments or companies using gmail, now do you. Well, small unprofessional companies do, but everyone else has a domain, website, mail server and all the usual internet infrastructure in place. Why should companies and governments use TweetBook or Snapstargram for official communication when they can host their own instance. For the time being, the problem has been that large majority of the people are using these unstable platforms, so companies decided to follow.
tons of large companies use gmail lol
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.”
“The Russian federation defederated Ukraine.”
More like it tried to forcibly merge the instances
Denies there is such a thing as a Ukrainian instance.
You claim to be a federation, yet you’ve shown that you are actually a defederation.
“The Russian federation defederates itself.”
Italy will follow soon 🤥
And all other EU countries. Then crimew.gay will defederate them all later.
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.
I’d be interested to see other organisations get involved too. For instance, instead of every news website having their own comments section, why not set up a Lemmy instance? They could post links to their articles and users can comment with their Fediverse account, posting could be limited to users from that server, and sign-up could be restricted to people who work there.
Excellent use case.
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.
Wow, I never thought about this, but this is probably pretty good to have right? Might be a good way to find info about something if their sites are really confusing etc possibly
Damn a government that actually do something in terms of digitilization.
Cries in German …
It’s weird that you use Germany as an example when Germany has been on Mastodon since 2020 at https://social.bund.de!
I tried to start a Mastodon account, but I got the error message “Validation failed: time zone not included in list”
Soo… you’re located on Mars?
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.
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.
Because it is a platform governed by a 3rd party entity in a foreign country. That platform can ban and censor citizen, based on foreign cultural values and arbitrary rules, limiting citizen access to their own goverments information.
The platform governments choose to use for public information and debate should always provide open and public access to that information.
A government should not require its citizen to create a Twitter account, and thereby requiring them to provide their personal information to a foreign country, just to be part of the public debate and to get public information. That is just plainly wrong.
That’s nice but all of that is irrelevant. You can view tweets without making an account.
Also, not one government solely relies on Twitter to disperse information, it is just one additional channel. They also use their own websites, apps, TV and radio.
There is some kind of account-wall on Twitter. I have been hit with a popup asking me to sign up or log in plenty of times, in order to be allowed to read the tweets I was trying to read.
So twitter is not allowing everyone to read the tweets without an account.
Working link: https://social.overheid.nl/@beheerder/110684642686045200
"This instance has been technically up and running since Friday, July 7, but not yet officially in use. Please be patient
The instance will contain the accounts of government agencies and will not currently accommodate individual officials."
translated by google translate.
