this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Fediverse

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[–] [email protected] 149 points 2 years ago (32 children)

I hope other governments, small and large, start doing this.

[–] [email protected] 121 points 2 years ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago (8 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 120 points 2 years ago (6 children)

They've done a lot of stupid things lately, but this isn't one of them.

Governments should be using open platforms and open source software.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago

Absolutely! Using open source software is much cheaper, as well. Hiring developers to work on open source software/OSs would cost less than buying software annually. Governments pay stupid amounts of money for easily replaceable software.

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 2 years ago (16 children)

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 @[email protected] or something. Then Wolf could have @[email protected].

Instant “verification” that way, too.

But we’ll see.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago

Given how the fediverse is kinda like e-mail, this feels like a natural next step.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago

Wow. Decentralization as a whole will be a game changer for all corners of media, science etc.

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 87 points 2 years ago (3 children)

That's actually hilarious because the coalition of ruling parties of the Netherlands was so unstable that it fell apart today.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 2 years ago

Oh dang, our government has fallen and I first read about it on Lemmy. It’s official, this is my social medium now.

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Eh, lots of companies use gmail it's just masked by being their own domain and part of g suite.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 2 years ago

Excellent use case.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not many governments would have enough tech-savy people to even think of opening a Mastadon instance. Kudos NL and Germany!

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (1 children)

a lot of government has one, they're just not paid enough

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 years ago (12 children)

The fact that a state government used a commercial service to inform the public is absurd, and this was bound to happen eventually.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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."

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago (5 children)

"The Russian federation defederated Ukraine."

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

in the future:

"Ireland.ir and Scot.land has defederated from the England.UK.gov. The Prime minister will be addressing his Instance shortly"

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 years ago

This actually makes a lot of sense and I am surprised that there isn't a lot of government already doing it. That and celebrities. It's basically instant verification.

[–] mintiefresh 41 points 2 years ago

Exciting to see this happening. More governments should do this.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Incredible! Are they the first government entity to do so?

[–] [email protected] 61 points 2 years ago (2 children)

No, EU and Germany have been in Mastodon for months.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (1 children)

On Mastodon or their own instances?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago

That's really cool. This is a good use-case example of Mastadon, the government can run its own official instance for announcements and information without impacting other instances

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 years ago

The EU started their own instance when Musk bought Twitter

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Lol that’s awesome! I didn’t think governments would start doing that so quickly.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Didn't the EU do the same shortly after Space Karen bought Twitter? I believe I saw an article around the time I started my Mastodon account.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

https://social.network.europa.eu/

https://tube.network.europa.eu/

Took about two weeks from Musk's announcement for those instances to show up.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (6 children)

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)

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

All governments, large NGOs, and news orgs should do this. Maybe there should be a "mastodon in a box" which is a simplified containerized version of the service which makes it easy to set up and secure.

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