It seems to me that governments and gov officials are in the perfect position to start disseminating updates via services like Mastodon instead of Twitter. Set up a state or fed gov instance for all the officials. All reporters would be forced to start watching these servers for updates. It also seems more ethical to use a gov-run service rather than a privately owned communication network. It could also offer better resiliency.
@ekastner also your toot reminded me that there *is* experimentation here, one example: https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/107843022757513829
@ekastner Germany has adopted this.
There is social.bund.de which hosts a couple of government agencies already.
Afaik it is run by @bfdi , the federal data protection officer - who also is trying to force government agencies to stop their Facebook fan sites due to being impossible to comply to gdpr this way.
@forteller @cybastl @ekastner
Oh you already posted that one. 👍
@ekastner Germany indeed did so already
@ekastner something like https://social.network.europa.eu/ ? damn, they seem to have some problems at the moment... But it's an official mastodon instance for European officials and official bodies. It's not very well publicized, and I don't know if it's very active, I only discovered it today 🙂
@ekastner EU actually has an official Mastodon instance. Not all that much traffic in the various accounts... but let us add 'yet' to that. 😀
@ekastner This is a good idea. I wonder if this Musknet business will give them the push to start branching out.
I work pretty closely with our county IT department. I might have to start planting ideas in peoples' heads.
@ekastner sounds to damn smart. Time will tell tho, most of the smart ones in gov are working for morons.
🏴
I hate to disagree because I agree with the sentiment behind it - but my experience of governments is most are ultimately bossed around by a few billionaires who control media outlets and can end a politician's career in hours if they don't get what they want.
I shudder at the thought of the current crop of pandering hate-speakers in UK government being let loose here to further spread their fascist agenda.
@ekastner I really like this idea. Instances run by government agencies...where you go direct to them and basically subscribe to get updates and to make posts even. This is a cool idea.
@ekastner love this idea! I've long thought that public notifications should be conducted through public infrastructure through feeds such as RSS or ActivityStreams. Media could do the same thing with their own websites.