this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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U.S. billionaire Elon Musk has agreed to sell a portion of Starlink assets to the U.S. Department of Defense, removing himself from decision-making regarding geofencing Ukraine’s access to the satellite internet service

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[–] Tylerdurdon 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Why doesn't he trade them X for some of Starlink? The value of ~~Twitter~~ X is in the negatives now, right?

Then maybe as a government run social media it can be stable and boring again.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

government run social media

ree eee

[–] MataVatnik 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Honestly probably wouldn't be all that bad. It likely be like the cspan of social media

[–] Deadeyegai 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never thought of it remotely even being possible like that. With some good support & security in place, it might even be a pleasant place!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are a few countries experimenting with their own Mastodon instances right now

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

All of the bad faith arguments about free speech and the first amendment become real arguments about free speech and the first amendment if the government is operating the social media site. You couldn't ban someone for offensive speech or delete their post.

[–] MataVatnik 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

True, the thought has crossed my mind cause I thought of it before. Honestly I'm not sure how it would be handled. On the one hand, calls to violence would definitely be stamped out more thoroughly. On the other hand, I could see certain problematic speech run rampant because of the first amendment. But I think you can still have a certain idea of decorum, like they do in congress, where certain behavior is frowned upon if not completely banned. I think you can also get away with pseudobanning people kind of how it's done with fact checking where certain posts are hidden behind a warning banner. Maybe also leave it up to the community like in lemmy where certain things are downvoted. It would still get spicy tho. My guess is that ultimately government run social media would be super stale and attract only the most boring conversations, like cspan.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congress_members_killed_or_wounded_in_office

Look at the first few stories under Wounded, you’ll see quite a bit of congressmen nearly beating each other to death

[–] MataVatnik 3 points 1 year ago

Yeeessss, bring on the thunderdome

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

We should bring this back honestly

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They could probably get around that by outsourcing the moderation to some public group overseen by some other public ethics group, etc, and otherwise the gov’t just provides the funding to keep it all employed, running and maintained.

Not that I’m recommending it. It would have to be better than X though.

[–] j4k3 2 points 1 year ago

Go running up and down the street outside of wherever you are waving a gun and reading all of your social media posts as loud as possible so all your neighbors can here. I bet you won't last an hour until the government shows up, shoots you, hauls you off, or tells you where to shove all of your rights and amendments.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh the EU and some (or one) Euro country has started their own Mastodon/Fediverse instances—The idea isn't terrible if your country isn't shit.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Their instances just publish to the fediverse, they don't allow civilian accounts on their server. This is usefull, any accounts from there are guaranteed to be official.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yup, and people on other instances can still comment

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It will be the opposite. The government will not be able to sensor or moderate anything but illegal stuff because of the first amendment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because they want Starlink satellites for Ukraine probably (and other uses but now this at minimum). X doesn't provide them with shit.