this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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This is pretty terrible really. Governments, cities, states use twitter for alerts and news. Now I have to agree to be tracked and monetized to view information from my government. I think everyone needs to write to all your cities, states, schools, law enforcement etc and demand they stop using twitter for anything. Our taxes should not go to padding twitter's wallets.
Now that Twitter has become what it is, I'm somewhat offended that my local government makes announcements on it. Hopefully this will be an impetus for them to stop... although many agencies use Facebook too, and FB and IG have been this way for years.
Lemmy is exactly what government bodies need. Anyone from other instances can see, vote and comment. They can limit sign up to only employees and their users immediately have an official seal of authenticity.
@[email protected]would be so cool.I think Mastadon might be better for that.
Either, or both. The Fediverse is the way forward for government announcements.
Either, or both. The Fediverse is the way forward for government announcements.
Either, or both. The Fediverse is the way forward for government announcements.
Either, or both. The Fediverse is the way forward for government announcements.
Either, or both. The Fediverse is the way forward for government announcements.
They absolutely should be setting up lemmy or mastodon as official announcement sites. That would be a perfect platform.
I think they also want to be on twitter, fb etc for the distribution potential though.
I would prefer @[email protected] so that it makes it easier to defederate from extreme right wing presidents if, god forbid, they get in power again.
Also for archival purposes.
I've worked in local level government communication. Most of the time your just trying to hit as many places as possible in a hopeless effort to keep an interested public informed. The price is usually low, the audience is there, and information can be duplicated to other platforms easily, so it generally makes sense to use social media.
That said, low engagement on a platform would be a great reason to consider cutting it out. A citizen with feedback is enough to spark the flame too.
As much as I hate the idea of Yet Another Social Media App, I kind of wish there was some sort of official government-specific platform that was only available to state/local/federal government(s) or organizations for making important announcements. No memberships required (other than posters or commenters), no likes, upvotes, or retweeting or whatever, just postings of information that people can get to from anywhere. Something completely untied from any corporate entities.
They could easily have their own websites based on Mastodon or Lemmy, not federated with anything.
They could also just use RSS feeds for one way notifications.
this is true, but that would require their audience to know about and use RSS.
People had to learn to use Twitter too, they can learn to use a feed reader. Or they can just read a website. It used to be common practice to just go to an official website, and optionally subscribe to its feed as well. Browsers used to make it super easy by prominently displaying a button that showed you that the website has feeds to offer.
Or just use RSS.
The Brazilian government send SMS to people for alerts. It’s independent of apps, and everyone with a phone can get them.
Seems like a good solution for important warnings.
I don't use twitter, but I'll check the local utilities twitter if there is a power outage so I can learn about updates, or the local transit twitter if there are delays, things like that. SMS isn't very practical for those kinds of infrequent uses.
They could just set up an RSS feed.
This should be the kick in the butt that public entities need to stop using twitter, since their announcements should be made available to everyone, not just those who have twitter accounts.
Some EU agencies are already on top of this. They host a Mastodon instance under the actual EU top-level domain name to make it actually verifiably official. https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission
Or just nationalize Twitter, make it a public utility like water, parks, roads, etc. Then it's not subject to the whims of some clownshow billionaire dictator. It could be the people's podium, not some damp troll cave.
Don't forget Elon unironically said he wanted Twitter to be a global town square. Dudes playing 1d chess by reducing his advertisers reach even further...