- cross-posted to:
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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.
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.
In a way, this gives me hope that the fediverse might actually survive in a way bigger capacity than XMPP did even if Threads/Meta manages to EEE a large part of the fediverse.
Yeah, I think theres quite a few reasons to be hopeful. Also why I personally am not very interested in comparisons to XMPP and EEE. To me, that refers to a different time on the internet, where corporations where way more interested in fighting an opensource threat. But times have changed, and for Big Tech, it seems to me they are way more worried about regulations than about opensource competitors.
Not to say that this automatically means that the fediverse will be a success, not at all, this shit is hard. But to properly judge what challenges await the fediverse, I think its more fruitful to look at what Big Tech is concerned by, and what governments are thinking about. And I see very little talk about EEE from those actors. Instead, its mainly focused on regulations, privacy, and sovereign power.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I fully expect Meta to go EEE. That they’re not talking about it in those terms makes sense, given that the Embrace part has barely started. Don’t want to spook the part of the prey that still feels safe.
I just have a bit of hope that the fediverse might survive it better.
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.
@[email protected] … you could add more links and what not to your bio here … ?
haha well think it mostly worked :D
and thanks for the shoutout! I do need to update my bio and get proper accounts. For now just testing out the water a little bit, havent really fully decided on which server I want to pick. reason Im replying with 2 accounts is that federation between kbin.social and lemmy.ml specifically is still broken, couldnt even see your reply. Not sure how to approach that yet
Oh wow. Didn’t know about the broken federation.
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/173366/lemmy-ml-is-no-longer-shadowbanning-kbin#comments
seems like a side effect of lemmy devs being overloaded with info and messages getting on a long backlog
How does federating two public instances enable spying
America has a lot of problems right now leading to exceptionally low trust in government, even for them.
We’re afraid of all government spying, including our own. I just think most Americans don’t really understand that other governments, especially in the EU, have significantly better privacy laws and protections for foreigners than America has for its own citizens.
Unfortunately there are people in the EU continously pushing for mass surveilance laws
Well it was reflexive choice I think. American anti government sentiment without thinking through whether the instance or government department in question was providing a service that some would benefit from on the fediverse.
ARD and ZDF too, probably just as significant because they’re some of the biggest media organisations in the world: https://ard.social/explore and https://zdf.social/about
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.
I’m pretty new to federation. What can I do with these two instances? Can I somehow follow them with my current account? Or do I have to create a separate account on both instances?
You can follow them from your already existing Mastodon (and maybe kbin?) account.
From my account on mastodon.online I just followed https://social.overheid.nl/@beheerder as a test, and I’ve already been following https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission
For some reason my server couldn’t find users from the social.bund.de when I pasted the follow-link (like https://social.bund.de/@Zoll )
By the way Mastodon has a very nice interface to subscribe to other instances. Like now when using when following the link in OPs post and opening a web browser, then clicking on a user and clicking follow, it gives the option to sign in to subscribe OR copy a link to subscribe from another instance . Then I just paste that link in the search field in my Mastodon app (logged in to mastodon.online). Hopefully Lemmy will implement that “button to copy link to subscribe from other instance” soon
The British treasury also has/had a discord, obviously not on the same level as a whole Lemmy instance, but it was still pretty interesting
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.
Meanwhile, government and education are still completely (and happily, it seems) shackled to Microsoft and Google, of course.
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.
Why not have a state-run instance on an open platform? It’s better than relying on a corporation’s platform. The government is ‘the people’ more than corporations are.
Exactly this. In the same way I expect to be able to email the government, but I wouldn’t expect to send them a message on Facebook Messenger.
Open platforms over walled gardens.
Surveillance with neither a warrant nor probable cause.
A private instance on an open platform, by the state, for the state? Sure. Go for it.
Surveillance? In what sense, here in particular. A bit confused. Also, it depends on the kind of private instance you mean, since this is private too, in the sense you cannot make accounts on it. What other benefit do they gain over people, using this over a corporate website?
It looks like a state government was creating their own mastodon instance which, when plugged into the rest, would give them surveillance and digital wire tapping powers that today they do not have?
Again, what can they tap or see into that they couldn’t before? All info on the other servers is public, that would be true for any federated server. I really don’t get how they’d get any more access to your data than another random person on the internet seeing your profile. They’re not making their own instance available to make accounts on, or enable users to post on it directly. You aren’t giving them any more details than you would if you had a Twitter account that was public. It is quite literally just for official government information dissemination without being locked behind rate limits.
What exactly do you think they’ll be able to do now?
They can see pretty much all the things without an instance. So can you. Social media is not private.
Yeah all of this free market media we’re enjoying is the real height of journalistic integrity and quality
would prefer free market solns where the state has to abide by the rules of the people
you mean like facebook? haha!
like lemmy! of course.
This isn’t that though. Running a federated service instance is more akin to them having to abide by the rule of the people than the status quo where Musk or Zuck could boot them from their platform or hide anything they don’t like without any reason at all.
In the fediverse, they’re choosing to run a self-hosted outlet that can interact with other privately or publicly run services. It’s like them choosing to run their own email servers instead of their officials all using gmail accounts.
The free market solutions have just led to unelected billionaire oligarchs controlling the narrative. With this federated stuff, no single entity can control the narrative (once all the kinks are ironed out like vote manipulation, exploits, etc)
Decentralized yet federated open platforms are part of the free market - and a victory of the free market. Consolidating media into an empire is a problem … but … ultimately … a problem the free market can solve, as long as the role of government keeps a free market free.
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.
That sounds like a great idea. Kind of like Twitter verification except the verification that you’re really a government official comes from the fact that your home server is a government run one.
And the same could go for corporate accounts. You’re a public relations guy at Roblox and want an official, verified account on mastodon/in the fediverse? Spin up social.roblox.com as a mastodon server that has your PR account as its only user, disable open account registration and you’re good to go. (maybe an optional dummy account to get federation going by subscribing to all known fediverse servers of interest)
Calling Twitter blue “verification” is a sad joke. You’re just paying the company money and you get the check. There’s no verification whatsoever. You can easily pretend you’re someone else or “verify” an army of bots.
There is verification of sorts for what it’s worth - you drop some HTML on your website, then tell Mastodon to crawl your website to look for it, and if it picks it up, it verifies that your Mastodon account and website are linked.
It helps for all sorts of use cases beyond “this is a famous person”, since people who run smaller projects can also verify who they are on Mastodon - I have 2 verified links on my profile for example.
Why would a government subject itself to potential censorship of whatever admin is running their instance? It makes perfect sense for a government to host their own instance from where they can freely broadcast announcements.
And the free market has proven to be unreliable. You’re subject to whatever billionaire is ego-tripping at the top of whatever platform you’re using. The will of the people is nowhere to be seen.
It’s like saying government officers should use gmail accounts instead of writing their emails from their own government-run email servers.
Why shouldn’t the state be subject to the same whims as its citizens? How else will the state have skin in the game?
To me, the free market has produced both Lemmy and Mastodon - I wouldn’t count it out just yet.
So Lemmy and Mastodon instances are free market solutions, unless a government does it? I don’t even understand what your point is.
For media, a state platform in order of goodness:
non state (open) platform > non state (closed) platform > State owned platform
most times when the state takes an action it deprives it’s citizens of the beneficial outcomes of that action (skill, monetary).
Which would be better - open instances in each country where the state ( country and regional/s) is a participant along with its citizens?
Or instances where the state and its infinite power is private and above the people the state would govern?
My reaction is not to a state using mastodon nor twitter for that matter. My reaction is to a state running mastodon separate from the people.
I think you’re fundementally misunderstanding the purpose of these state instances. They’re a one-way broadcast channel from the government to the people. It’s not a social platform and no one except the government can create an account.
Why is that a good or better thing?
True free market solutions inevitably lead to the people abiding by the rules of the rich and powerful.
Anything run by the government has to at the very least PRETEND to listen to people who don’t have a financial interest in the enshittification of every part of society.
Just the opposite, I would argue…the role of the state should be to keep a market free so that open & standard-based solutions can replace vertical & proprietary solutions.
You mean fair, not free. The only way to avoid the tyranny of the powerful is regulation restricting their freedom to abuse their powers.
THAT’S what the government is supposed to do to a market: help the small to regular sized fish and cooperation between them by, amongst other things, erecting fences keeping off the sharks that would otherwise immediately eat them.
Also stuff with plants, I guess, but this ocean analogy is probably long and complicated enough already 😂
lol! yes, we likely agree. A free market refers to a market free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies, and artificial scarcity.
free market and rules of the people in one sentence?
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.
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.
I’m from Indonesia and I can assure you European level of stupid doesn’t even come close to my country’s
Why. So they become less secure? Propriatery software has its uses /s
Yes and how is the developer supposed to earn their money when they can’t spy on people and insert ads?!!!!!!!1111
Not enough exclamation marks… Add more to better convey your fragility. lol
It would be nice if governments could make a “software union”, pledging to use the same standards. It seems that everyone is inventing the wheel separately in every country or falling back on commercial industry standards.
F.i. the exchange of financial documents. There’s a standard coming along called SAF-T, and even if it is a standard, every country using it are making their own definitions of what it is. There are also some countries that already have their own completely different standard. The crazy thing is that almost every country worldwide are asking for the exact same info on tax returns, but they’ve all individually come up with that. Only differences is the order of fields on the form.
Same with user identification. Every country has their own almost identical solution for identification, which however does not work across borders, despite the similarities.
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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.
Wow. Decentralization as a whole will be a game changer for all corners of media, science etc.
Given how the fediverse is kinda like e-mail, this feels like a natural next step.
That’s a really great idea. It makes so much sense that it seems weird that it’s not already the way things are done.
I had the same exact thoughts when the first twitter migration happened. I doubt we will see it, but I can dream.
The only way they would do that is if they could monetize it somehow.
It’d be another method to drive traffic to their websites and gain more ad revenue. Same as maintaining a presence on twitter or facebook, or providing an RSS feed.
Yeah totally.
I had the thought that since Threads “doesn’t want politics” on their platform, and Twitter is trash, maaaaybe activity pub could be a thing.
But you are right: they won’t do anything if it won’t make money.
Isn’t their entire strategy to fish people onto their site, make money that way? Twitter doesn’t pay them either.
Does CNN already own that domain?
For some crazy reason they haven’t snatched it up yet. Atleast a domain seller website is saying it is free for pickings, if you want it.
Then again maybe their policy is to put everything as subdomain on cnn.com and make cnn.com their sole brand “if it’s not on cnn.com, it’s not that CNN”. Still i would have though they defensive register all relevant TLDs, even if they never ever use them.
I don’t remember which pizza chain (or it has since been fixed) but something like
papajohns.pizzaused to redirect todominos.com.
I have no idea. That’s just an example.
Ah, okay, it would make more sense to say something like
social.cnn.comsince they already own and usecnn.com.
Agreed, not sure how I feel about governments setting up their own servers, but news organizations definitely.
How would you propose government officials officially distribute verified information? Just for government officials and distribution, that’s the whole point of having a .gov domain is so you can know it’s official
Only employees can have an account on those servers. Registration is not open to the public.
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.
That’s actually hilarious because the coalition of ruling parties of the Netherlands was so unstable that it fell apart today.
Oh dang, our government has fallen and I first read about it on Lemmy. It’s official, this is my social medium now.
Is there a local article about this? I’m very curious
Einde kabinet-Rutte IV - https://nos.nl/collectie/13942
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.
Eh, lots of companies use gmail it’s just masked by being their own domain and part of g suite.
Gmail itself, in that situation, is just a frontend to the mail server. You can use the same domain, on any mail server, with any frontend, and it would work just as well. It’s just that Google Workspace apps are familiar to most users. But even then, the industry leader is Microsoft with their Office Suite which is yet another option
It’s still Google’s mail server. The mail client is irrelevant.
I was talking about companies with an email address like myFirstCompanyPleaseTakeMeSeriously(at) gmail.com as opposed to first.last(at)company.com In the latter case you can still have gmail involved but your customers wouldn’t know about it.
You don’t see governments or companies using gmail, now do you.
Many definitely do use it. But now that many have moved towards microsoft and/or google cloud services (mostly pushed by the private sector), people are indeed noticing that maybe, it’s not the best idea for public institutions to be dependent on foreign corporations.
Why should companies and governments use TweetBook or Snapstargram for official communication when they can host their own instance.
Well because “cloud is the future” and hosting your own instances is not “cost effective”.
For the time being, the problem has been that large majority of the people are using these unstable platforms, so companies decided to follow.
Big tech companies have been fighting for the dependency of the private sector for decades. Even before the cloud, there was a dependency on windows, Microsoft office and exchange. Now big tech is selling the promise that “they will take care of everything, you don’t need a ton of IT employees who administer everything, microsoft/google will take care of everything”.
When it comes to cutting expenses, government institutions are always very interested, so it makes sense to outsource all sorts of things. On the other hand, political decision making can change the situation completely. For example, some countries have decided that all of mining industry, railways, electricity and water must be kept in government hands, no matter the cost. Same sort of things can happen with IT services once you burn your fingers badly enough.
When it comes to cutting expenses, government institutions are always very interested, so it makes sense to outsource all sorts of things.
On paper, sort of. Government IT projects are often seen as cash machines by private businesses where I’m from because there is often a generous budget and government institutions tend to want to use those budgets completely because if they don’t, some will start wondering if they really need that much budget or if it maybe can be shortened a bit… There have been notorious cases where there were huge projects that ended up being even more expensive than initially planned because the private contractors just milked it. And there is of course a lot of mutual masturbation between government institutions and big tech.
And government institutions tend to follow the private sector. The private sector has been pushing to the cloud for a long time now to the point where virtually nobody is suggesting or providing support for on-premise solutions. When every IT contractors says that moving everything to the google/microsoft cloud is the state of the art (and that there are 0 downsides to it and everything is 100% secure), most will not question it.
some countries have decided that all of mining industry, railways, electricity and water must be kept in government hands, no matter the cost. Same sort of things can happen with IT services once you burn your fingers badly enough.
Recently there has been somewhat of a push for open source solutions and big tech independent solutions for government institutions as they start to notice the downsides and potential security risks. And I mean it’s absolutely ridiculous, there are entire IT projects where entire systems and solutions were developed to provide a secure software solution for the military (costing hundreds of millions), but then they want to share those files with sharepoint online…
tons of large companies use gmail lol
Excellent use case.
Not many governments would have enough tech-savy people to even think of opening a Mastadon instance. Kudos NL and Germany!
a lot of government has one, they’re just not paid enough
I would think that, more than anything else, the issue would be more getting it through all the bureaucratic red tape. See the ESB debacle:
Weaver had been brought to Raytheon, the company the Air Force had hired to write the software for the next generation GPS satellites, because the Raytheon team was behind schedule and over budget. This issue of data transmission to the ground stations and back again was one of a few problems that was holding them back. There is an industry standard way of doing this, a simple, reliable protocol that is built into almost every operating system in the world.
But this team wasn’t using this simple protocol on its own. Instead, the team had written a piece of software to receive the message from that protocol, read the data, and then recode it into a different format, so they could feed it into a very complex piece of software called an Enterprise Service Bus, or ESB. The ESB eventually delivered the data to yet another piece of software, at which point the whole process ran in reverse order to deliver it back to the original, simple protocol. Because the data was taking such a roundabout route, it wasn’t arriving quickly enough for the ground stations to make the calculations needed. Using the simple protocol alone would have made the entire job a snap—as easy as nailing a couple of boards together. Instead, they had this massive Rube Goldberg contraption that was never going to work.
The people on this project knew quite well that using this ESB was a terrible idea. They’d have been relieved to just throw it out, plug in the simple protocol, and move on. But they couldn’t. It was a requirement in their contract. The contracting officers had required it because a policy document called the Air Force Enterprise Architecture had required it. The Air Force Enterprise Architecture required it because the Department of Defense Enterprise Architecture required it. And the DoD Enterprise Architecture required it because the Federal Enterprise Architecture, written by the Chief Information Officers Council, convened by the White House at the request of Congress, had required it.
I’m sure some of the fine folks at 18F would love to help various US agencies or state governments with migrating to Mastodon. I’m not so sure any of them would be able to convince geriatric politicians to do so.
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.
It is absurd in the way that the previous NL-ALERT I received had a link to Twitter for more information that I couldn’t open, since I don’t have a Twitter account. When Musk decides to do something crazy with his platform it could have a direct impact on the communication between the government and the people. It is safer to use a self hosted platform so you can always reach the masses when it is needed.
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.
They could have used a mailing list or an rss feed or half a dozen other solutions that don’t require a special website or government app.
I don’t want my government spamming my inbox with updates. I don’t know how active government Twitter accounts tend to be but I suspect there are plenty of things that are significant enough to announce via some platform but not significant enough that they merit an email.
RSS would be great and I fully support governments using it. But sadly in this day and age it would reach significantly fewer people than Twitter.
“this day and age” is rapidly coming to a close
i can get alerts on my phone from the government. plus you could have people sign up for text messages rather then follow om Twitter. I get that Twitter wasca super fast way to get announcements out to the public and it would go to the people that actually care. But itvis bad for vital communication line to be own by a third party that can’t make money since what happens when it shuts down
Governments have been PAYING to inform the public via commercial services for… ever? And requiring citizens to do the same. Have you ever seen a public notice in a newspaper? At least posting on Twitter is free (for now).
At least posting on Twitter is free (for now).
“For now”, is right. That isn’t always the case.
You think they own the servers?
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.
There are a lot of ways they could handle it. Imagine the New York Times or similar organizations with their own customized Mastodon for live updates and Lemmy for linking to articles and for searching. Mastodon being the free to follow and the Lemmy/main site being subscription to make an account and comment.
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.
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.”
You claim to be a federation, yet you’ve shown that you are actually a defederation.
More like it tried to forcibly merge the instances
Denies there is such a thing as a Ukrainian instance.
“There was never such an instance, it’s a bug created by Lenin”
“The Russian federation defederates itself.”
i’ll take country defederation dramas over the shit we have now any day.
Nah they’re too petty for that. They’d make a huge show about how they’re going to block the US and everyone else. Then they’ll block.
Then they’ll quietly unblock everyone.Three months later they’ll do all over again.
This is just discord in a nutshell
Man I’m so glad to be in the discords I am in. I’ve never had any problems there. I keep hearing horror stories though.
in the future:
“Ireland.ir and Scot.land has defederated from the England.UK.gov. The Prime minister will be addressing his Instance shortly”
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.
