A city councillor is pushing the City of Ottawa to suspend all of its accounts on the social media platform X, which she calls “very negative,” rife with misinformation and tied to the threat of punishing tariffs against Canada.
Orléans West-Innes Coun. Laura Dudas has given notice of a motion she will make to council’s finance and corporate services committee next week. It asks city staff to draw up a plan to suspend the accounts and migrate to other platforms.
In her motion, she said X and owner Elon Musk no longer uphold the values of “transparency, impartiality, respect and accountability,” which Dudas views as core principles for the city.
I’d love to see the city spin up their own mastodon server to broadcast their announcements—city recreation on one @ottawa.ca account, Planning, development, and construction on another, etc, etc. They could own their own content and be unbeholden to any one platform’s philosophy.
The city is technologically savvy enough that I think it could be done.