Having states, cites, countries, or even departments of government run their own mastadon servers would be great. I refuse to give my information to big tech just so I can keep up with public information. At the very least they should publish such things on their own websites, but these days those are rarely updated. Even critical things like wildfire information are posted on twitter and facebook.

In-Q-Tel

When covid started I didn't know anything about it. I wasn't on Twitter or reddit or Facebook. I was in college, doing that and had a baby. We watched cartoons and when they slept I'd read and write. I had no idea until no one was on the road or at Walmart with me. I had no idea how to even get information about what was happening, so I went to the county website and found nothing. my professors stopped livestreaming and sent helpful information about it the same week so I got it.

Turned out the city had a Facebook page that people were getting their information from. And there was also a Twitter.

Then my kid gets to be school aged. The fucking school used Facebook and twitter to communicate with parents. I missed so many programs, and lacked information about everything that happened there.

Fucking hate it.

They don't need to choose a platform. They have to be forced to put all public-facing communication onto their website without exception. From there, they or anyone else who wants to can copy it to any platform there is.

I appreciate the peertube link for this video.

Yah, my local (all Republicans) county board shares their videos on YouTube only and we all know why that sucks.

Is this the same UK with the Online Safety Act whose main purpose (in the sense of "the purpose of a system is what it does") is to legislate all forums and platforms not run by big tech companies out of existence? I somehow don't think that country in particular will do that, but best of luck to the ORG!

Governments will move when these platforms have the reach as the toxic ones do. They're not on Facebook and Twitter for fun. They're on them because it's incredibly easy to reach people without much hassle. The toxicity they can generate is just a happy byproduct for them.

Ethics and morals according to whom? There are plenty of toxic people & groups on the Fediverse. We don’t need defederation getting in the way of things. What makes the most sense is encouraging governments to move their sites over to providers that integrate open protocols. That way the information on their sites can make it onto feeds and it’s no another social platform they need to juggle.

It kinda depends on if its additional or if its a required thing. The government does have an onus to get the word out but it should not be the official channel.