1y ago

Dutch government starts own Mastodon instance as reaction to the instability of Twitter

https://social.overheid.nl/@beheerder

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259 comments

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.
  @fediverse_report@lemmy.ml ... 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
  
  Huh ... that's quite funny and unfortunate.
  Curiously enough I've been ranting in some replies about how "The Protocol" maybe requires too much coordination at a software level for its promises of a distributed social network to be taken at face value.
  This issue incidentally seems like a prime issue. Like, just looking at it naively, would it not be reasonable that at some level the protocol has some checks built into it such that an instance either is or is not federating with another instance and determining whether that is the case or not is straight-forward?
  The arbitrariness of a service called kbinbot being a whole instance's federation request service and the ability to block that by accident without any more declarative data structures verifying or identifying whether federation is successful ... that all smells like a bad system.
  I'm starting to wonder if there's something to my "concern" compared to other protocols (wish I knew enough to seriously examine it).
  I'll stop ranting now ... glad lemmy.ml and kbin are connected again.
  
  How does federating two public instances enable spying
  
  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.
  
  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
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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?
  
  It's not worse or better than a social platform. It's an entirely seperate tool. Broadcasting your official government messages through a community owned by other people that could delete your comments on a whim is not ideal. The people have already decided to put the owners in power through democratic elections, which are lightyears beyond the whims of narcisistic billionaires, admins and biased social media polls.
  
  It verifies that what you are seeing is actually from a government agency. Like how .gov as a TLD verifies that you're in a government website.
  You're really fundamentally misunderstanding this whole situation. This is like the government running their own webserver to host a blog. It's not government controlling anything.
  
  Yeah all of this free market media we're enjoying is the real height of journalistic integrity and quality
  
  free market and rules of the people in one sentence?

259 comments