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Call your congress critters and ask them to look at drafting legislation requiring the Executive branch of government to self-host its own standards-compliant s

by riffic 6y ago

Call your congress critters and ask them to look at drafting legislation requiring the Executive branch of government to self-host its own standards-compliant social media site, using government infrastructure. We live in a day and age where ActivityPub exists and the White House could be running its own Mastodon server (well, I would not recommend that exactly, but it could be running something that speaks the same language).

bmarquez 6y ago
Why limit it to the Executive branch? I don't want to have to log in to Nextdoor to see what my local politicians are up to either.
mc32 6y ago
Why only exec? In any event rather than the official account for the office, they’ll communicate from their personal non gov account —which given first amendment, they have a right to.
- riffic 6y ago
  okay, widen the scope. Any public official should be communicating from publicly owned and controlled infrastructure.
Renaud 6y ago
It's a good idea but I see a couple of drawbacks: - if you use a standard website you get limited feedback. Politicians love twitter and FB because they basically have unlimited retweet/reposts and feedback from their supporters. So using their own system, they would lose that. - A stand-alone governmental system that allows interaction would need people to register specifically to that system. Beyond becoming a massive potential for data collection (potentially in the same vein apps for political parties are doing it) there is no way it could reach a significant portion of the population (beyond its own supporters maybe). - The use of private companies blurs the line between official commentary and a personal one. That's probably also a reason why these people would not want a dedicated governmental infrastructure, it may rob them of this ambivalence. So, the government should have its own system and any public official should only be allowed to interact through that system and not use any other social media platform other than for sharing recipes and pictures of their dogs. Maybe they would then think a bit more before retweeting nonsense and hate[1] and they could be made slightly more accountable. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53212685 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53212685
Animats 6y ago
That's "whitehouse.gov". For some reason, it's not updated much. It's about a month out of date right now.

by riffic 6y ago

bmarquez 6y ago

Why limit it to the Executive branch? I don't want to have to log in to Nextdoor to see what my local politicians are up to either.

mc32 6y ago

Why only exec? In any event rather than the official account for the office, they’ll communicate from their personal non gov account —which given first amendment, they have a right to.

riffic 6y ago
okay, widen the scope. Any public official should be communicating from publicly owned and controlled infrastructure.

Renaud 6y ago

It's a good idea but I see a couple of drawbacks: - if you use a standard website you get limited feedback. Politicians love twitter and FB because they basically have unlimited retweet/reposts and feedback from their supporters. So using their own system, they would lose that. - A stand-alone governmental system that allows interaction would need people to register specifically to that system. Beyond becoming a massive potential for data collection (potentially in the same vein apps for political parties are doing it) there is no way it could reach a significant portion of the population (beyond its own supporters maybe). - The use of private companies blurs the line between official commentary and a personal one. That's probably also a reason why these people would not want a dedicated governmental infrastructure, it may rob them of this ambivalence. So, the government should have its own system and any public official should only be allowed to interact through that system and not use any other social media platform other than for sharing recipes and pictures of their dogs. Maybe they would then think a bit more before retweeting nonsense and hate[1] and they could be made slightly more accountable. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53212685 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53212685

Animats 6y ago

That's "whitehouse.gov". For some reason, it's not updated much. It's about a month out of date right now.