5 ms·

> what do governments want (many politicians use twitter as an official means of communication) This needs to be changed; ideally governments would contribute

by riffic 5y ago

> what do governments want (many politicians use twitter as an official means of communication) This needs to be changed; ideally governments would contribute directly into a digital commons directly from their own official web presence. We've had the answer since 2008 for this too - the federated social web. public communications funded with public money should occur via public infrastructure. Twitter could be in the business of selling this (their hosted software on custom domains) to public agencies, institutions, groups, or anyone who just wants ownership of their own ActivityPub interoperable namespace. EDIT: No one asked me but I just want to remind everyone here that Bluesky, a vaporware "protocol" initiative, is not doing anything of value.

numbsafari 5y ago
At least in the case of the US, you need to distinguish between _the government_ and _politicians_. I would agree with your position that, when a politician is acting in their official capacity or when the government as an entity itself is seeking to communicate, that communication should be done in an open manner using the infrastructure of the state. However, when a politician, or a political group, seeks to communicate, it should _not_ be done on that same infrastructure. There are all sorts of negative implications of real First Amendment protections for speech "in the commons". If, for example, the government owned twitter, it would have to support and allow Neo Nazis, the KKK, cult leaders, and all sorts of other corrosive participants to have access. Private entities have greater leeway. So, if you are saying the government and officials in their official capacity must communicate via some protocol (RSS, ActivityPub, printed letterhead, etc.) that can be shared and accessed equally by other platforms or tools, I'm on board. But if you are arguing that Twitter should somehow be nationalized, I think that way lies dragons.
- 7speter 5y ago
  Or just make a twitter where government officials have create update and delete privileges and make it read only for the public.
  - TremendousJudge 5y ago
    That sounds like a regular webpage.
    - 7speter 5y ago
      A single place where all government officials, maybe elected officials, can make announcements that you can filter (or follow officials youd prefer to follow, would that make it web app enough?) by branch or state? Haven’t seen such a webpage yet.
- riffic 5y ago
  > So, if you are saying the government and officials in their official capacity must communicate via some protocol (RSS, ActivityPub, printed letterhead, etc.) that can be shared and accessed equally by other platforms or tools, I'm on board. This option, completely. Thank you for the further substantiation of this idea. An example of this would be a system set up specifically for members of the House of Representatives, each member having access to an account (member@HOUSE.GOV) and access is provisioned through normal directory services like LDAP. We do corporate/institutional email like this today, so the public is more than familiar with this principle. Then, as a further extrapolation of this idea, we will have have all of the fire departments and police departments and departments of motor vehicles and what have you all running their own individual systems (or bidding for managed services that provide this), allowing for common subscription through standardized protocols - why are all of these groups sharing one giant Twitter.com namespace? Who knows but it's a tired system.
jerojero 5y ago
Governments and politicians need to reach people where people are. Though I agree it is extremely important for governments to have official state-owned channels of communication; we can't close our eyes and pretend like people don't go to twitter first. That's the situation we are in, that's the situation governments find themselves in. Due to network effects it's very difficult to get people out of these platforms so what should be done about it?
- riffic 5y ago
  > Governments and politicians need to reach people where people are One of the other points I've made elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31067225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31067225) is that the public has jumped formats many times before. I suppose they will continue to do that as media evolves.

by riffic 5y ago

numbsafari 5y ago

At least in the case of the US, you need to distinguish between _the government_ and _politicians_. I would agree with your position that, when a politician is acting in their official capacity or when the government as an entity itself is seeking to communicate, that communication should be done in an open manner using the infrastructure of the state. However, when a politician, or a political group, seeks to communicate, it should _not_ be done on that same infrastructure. There are all sorts of negative implications of real First Amendment protections for speech "in the commons". If, for example, the government owned twitter, it would have to support and allow Neo Nazis, the KKK, cult leaders, and all sorts of other corrosive participants to have access. Private entities have greater leeway. So, if you are saying the government and officials in their official capacity must communicate via some protocol (RSS, ActivityPub, printed letterhead, etc.) that can be shared and accessed equally by other platforms or tools, I'm on board. But if you are arguing that Twitter should somehow be nationalized, I think that way lies dragons.

7speter 5y ago
Or just make a twitter where government officials have create update and delete privileges and make it read only for the public.
- TremendousJudge 5y ago
  That sounds like a regular webpage.
  - 7speter 5y ago
    A single place where all government officials, maybe elected officials, can make announcements that you can filter (or follow officials youd prefer to follow, would that make it web app enough?) by branch or state? Haven’t seen such a webpage yet.
riffic 5y ago
> So, if you are saying the government and officials in their official capacity must communicate via some protocol (RSS, ActivityPub, printed letterhead, etc.) that can be shared and accessed equally by other platforms or tools, I'm on board. This option, completely. Thank you for the further substantiation of this idea. An example of this would be a system set up specifically for members of the House of Representatives, each member having access to an account (member@HOUSE.GOV) and access is provisioned through normal directory services like LDAP. We do corporate/institutional email like this today, so the public is more than familiar with this principle. Then, as a further extrapolation of this idea, we will have have all of the fire departments and police departments and departments of motor vehicles and what have you all running their own individual systems (or bidding for managed services that provide this), allowing for common subscription through standardized protocols - why are all of these groups sharing one giant Twitter.com namespace? Who knows but it's a tired system.

jerojero 5y ago

Governments and politicians need to reach people where people are. Though I agree it is extremely important for governments to have official state-owned channels of communication; we can't close our eyes and pretend like people don't go to twitter first. That's the situation we are in, that's the situation governments find themselves in. Due to network effects it's very difficult to get people out of these platforms so what should be done about it?

riffic 5y ago
> Governments and politicians need to reach people where people are One of the other points I've made elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31067225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31067225) is that the public has jumped formats many times before. I suppose they will continue to do that as media evolves.