4 ms·

EDPS decentralised social media pilot: the end of a successful story

53 points by skilled 2y ago

furiousvoter 2y ago
[flagged]
- nolok 2y ago
  You either misunderstood what you read, or commented something incorrect and out of subject on purpose. I encourage you to offer alternatives from other countries that you think should be followed.
  - furiousvoter 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - mtmail 2y ago
      It's a press release, that's not quiet.
mannycalavera42 2y ago
So it's a (unsurprisingly) hosting cost issue. Now we know what to do next time we discuss the need for privacy-friendly and user-focused social media platforms.
- nolok 2y ago
  Yes and no. They were not cancelled because they cost too much. The pilot experiment was one year. It was actually renewed a second year. Now they were at the end of the pilot, and thus a decision had to be made about making it a permanent/long term thing with its own resources and funding, or not. And it two years, barely 40 representatives migrated there. Therefore their resources to protect privacy are better spent improving the areas where 90+% of the representative actually are. Like I said in my other comment, ultimately I think this is the better move, because having a dedicated "clean" plateform would automatically lead to slighly less effort to try and make the "big ones for the public" clean.
- mordae 2y ago
  More like they couldn't be bothered to use anything else than a "free" service or something with a vendor to bribe them as usual. Public sector still hasn't realized most of it is actually an IT company providing judicial, law enforcement, healthcare, education and insurance services and still mistakenly believes that outsourcing their core information management to 3rd parties is a good move.
- berkes 2y ago
  I'm not sure what they ran, but if it's Mastodon: it scales in troublesome ways. For one, it uses Rails and is very big. Rails is known for being extremely slow¹. A difficulty with ActivityPub is that it scales rather weird. If your server has (accounts with) many followers, you're essentially DDOSsed through activity. So it scales weird in the sense that not activity on your server demands Resources, but that activity on the fediverse, which you don't control, does.² So it can get very expensive really fast. Maybe something like gotosocial could lower these costs. But that's not "stable" (as in: frequent, disruptive upgrades and missing features) enough for a govt, I'd say. Its software design, however is far better aligned with a server with relatively few (one, or a few dozen) accounts. Accounts that can have large following and activity. Whereas the Rails project is much better aligned with servers with (tens of) thousands of users. I.e. with mastodon.social. 1 I've been helping companies scale and tune Rails for over 12 years now. I know it can be done, but also what the limitations are. They are real. ² https://ar.al/2022/11/09/is-the-fediverse-about-to-get-fryed-or-why-every-toot-is-also-a-potential-denial-of-service-attack/ https://ar.al/2022/11/09/is-the-fediverse-about-to-get-fryed...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nolok 2y ago
They offered their own hosted instance of fediverse social platforms, for a pilot experiment. After a successful first year, they were renewed for a second year. 40 "institutionnal account" went on there, which seems a lot until you realize it doesn't mean institutions, any MEP qualify, for exemple. At the end of the days, 40 is just not that high, so the pilot was not extended and allocated funding into a bigger long term project. Because it was a fediverse integrated platform, they're offering all 40+ account a way to convert into another hosted instance. They tried, it didn't catch, figuring out if it was worth doing it long term is what the pilot was for. Personally I'm of two sides, the idea of them owning their own platform seems nice on the surface, but the whole point of social media account is to be where the users are, and also forcing them to use the same platforms the rest of us do also forces them to be facing the same TOS/rules/moderation. Utimately I think it's better this way.
- gwervc 2y ago
  I'm glad no more taxpayers money is going to fund such bullshit. Alas, they probably found another irrelevant action to burn money already. In the end this is just a convoluted way to transfer money, ie corruption.
  - bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
    It's bullshit to make it easier for MEPs to get in touch with their constituencies? Do you also hate democracy?
    - Arnt 2y ago
      IIRC, if a representative posts on one instance and a constituent replies on another, the original poster is unlikely to see the reply. Not a good way to communicate with constituents.
      - luluganeta 2y ago
        This is not how Mastodon works, the point is exactly that cross-instance communication can work smoothly, and it does. Replies show up on your notifications just like any other similar platform, whether they come from your instance or another.
mg 2y ago
Europe could put quite some weight behind open social media if they would put official accounts like x.com/bundeskanzler on bundestag.de/@bundeskanzler instead. Similar to https://www.threads.net/@potus https://www.threads.net/@potus but truly open by tying it to a government controlled domain. I think ActivityPub supports putting a "look over there for the actual content" file on a domain, so that technically all you have to do is put a static file on the domain. And then you can use an external service to publish your content.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- johannes1234321 2y ago
  > bundestag.de/@bundeskanzler in That's wrong. The Bundeskanzler is not part of the Bundestag but part of the constitutional body Bundesregierung. Anyways: https://social.bund.de/exists https://social.bund.de/exists and is used by many authorities. Trouble is: They want to be where an audience is.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    The only rational project for governments etc in this space to do would be in the cross posting space (with audit trail of what / where / authorisation etc) with a single source of truth on the authoring side. Given the point is to disseminate information it is all about where the audience is, and increasingly the audience is in multiple places and certainly not where privacy folks are.
  - rglullis 2y ago
    > Trouble is: They want to be where an audience is. The indieweb answer for this is POSSE. You stop chasing the audience and you get to be in control of your main communication channels.
    - johannes1234321 2y ago
      That is good - in theory. But your if political opponent is strong in the populated corners and you got no visibility it's not a good situation for your campaign.
sixhobbits 2y ago
Not sure how 'successful' it is, but Netherlands government also started a Mastodon server https://social.overheid.nl/about https://social.overheid.nl/about and e.g. the tax office has over 2000 followers https://social.overheid.nl/@belastingdienst https://social.overheid.nl/@belastingdienst
pera 2y ago
That's disappointing: the European Commission has 100k followers on Mastodon (https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission) which seems enough to justify the continuation of this project.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
> Unfortunately, despite our efforts to find a new home for EU Voice and EU Video in other EUIs, we have been unable to secure new ownership to maintain the servers and sustain operations at the high standards that EUIs and our users deserve What does that mean? The server/host they were using shut down? Was it outsourced to like a 'masto.host' or in-house?
kkfx 2y ago
I insist that it's absurd trying to beat big tech mimicking their models. A social? Just dress Usenet with some extras (a minimal, readable markup, that render allowing things like video/images embedding in-line for instance) and you get a social no X or Mastodon can beat. We do not need to copy the big, we need better stuff, and those come from the desktop model. Pushing them cut completely out the big ones because they offer inferior solutions and they can't do otherwise to keep up their business. Try to copy them and nobody will care.

53 points by skilled 2y ago

furiousvoter 2y ago

[flagged]

nolok 2y ago
You either misunderstood what you read, or commented something incorrect and out of subject on purpose. I encourage you to offer alternatives from other countries that you think should be followed.
- furiousvoter 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mtmail 2y ago
    It's a press release, that's not quiet.

mannycalavera42 2y ago

So it's a (unsurprisingly) hosting cost issue. Now we know what to do next time we discuss the need for privacy-friendly and user-focused social media platforms.

nolok 2y ago
Yes and no. They were not cancelled because they cost too much. The pilot experiment was one year. It was actually renewed a second year. Now they were at the end of the pilot, and thus a decision had to be made about making it a permanent/long term thing with its own resources and funding, or not. And it two years, barely 40 representatives migrated there. Therefore their resources to protect privacy are better spent improving the areas where 90+% of the representative actually are. Like I said in my other comment, ultimately I think this is the better move, because having a dedicated "clean" plateform would automatically lead to slighly less effort to try and make the "big ones for the public" clean.
mordae 2y ago
More like they couldn't be bothered to use anything else than a "free" service or something with a vendor to bribe them as usual. Public sector still hasn't realized most of it is actually an IT company providing judicial, law enforcement, healthcare, education and insurance services and still mistakenly believes that outsourcing their core information management to 3rd parties is a good move.
berkes 2y ago
I'm not sure what they ran, but if it's Mastodon: it scales in troublesome ways. For one, it uses Rails and is very big. Rails is known for being extremely slow¹. A difficulty with ActivityPub is that it scales rather weird. If your server has (accounts with) many followers, you're essentially DDOSsed through activity. So it scales weird in the sense that not activity on your server demands Resources, but that activity on the fediverse, which you don't control, does.² So it can get very expensive really fast. Maybe something like gotosocial could lower these costs. But that's not "stable" (as in: frequent, disruptive upgrades and missing features) enough for a govt, I'd say. Its software design, however is far better aligned with a server with relatively few (one, or a few dozen) accounts. Accounts that can have large following and activity. Whereas the Rails project is much better aligned with servers with (tens of) thousands of users. I.e. with mastodon.social. 1 I've been helping companies scale and tune Rails for over 12 years now. I know it can be done, but also what the limitations are. They are real. ² https://ar.al/2022/11/09/is-the-fediverse-about-to-get-fryed-or-why-every-toot-is-also-a-potential-denial-of-service-attack/ https://ar.al/2022/11/09/is-the-fediverse-about-to-get-fryed...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nolok 2y ago

They offered their own hosted instance of fediverse social platforms, for a pilot experiment. After a successful first year, they were renewed for a second year. 40 "institutionnal account" went on there, which seems a lot until you realize it doesn't mean institutions, any MEP qualify, for exemple. At the end of the days, 40 is just not that high, so the pilot was not extended and allocated funding into a bigger long term project. Because it was a fediverse integrated platform, they're offering all 40+ account a way to convert into another hosted instance. They tried, it didn't catch, figuring out if it was worth doing it long term is what the pilot was for. Personally I'm of two sides, the idea of them owning their own platform seems nice on the surface, but the whole point of social media account is to be where the users are, and also forcing them to use the same platforms the rest of us do also forces them to be facing the same TOS/rules/moderation. Utimately I think it's better this way.

gwervc 2y ago
I'm glad no more taxpayers money is going to fund such bullshit. Alas, they probably found another irrelevant action to burn money already. In the end this is just a convoluted way to transfer money, ie corruption.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  It's bullshit to make it easier for MEPs to get in touch with their constituencies? Do you also hate democracy?
  - Arnt 2y ago
    IIRC, if a representative posts on one instance and a constituent replies on another, the original poster is unlikely to see the reply. Not a good way to communicate with constituents.
    - luluganeta 2y ago
      This is not how Mastodon works, the point is exactly that cross-instance communication can work smoothly, and it does. Replies show up on your notifications just like any other similar platform, whether they come from your instance or another.

mg 2y ago

Europe could put quite some weight behind open social media if they would put official accounts like x.com/bundeskanzler on bundestag.de/@bundeskanzler instead. Similar to https://www.threads.net/@potus https://www.threads.net/@potus but truly open by tying it to a government controlled domain. I think ActivityPub supports putting a "look over there for the actual content" file on a domain, so that technically all you have to do is put a static file on the domain. And then you can use an external service to publish your content.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
johannes1234321 2y ago
> bundestag.de/@bundeskanzler in That's wrong. The Bundeskanzler is not part of the Bundestag but part of the constitutional body Bundesregierung. Anyways: https://social.bund.de/exists https://social.bund.de/exists and is used by many authorities. Trouble is: They want to be where an audience is.
- blitzar 2y ago
  The only rational project for governments etc in this space to do would be in the cross posting space (with audit trail of what / where / authorisation etc) with a single source of truth on the authoring side. Given the point is to disseminate information it is all about where the audience is, and increasingly the audience is in multiple places and certainly not where privacy folks are.
- rglullis 2y ago
  > Trouble is: They want to be where an audience is. The indieweb answer for this is POSSE. You stop chasing the audience and you get to be in control of your main communication channels.
  - johannes1234321 2y ago
    That is good - in theory. But your if political opponent is strong in the populated corners and you got no visibility it's not a good situation for your campaign.

sixhobbits 2y ago

Not sure how 'successful' it is, but Netherlands government also started a Mastodon server https://social.overheid.nl/about https://social.overheid.nl/about and e.g. the tax office has over 2000 followers https://social.overheid.nl/@belastingdienst https://social.overheid.nl/@belastingdienst

pera 2y ago

That's disappointing: the European Commission has 100k followers on Mastodon (https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission) which seems enough to justify the continuation of this project.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

> Unfortunately, despite our efforts to find a new home for EU Voice and EU Video in other EUIs, we have been unable to secure new ownership to maintain the servers and sustain operations at the high standards that EUIs and our users deserve What does that mean? The server/host they were using shut down? Was it outsourced to like a 'masto.host' or in-house?

kkfx 2y ago

I insist that it's absurd trying to beat big tech mimicking their models. A social? Just dress Usenet with some extras (a minimal, readable markup, that render allowing things like video/images embedding in-line for instance) and you get a social no X or Mastodon can beat. We do not need to copy the big, we need better stuff, and those come from the desktop model. Pushing them cut completely out the big ones because they offer inferior solutions and they can't do otherwise to keep up their business. Try to copy them and nobody will care.