The server is now live and in use at social.overheid.nl
The official announcement post by the State Secretary of Digitalisation: https://social.overheid.nl/@avhuffelen/110700825255524685
In the post she mentions that the government supports ‘value-driven’ alternatives to social media. In a letter to the house of representatives she describes Mastodon as a Digital Common Good, and that it fits in the larger strategy of the government of using ‘open source, unless’ (meaning theyll always use open source unless there is a clear explicit reason not to).
Really wish all governments would do this.
Knowing how the US operates, we’ll go down that path here in about 100 years, when children that are growing up with this and have fully aged into seniority in all the branches.
I could see the US Digital Service doing this. They’re pretty solid.
Interesting, never heard of that group, surprised they survived the Trump years, given that Obama was the one that created the unit.
Slightly related, I remember sitting in on a recruitment seminar for the CIA some years back when they came to our design school and gave a talk about the graphic designers that prepare Intelligence Reports for the President. Interesting talk, but they had absolutely no sense of humor (as I guess anybody would expect). Other than background checks and all that for a government position, I was surprised at how relatively easy it seemed for an entry-level graphic designer to get that close to interacting with the Presidency and classified secrets. However, given the demands of the job, I’m sure it burns people out pretty quickly. This USDS group though sounds like it might be slightly less stressful, though still an important position for designers to get into.
Mastodon is perfect for this type of thing as well. They have full control over the instance. They can restrict sign-ups so that official accounts are easily verifiable. It’s a terrific idea.
This is the kind of thing that could help Mastodon really take off. The only reason most people still look at Twitter is for updates from official sources.
Same.
It depends if you trust in your government.
We need more governments to follow.
The German government also has one: https://social.bund.de/
The EU too.
https://social.network.europa.eu/Great!
and honestly, businesses too. There is opportunity here in the business sector, I think.
Definitely. Your PR account being from your official webdomain (or rather, a mastodon/fediverse-specific subdomain, something like mastodon.intel.com) would be the ultimate verification.
Example:
How do you know this (fictitious) announcement that Intel is going to merge with AMD is really from Intel and not from someone pretending to be from Intel for the lulz? Just look at the home instance of the account making this announcement. Only the official Intel account has this home instance.
I know it’s something of an unpopular opinion around these parts, but I could see this being much more likely if Threads does federate, which I think would be an overal boon to ActivityPub-based instances as a whole.
Could still get hacked, but the point stands that is an extra level of verification.
At least the hacks are then one company at a time or something and not direct to all big companies or people like what happend with twitter (a hacker posted a bitcoin link via multiple popular peoples accounts)
You can actually have accounts be on the base domain and only put the interface on a subdomain. It’s really neat.
Not to mention that they can have a extra layer of legitimacy/professionalism with a corporate subdomain and a branded theme.
Godverdomme wat lekker
soms wel fijn om toch af en toe een klein beetje trots te kunnen zijn op onze overheid
This is the only correct response
Very good. I hate the fact that different branches of my government are all just on big-tech networks. When the government publishes something, it should be free and available to all, not behind a fucking twitter or insta login.
Can’t believe this is hard to understand for some governments
unequivocally based
Absolutely amazing.
hell yeah interop is awesome!
Hey, noobie question here, I dont know much about fediverse, so don’t mind correct me :
Is it a good thing ?
I first had the feeling that it ain’t, but everybody in the comment section seems happy with it. My knowledge of the Fediverse is this :
- Federation aims to decentralization
- The aim beyond decentralization is to prevent one entity (like Reddit) to have too much power over the content created and shared.
- When Meta said they wanted to connect Threads to the fediverse, people seemed concerned and/or opposed to it. It seemed coherent to me as the federation with Meta was seen as a danger for decentralization, because a big entity could have access to the content. (I feel like I probably misunderstood that part though).
Now, I (personnally) consider that any state is as a big entity as big companies, and that we should feel as much concerned about their power over content and informations. This is of course debatable and maybe the origin of my misunderstanding.
So here’s my true question : do i miss any point in this, that could make me understand why you consider it a good thing ?
One thing to keep in mind is that this Mastodon instance is purely used by the government to speak officially. It is not a platform where regular folks can create new posts (they can still comment on and like posts made by the government).
They are basically removing their dependency on Twitter as a platform for sharing information to the public.
Ooooh ok, got it. Thank you very much for explaining !
But the Dutch state instance isn’t meant to assert power over user content nor is it meant to influence any information shared. Normal people won’t be able to create an account on that instance, so they cannot see what people view or limit what people create.
The reason for the instance is to have a government owned instance to share things that aren’t limited by another 3rd party commercial company. Now the government is in control instead of meta or Twitter and they can’t decide to, for instance, limit view access for everyone with no accounts one day. (Looking at you Twitter)
Another additional advantage is that all the official dutch government accounts are now grouped on an instance with limited and screened account creation. So now everything from that instance is verified to be from the Dutch government. Possibly reducing fraud and impersonating accounts in the future once people get used to the federated usernames.
The big difference between Meta and the Dutch government, is that the dutch government’s aim is not to compete and “destroy” other instances like lemmy.world/etc. Their instance is sort of their official digital megaphone.
Yes, anyone who is mad about the meta fedi is just fed misinformation and all this means is that there’s more content to federate with, which is a good thing.
Aaaad it’s down, giving 503s
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