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The community to discuss buying European goods and services.
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A European Citizen Initiative requires a massive investment to come through (quotas of signature per country, amount of signatures, quantity of personal data signatories have to give away, etc.) while at the same time it cannot force the EU to do anything. the Commission can just decide to file it vertically (in the trash can) and they often do.
So speak about a glorified, expansive petition... and you may find modes of action that are way way more efficient.
Everything mission critical to the governent should be open source and secure in my opinion. Of course using mastodon would be nice but what is extremely important is to start using linux insead of microsoft and similar examples because they pose a genuine risk.
just talked with a coworker about that. europe is heavily relying on microsoft products and investing a lot of money into them. we are certain, that all that money can easily pay for an expert team to develop and maintain a eu-gov linux distro.
i know that certain military branches maintain a hardened version of different linux distros for critical systems. why not take this to the next level and have an expert team maintaining your OS?
As opposed to Linux, which poses a penguin risk.
Puns aside, I completely agree with you, but that one might be either the best or the worst thing to happen to OSS. Best case scenario the govt. ensures critical technology is funded and maintained, is invested in and essentially brings a sustainable model for maintainers. Worst case, open source is regulated out of existence as we know it. There was a piece of EU legislation that thankfully didn't pass, which would've resulted in just that. Here's a reference, sorry I don't have the time right now for a better one.
I think no government should depend on any commercial platform to communicate with its citizens. As low tech as possible and workable would be best I suppose, so maybe just a website? Mastodon could work too I guess.
RSS feed maybe
But who has an RSS reader (app) these days? Everyone has a web browser. Still an RSS feed would be a lot better than anything controlled by a commercial party, X, Facebook, whatever…
Honestly it just seems nutty to me that every sovereign government isn't running its own mastodon instance for PR stuff.
They can continue posting to xitter if they really want.
I thought we were going to use Bluesky...
How does moderation work in that case? It would have to have comments disabled if it's government ran or they risk censoring (or not censoring) people. Either that or a non-government entity could run an eu instance and only give accounts to officials from various countries/groups/entities.
Would it be technically infeasible for their servers to only handle their own stuff, but where responses to it could still be made externally, viewable depending on what you federate with?
I guess if they just don't federate or only federating with other official instances. If people want to discuss it, then they can just link to it. Can you subscribe to non-fed instances?
I will support it yes.
I would love for the "official/non personal" accouts to be on Mastodon. I feel strongly they should do whatever they like in their time off, but for the love of the fediverse please use Mastodon for official communication. A lot of my country's politicians (the Netherlands) are using Twitter/X to communicate and I hate it. (They even argue on there.. I'm not missing that)
It should've been done already!
Tbh, what I've understood EU has been trying to help create it for years. It just never got wings to fly. Maybe now there's enough lift.
Its nuts that anything is using this. Especially things that have their own infrastructure to begin with like news agencies.
“Support” is vague. Your link is unreachable to Tor users so I can’t see what it’s about.
I boycott Twitter wholly. Will not set foot there. In fact, it’s mutual. Twitter kicked me off their platform when I refused to share a mobile phone number. Thus I inherently support dropping TWTR by not consuming it.
It’s embarassing and very disturbing that the public sector (especially in Europe) uses shitty corporate exclusive walled gardens like Twitter and Facebook. When a politician uses Twitter or Facebook exclusively, they should be sued for free speech infringement. The #1 purpose of free speech is to express yourself to policy makers. When they use an exclusive gatekeeper to block some people from reaching them, it’s an assault on free speech.
Whether they do Mastodon or not does not matter so much. Would be useful if they did, but the real focus should be on just getting them off exclusive tech. They can work out for themselves that Mastodon is useful and inclusive.
I'd agree with compelling politicians to change platform only in the case you outline above, where said politician (assuming they are democratically elected) is unreachable through other means of communication. Else I think everyone is free to make their own decision as to what platform/soapbox they want to use, just as much as I have the right to not use that platform.
People don’t have a right to use Twitter -- b/c it’s a private company that excludes people (e.g. people without mobile phones). That’s the first problem.
I heard a rumor that (like Facebook) Twitter was closing read access so only members could /read/ posts. Did that ever happen? Maybe not, because I was just able to reach a twitter timeline without having Twitter creds as a test. If that exclusivity plays out, then politicians will be writing messages that a segment of people are excluded from viewing. It would not be enough that they can be reached by other means. Politicians would also have to copy all of their messages to an accessible space somewhere.
It’s also insufficient that I can reach them outside twitter only by non-microblogging means. E.g. by letter. A letter is a private signal not seen by others. Microblogging is an open letter mechanism. It’s important to deliver your msg to a polician in a way that the msg has an audience. Take away the audience and you take away the power of the signal.
Twitter was closing read access so only members could /read/ posts.
It is indeed the case
I tested by accessing ACLU’s timeline anonymously without an account. Is it different for different accounts?
(edit) just tested trying to access the acct of someone arbitrary.. a broken login popup attempted to render. So I guess different accts are different.
I never really understood how it's managed. I guess Twitter allows you to see a tiny bit of content but then login walls you when you try to navigate
People don’t have a right to use Twitter.
I have a right to use twitter to the same extent as you have a right to use lemmy. Others not having a phone/computer should not infringe on my right to use existing technology, services or software.
The right to choose to use twitter is markedly different from making it a universal right to be able to access twitter.
It’s also insufficient that I can reach them outside twitter only by non-microblogging means.
Public protest existed for centuries prior to Twitter, and it's not as if the only choices are Twitter or private letter. There are many other channels of communication around, some of which public.
I have a right to use twitter to the same extent as you have a right to use lemmy.
Not in the slightest. Twitter is like a private road controlled by a single gatekeeping corporation whose private property rights are the only rights to speak of -- and it’s run by a right-wing populist who controls who can participate. Lemmy is like a network of public roads without centralized ownership, where the concept of rights is not even needed because there is no central corporate control.
The right to choose to use twitter is markedly different from making it a universal right to be able to access twitter.
Why are you talking about a universal right to access Twitter? AFAIK, no one here endorses that.
Either you lick Musk’s boots or you bounce. Those are your choices. Politicians who lick Musk’s boots and drive exclusion cannot effectively represent the people.
Public protest existed for centuries prior to Twitter
Those are different times. We are in Twitter times. Shouting on a street corner brings a smaller audience than posting on Twitter. Higher effort and less exposure; for not licking Musk’s boots. And because of network effect, non-Twitter methods have lost ground to an unequitable elitist platform that exludes people without mobile phone numbers as well as those wise enough not to share their number with Twitter, and those who object to feeding a right-wind ad surveillance platform. The open letter audience someone would have in a free world is dimished because the audience has their eyes glued to Twitter, who poached them by exploiting network effect.
Why are you talking about a universal right to access Twitter? AFAIK, no one here endorses that.
b/c it’s a private company that excludes people (e.g. people without mobile phones).
Poor comparison on my part. But it seems your sense of what is a right or not depends on whether it is accessible for all (which Lemmy/Mastodon/Bluesky isn't either as like you mentioned not everyone might have a phone or computer), whereas I argue that this only matters if it is the sole means of communication used by said politician.
I've had a twitter account for years with little more than an email address, so not sure if this is a country-specific barrier or my account was grandfathered in. I only use it to lurk as the platform is still useful to obtain information related to my job, but never tweeted.
Either you lick Musk’s boots or you bounce. Those are your choices. Politicians who lick Musk’s boots and drive exclusion cannot effectively represent the people.
If these politicians have been voted in by the people then I see no problem here democratically. The people presumably will find out in time who they really voted for and hopefully learn from it.
Those are different times. We are in Twitter times.
I'd argue that because every tweet is just another voice in the void and there is little filtering of opinions, Twitter is likely less effective than shouting on a street corner for the everyday man to get his opinion across. The sheer prevalence of bots distorts this even more. Also if platform size is the criterium here then Lemmy and Mastodon are still terrible substitutes to Reddit or Twitter in terms of reach.
Also if platform size is the criterium here then Lemmy and Mastodon are still terrible substitutes to Reddit or Twitter in terms of reach.
That's currently true, but it would still behoove them to have it from a public accessibility and national security perspective, and there is nothing stopping them from cross posting on Twitter until it becomes irrelevant (or Musk kicks them off).
Definitely.
I believe each country should host their instance of Mastodon free of censorship (under legal limits, of course). These instances should give accounts to members of political parties. These instances would be federated with as many other instances as possible.
What would be possible flaws of this system?
I clicked the link to support the initiative but I landed on the home page. Am I missing something?
I think the idea of the post is to ask if we would support it, in case it existed.
Yes exactly
Notbsure that i support forcing politicians to transition to a European platform but I would support an initiative to create a safer and more objective alternative where politicians could share their points without being able to promote them by paying for views
Creating a new platform would take time. Mastodon is there, the European Commission already has an instance: https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission
How about they just use IRC and also have email addresses they actually read
I actually not want our politicians to personally read all emails I send to them. There's a ton of emails to read and I would prefer the politicians doing something else than just reading endless emails.
They've got aides for that, and the aides will inform the politician about the relevant content in the emails. And will of course forward individual emails to the politician if they so wish. The important thing is that the emails get read by the politician's office.
Solution, another level of politician, perhaps per street?
Somebody still has to do the city-wide politics. This with per street politicians could work, if they functioned like aides, but... then they would be aides.
Also, if there was one politician representing my street, and he is aligned politically very differently than I am, then I've got zero chances of getting the city to hear me. If I want less houses but much taller, and the representative wants single-family homes, me having an idea of how to make it possible to build one more tall house on my street would just crash into my street-representative's political opinions. Now I can contact a politician that thinks the same was I do about what is good and what is bad. I can write them an email. They won't read it, but someone in their office will, and then it will have an effect on the politician's work. Depends on the politician, of course, but that's something I take into account when choosing whom to vote.
Why not on Bluesky? I used Mastodon about 8 or so years ago and it was confusing.
Bluesky is just kicking the problem down the road for a few years.
Not the OP, but mastodon is open source and not corporately controlled. That seems pretty important when whoever controls the platform can make decisions about what content is surfaced to a user. If I'm the government or a politician I want to make sure I have a direct line to my constituents.
I use both these days, I don't think the user interface is particularly confusing for mastodon, but I think what bluesky has over it is you don't have to choose a server, and the types of users and stuff they're posting on bluesky has a certain appeal. (For example all the funny accounts I used to follow on twitter went to bluesky)
I think what bluesky has over it is you don't have to choose a server
That's part of it. But even getting over that, if I make a Mastadon account on a themed instance I don't even know how to find people more diverse types of people to follow. At least in Bluesky they're all in one place. And most importantly to me you can share custom feeds on Bluesky.
Because Bluesky is just another commercial centralised platform.