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.
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.
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.
How about they just use IRC and also have email addresses they actually read
Definitely.
“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.
Here’s a working link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens’_Initiative
Thanks!
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.
Thanks for sharing
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)
Because Bluesky is just another commercial centralised platform.
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
