Would you support a European Citizens Initiative to force our politicians to drop Twitter and create their own Mastodon instances?
Would you support a European Citizens Initiative to force our politicians to drop Twitter and create their own Mastodon instances?
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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).
There are moral problems with crossposting to Twitter.
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Twitter is financed by advertising. I do not finance public services to then finance the advertising revenue of private corporations. Politician’s IT staff, time, and resources used to feed Twitter are not free. Public money is used for the tooling and the operations on that platform of inequality. So people who are excluded from Twitter are financing content fed to Twitter involuntarily via taxation. And those who are priviledged to be on the Twitter platform are hit with ads as a precondition to reaching content they already paid taxes for -- due to an inappropriate intermingling of public and private sectors.
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Network effect: making Twitter a superset of content exacerbates the stranglehold Twitter has on the world. The private sector will do its thing, but the public sector has a duty to work in the public interest. A public office adding to Twitter’s network effect disservices the public interest.
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Twitter is a politically manipulated venue with a bias toward right-wing populism. People who vote for a green party or socialist party politician do not endorse feeding an extreme right-wing US agenda with worldwide consequences. They do not have an equal voice on that platform which is wired for right-wing propaganda.
Recall how Trump took power in 2016: Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. FB and Twitter are pawned by right-wing extremists.
I absolutely agree, and the most I get from Twitter is from other people posting about it elsewhere. But there is a need for politicians to reach their constituents, and if they can be effectively reached by an imperfect method, then I can accept them using it while also promoting better methods.
But there is a need for politicians to reach their constituents, and if they can be effectively reached by an imperfect method,
Leaders should lead, not follow. Politicians can reach and be reached on a Mastodon server, where all their constituents have access.
Asking ~8 billion (or however many) people to make a personal change first is a non-starter. Demanding many orders of magnitude fewer people (politicians) make the first move to break the dystopian cycle is far more sensible.
then I can accept them using it while also promoting better methods.
Posting on Twitter is an assault on promoting better methods. Mirroring everything on Twitter facilitates the Tyranny of Convenience (great essay by Tim Wu) by making Twitter the superset. It’s important and socially responsible to withhold info from Twitter so that it cannot be the superset.
RMS gives good advice for orgs who think they need a Facebook presence:
https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html
Politicians don’t need a Twitter presence, but to the extent that they are not convinced, the bare minimum action they can take is implement some of the advice on that RMS page.
Any random 3rd party joe shmoe can make a Twitter bot that mirrors a politician’s msgs to Twitter. In fact, force Twitter to do the work simply by not feeding Twitter. Motivation for Twitter’s self-preservation would appropriately ensure gov resources are not spent on Twitter. Make Twitter be the host of dodgy mirror bots without engagement, where you need Mastodon to actually engage with a politician.
Nothing you said there actually disagrees with what I said, with the exception of abandoning Twitter completely, which I'm okay with in principle. The issue is that Twitter is currently an effective method to reach some subset of their constituents, regardless of how misguided they may be. Giving an alternative is also a bonus.
Face it, the number of people who know Mastodon exists is a fraction of Twitter users. Do you think it's politicians' job to provide technology education?
Do you think it's politicians' job to provide technology education?
Of course. Public education comes from the public sector. We should be electing politicians with administrations who are smarter than the general public. Any tech education that comes of Twitter abandonment is welcome.
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