Dutch government starts own Mastodon instance as reaction to the instability of Twitter

3 years ago by Quinten to c/fediverse

SGG 251 points 3 years ago

I hope other governments, small and large, start doing this.

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laurens 188 points 3 years ago

Germany (social.bund.de) and the EU (social.network.europa.eu) already have it. I think it's very likely that other governments, especially european ones, will start to do this.

With the internet being so dominated by american voices, I dont think a lot of people have fully appreciated the sentiment change in the higher levels of european governments. Sovereign control over their digital spaces is something that is actually mattering on the level of nation states. Its a way of thinking that is kind of new to most people, as we rarely think about the sovereign powers of nation states, and even less so in the context of the internet. But now were starting to do that again, and it actually matters.

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maegul 69 points 3 years ago

With the internet being so dominated by american voices, I dont think a lot of people have fully appreciated the sentiment change in the higher levels of european governments.

Absolutely. I was on an instance, run by North Americans, that had blocked European Govt instances because they didn’t trust government agencies spying on them etc. Some German users picked up on this and voiced a lot of frustration over it. There was a clear cultural divide. Even more ironic, I think it was the German department of privacy or something to that effect.

Nonetheless, it was quite interesting to see a tension between the small hacker aspect of the fediverse and the “this is the new internet” aspect and how much the US dominated perspective probably completely missed the mark.

EDIT: European Govt from “European” to clarify I was referring to government run instances.

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fediverse_report 34 points 3 years ago

ha yeah I remember that, that was fun.

To riff on this a little bit further: its also visible in how little attention in the gazillion conversations about Threads is paid to the fact that the entirety of the EU cannot even access it yet due to the new DMA and DSA.

Or one of the articles I wrote that got relatively low traction, that was specificially about how all of the Nordic countries got an official recommendation to use ActivityPub for their governmental communications. I dont mind that some articles get less traction than others, but it does stand out when you consider how impactful such things are for the long term structure of the fediverse. Lots of EU governments are now talking about needing sovereign public digital spaces, and are actively looking how ActivityPub can help with that. And that matters way more than whatever Elons latest shenanigans are.

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curiosityLynx 18 points 3 years ago

In a way, this gives me hope that the fediverse might actually survive in a way bigger capacity than XMPP did even if Threads/Meta manages to EEE a large part of the fediverse.

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maegul 6 points 3 years ago

ha yeah I remember that, that was fun.

Hey! I was trying to be vague and anonymous!! 😅

But yea ... totally with you!!

For those that don't know, this person is the author of https://fediversereport.com/ and posts here like this.

@fediverse_report@lemmy.ml ... you could add more links and what not to your bio here ... ?

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Onionizer 10 points 3 years ago

How does federating two public instances enable spying

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maegul 16 points 3 years ago

Well it was reflexive choice I think. American anti government sentiment without thinking through whether the instance or government department in question was providing a service that some would benefit from on the fediverse.

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SJ_Zero 14 points 3 years ago

America has a lot of problems right now leading to exceptionally low trust in government, even for them.

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quink 24 points 3 years ago path: 0 1066138 1067047 1067496, hotness: undefined, score: 24, children: 0
moitoi 7 points 3 years ago

With the internet being so dominated by american voices,

Europe has to build something new that isn't a big corp, that isn't centralized. It has to find its own way, and the Fediverse model is a good beginning. It's to show we can do something but in the European spirit.

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Myro 4 points 3 years ago

I'm pretty new to federation. What can I do with these two instances? Can I somehow follow them with my current account? Or do I have to create a separate account on both instances?

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klangcola 17 points 3 years ago

You can follow them from your already existing Mastodon (and maybe kbin?) account.

From my account on mastodon.online I just followed https://social.overheid.nl/@beheerder as a test, and I've already been following https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission

For some reason my server couldn't find users from the social.bund.de when I pasted the follow-link (like https://social.bund.de/@Zoll )

By the way Mastodon has a very nice interface to subscribe to other instances. Like now when using when following the link in OPs post and opening a web browser, then clicking on a user and clicking follow, it gives the option to sign in to subscribe OR copy a link to subscribe from another instance . Then I just paste that link in the search field in my Mastodon app (logged in to mastodon.online). Hopefully Lemmy will implement that "button to copy link to subscribe from other instance" soon

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Baku 2 points 3 years ago

The British treasury also has/had a discord, obviously not on the same level as a whole Lemmy instance, but it was still pretty interesting

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dnzm 1 point 3 years ago

With the internet being so dominated by american voices, I dont think a lot of people have fully appreciated the sentiment change in the higher levels of european governments.

Meanwhile, government and education are still completely (and happily, it seems) shackled to Microsoft and Google, of course.

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const_void -49 points 3 years ago
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adriaan 86 points 3 years ago

Why not have a state-run instance on an open platform? It's better than relying on a corporation's platform. The government is 'the people' more than corporations are.

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ojmcelderry 7 points 3 years ago

Exactly this. In the same way I expect to be able to email the government, but I wouldn't expect to send them a message on Facebook Messenger.

Open platforms over walled gardens.

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const_void -5 points 3 years ago
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locknessmeownster 7 points 3 years ago

Surveillance? In what sense, here in particular. A bit confused. Also, it depends on the kind of private instance you mean, since this is private too, in the sense you cannot make accounts on it. What other benefit do they gain over people, using this over a corporate website?

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dizzy 41 points 3 years ago

This isn’t that though. Running a federated service instance is more akin to them having to abide by the rule of the people than the status quo where Musk or Zuck could boot them from their platform or hide anything they don’t like without any reason at all.

In the fediverse, they’re choosing to run a self-hosted outlet that can interact with other privately or publicly run services. It’s like them choosing to run their own email servers instead of their officials all using gmail accounts.

The free market solutions have just led to unelected billionaire oligarchs controlling the narrative. With this federated stuff, no single entity can control the narrative (once all the kinks are ironed out like vote manipulation, exploits, etc)

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const_void -1 points 3 years ago
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seeCseas 37 points 3 years ago

would prefer free market solns where the state has to abide by the rules of the people

you mean like facebook? haha!

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const_void 2 points 3 years ago
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Kerb 31 points 3 years ago

imo mastadon wont suddenly become "state-run media" just because Goverment instances exist.

there are .gov email adresses already, and emails are pretty far from state-run.

since there is (afaik) no verification on mastadon, ill assume that theyll use the goverment instances to prove that @official@goverment is legit.

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curiosityLynx 12 points 3 years ago

That sounds like a great idea. Kind of like Twitter verification except the verification that you're really a government official comes from the fact that your home server is a government run one.

And the same could go for corporate accounts. You're a public relations guy at Roblox and want an official, verified account on mastodon/in the fediverse? Spin up social.roblox.com as a mastodon server that has your PR account as its only user, disable open account registration and you're good to go. (maybe an optional dummy account to get federation going by subscribing to all known fediverse servers of interest)

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blue_zephyr 3 points 3 years ago

Calling Twitter blue "verification" is a sad joke. You're just paying the company money and you get the check. There's no verification whatsoever. You can easily pretend you're someone else or "verify" an army of bots.

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matt 4 points 3 years ago
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Viking_Hippie 27 points 3 years ago

True free market solutions inevitably lead to the people abiding by the rules of the rich and powerful.

Anything run by the government has to at the very least PRETEND to listen to people who don't have a financial interest in the enshittification of every part of society.

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const_void -1 points 3 years ago
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Viking_Hippie 5 points 3 years ago

You mean fair, not free. The only way to avoid the tyranny of the powerful is regulation restricting their freedom to abuse their powers.

THAT'S what the government is supposed to do to a market: help the small to regular sized fish and cooperation between them by, amongst other things, erecting fences keeping off the sharks that would otherwise immediately eat them.

Also stuff with plants, I guess, but this ocean analogy is probably long and complicated enough already 😂

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blue_zephyr 26 points 3 years ago

Why would a government subject itself to potential censorship of whatever admin is running their instance? It makes perfect sense for a government to host their own instance from where they can freely broadcast announcements.

And the free market has proven to be unreliable. You're subject to whatever billionaire is ego-tripping at the top of whatever platform you're using. The will of the people is nowhere to be seen.

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curiosityLynx 12 points 3 years ago

It's like saying government officers should use gmail accounts instead of writing their emails from their own government-run email servers.

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const_void -3 points 3 years ago
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blue_zephyr 6 points 3 years ago

So Lemmy and Mastodon instances are free market solutions, unless a government does it? I don't even understand what your point is.

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Nezgul 26 points 3 years ago

Yeah all of this free market media we're enjoying is the real height of journalistic integrity and quality

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Onionizer 5 points 3 years ago

free market and rules of the people in one sentence?

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experbia 130 points 3 years ago

This is great. This is how it always should have been.

Organization of any kind needs a Twitter page or subreddit? No, they need their own official, self-controlled Mastodon instance anyone can see and listen to and interact with, even without accounts on that specific instance. They need their own kbin or Lemmy instance to make and administer their community on and have control over, everyone can still participate even without signing up for accounts on that specific instance.

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Hamartiogonic 46 points 3 years ago

You don’t see governments or companies using gmail, now do you. Well, small unprofessional companies do, but everyone else has a domain, website, mail server and all the usual internet infrastructure in place. Why should companies and governments use TweetBook or Snapstargram for official communication when they can host their own instance. For the time being, the problem has been that large majority of the people are using these unstable platforms, so companies decided to follow.

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master5o1 65 points 3 years ago

Eh, lots of companies use gmail it's just masked by being their own domain and part of g suite.

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yoichi 14 points 3 years ago

Gmail itself, in that situation, is just a frontend to the mail server. You can use the same domain, on any mail server, with any frontend, and it would work just as well. It's just that Google Workspace apps are familiar to most users. But even then, the industry leader is Microsoft with their Office Suite which is yet another option

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master5o1 18 points 3 years ago

It's still Google's mail server. The mail client is irrelevant.

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Hamartiogonic 4 points 3 years ago

I was talking about companies with an email address like myFirstCompanyPleaseTakeMeSeriously(at) gmail.com as opposed to first.last(at)company.com In the latter case you can still have gmail involved but your customers wouldn’t know about it.

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aski3252 8 points 3 years ago

You don’t see governments or companies using gmail, now do you.

Many definitely do use it. But now that many have moved towards microsoft and/or google cloud services (mostly pushed by the private sector), people are indeed noticing that maybe, it's not the best idea for public institutions to be dependent on foreign corporations.

Why should companies and governments use TweetBook or Snapstargram for official communication when they can host their own instance.

Well because "cloud is the future" and hosting your own instances is not "cost effective".

For the time being, the problem has been that large majority of the people are using these unstable platforms, so companies decided to follow.

Big tech companies have been fighting for the dependency of the private sector for decades. Even before the cloud, there was a dependency on windows, Microsoft office and exchange. Now big tech is selling the promise that "they will take care of everything, you don't need a ton of IT employees who administer everything, microsoft/google will take care of everything".

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Hamartiogonic 5 points 3 years ago

When it comes to cutting expenses, government institutions are always very interested, so it makes sense to outsource all sorts of things. On the other hand, political decision making can change the situation completely. For example, some countries have decided that all of mining industry, railways, electricity and water must be kept in government hands, no matter the cost. Same sort of things can happen with IT services once you burn your fingers badly enough.

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aski3252 4 points 3 years ago

When it comes to cutting expenses, government institutions are always very interested, so it makes sense to outsource all sorts of things.

On paper, sort of. Government IT projects are often seen as cash machines by private businesses where I'm from because there is often a generous budget and government institutions tend to want to use those budgets completely because if they don't, some will start wondering if they really need that much budget or if it maybe can be shortened a bit.. There have been notorious cases where there were huge projects that ended up being even more expensive than initially planned because the private contractors just milked it. And there is of course a lot of mutual masturbation between government institutions and big tech.

And government institutions tend to follow the private sector. The private sector has been pushing to the cloud for a long time now to the point where virtually nobody is suggesting or providing support for on-premise solutions. When every IT contractors says that moving everything to the google/microsoft cloud is the state of the art (and that there are 0 downsides to it and everything is 100% secure), most will not question it.

some countries have decided that all of mining industry, railways, electricity and water must be kept in government hands, no matter the cost. Same sort of things can happen with IT services once you burn your fingers badly enough.

Recently there has been somewhat of a push for open source solutions and big tech independent solutions for government institutions as they start to notice the downsides and potential security risks. And I mean it's absolutely ridiculous, there are entire IT projects where entire systems and solutions were developed to provide a secure software solution for the military (costing hundreds of millions), but then they want to share those files with sharepoint online..

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barrybeebenson 1 point 3 years ago

tons of large companies use gmail lol

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SJ_Zero 121 points 3 years ago

They've done a lot of stupid things lately, but this isn't one of them.

Governments should be using open platforms and open source software.

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Koffiato 39 points 3 years ago

Absolutely! Using open source software is much cheaper, as well. Hiring developers to work on open source software/OSs would cost less than buying software annually. Governments pay stupid amounts of money for easily replaceable software.

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grissee 7 points 3 years ago

I'm from Indonesia and I can assure you European level of stupid doesn't even come close to my country's

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CodeMonkeyDance 7 points 3 years ago

Why. So they become less secure? Propriatery software has its uses /s

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Freesoftwareenjoyer 6 points 3 years ago

Yes and how is the developer supposed to earn their money when they can't spy on people and insert ads?!!!!!!!1111

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CodeMonkeyDance 1 point 3 years ago

Not enough exclamation marks.. Add more to better convey your fragility. lol

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bstix 2 points 3 years ago

It would be nice if governments could make a "software union", pledging to use the same standards. It seems that everyone is inventing the wheel separately in every country or falling back on commercial industry standards.

F.i. the exchange of financial documents. There's a standard coming along called SAF-T, and even if it is a standard, every country using it are making their own definitions of what it is. There are also some countries that already have their own completely different standard. The crazy thing is that almost every country worldwide are asking for the exact same info on tax returns, but they've all individually come up with that. Only differences is the order of fields on the form.

Same with user identification. Every country has their own almost identical solution for identification, which however does not work across borders, despite the similarities.

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dontcarebear 108 points 3 years ago
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garretble 107 points 3 years ago

This is great.

I really wish more news sites set up their own instances. At the start I realize they wouldn’t be getting as many eyeballs, but it seems to make a lot of sense to have a @news@cnn.social or something. Then Wolf could have @Wolf.Blitzer@cnn.social.

Instant “verification” that way, too.

But we’ll see.

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CodeMonkeyDance 34 points 3 years ago

Wow. Decentralization as a whole will be a game changer for all corners of media, science etc.

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2bR02b 33 points 3 years ago

Given how the fediverse is kinda like e-mail, this feels like a natural next step.

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Dapado 8 points 3 years ago

That's a really great idea. It makes so much sense that it seems weird that it's not already the way things are done.

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AnotherPerson 7 points 3 years ago

I had the same exact thoughts when the first twitter migration happened. I doubt we will see it, but I can dream.

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Thteven 4 points 3 years ago

The only way they would do that is if they could monetize it somehow.

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cacheson 10 points 3 years ago

It'd be another method to drive traffic to their websites and gain more ad revenue. Same as maintaining a presence on twitter or facebook, or providing an RSS feed.

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garretble 3 points 3 years ago

Yeah totally.

I had the thought that since Threads “doesn’t want politics” on their platform, and Twitter is trash, maaaaybe activity pub could be a thing.

But you are right: they won’t do anything if it won’t make money.

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Jourei 9 points 3 years ago

Isn't their entire strategy to fish people onto their site, make money that way? Twitter doesn't pay them either.

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JackbyDev 4 points 3 years ago

Does CNN already own that domain?

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variaatio 6 points 3 years ago

For some crazy reason they haven't snatched it up yet. Atleast a domain seller website is saying it is free for pickings, if you want it.

Then again maybe their policy is to put everything as subdomain on cnn.com and make cnn.com their sole brand "if it's not on cnn.com, it's not that CNN". Still i would have though they defensive register all relevant TLDs, even if they never ever use them.

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JackbyDev 3 points 3 years ago

I don't remember which pizza chain (or it has since been fixed) but something like papajohns.pizza used to redirect to dominos.com.

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garretble 4 points 3 years ago

I have no idea. That’s just an example.

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JackbyDev 3 points 3 years ago

Ah, okay, it would make more sense to say something like social.cnn.com since they already own and use cnn.com.

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Fonchote -4 points 3 years ago

Agreed, not sure how I feel about governments setting up their own servers, but news organizations definitely.

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klieg2323 12 points 3 years ago

How would you propose government officials officially distribute verified information? Just for government officials and distribution, that's the whole point of having a .gov domain is so you can know it's official

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Freesoftwareenjoyer 11 points 3 years ago

Only employees can have an account on those servers. Registration is not open to the public.

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blue_zephyr 98 points 3 years ago

That's actually hilarious because the coalition of ruling parties of the Netherlands was so unstable that it fell apart today.

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smashboy 81 points 3 years ago

Oh dang, our government has fallen and I first read about it on Lemmy. It’s official, this is my social medium now.

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a_corbin 2 points 3 years ago path: 0 1068813 1105966, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1
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Nerrad 92 points 3 years ago

Its super important that Government info NOT be hidden behind paywalls, forced log-ins or even CloudFlare puzzles. People need to be able to freely click through to the official information.

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001100010010 88 points 3 years ago
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zuhayr 49 points 3 years ago

"The Russian federation defederated Ukraine."

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001100010010 20 points 3 years ago
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sgtlighttree 11 points 3 years ago

More like it tried to forcibly merge the instances

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Hyperreality 10 points 3 years ago

Denies there is such a thing as a Ukrainian instance.

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SuddenDownpour 13 points 3 years ago

"There was never such an instance, it's a bug created by Lenin"

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tesfabpel 4 points 3 years ago

"The Russian federation defederates itself."

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Niello 31 points 3 years ago

i'll take country defederation dramas over the shit we have now any day.

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WarmSoda 12 points 3 years ago

Nah they're too petty for that. They'd make a huge show about how they're going to block the US and everyone else. Then they'll block.
Then they'll quietly unblock everyone.

Three months later they'll do all over again.

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mefinity 6 points 3 years ago

This is just discord in a nutshell

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WarmSoda 4 points 3 years ago

Man I'm so glad to be in the discords I am in. I've never had any problems there. I keep hearing horror stories though.

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Boiglenoight 68 points 3 years ago

Excellent use case.

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karrbs 65 points 3 years ago

This actually makes a lot of sense and I am surprised that there isn't a lot of government already doing it. That and celebrities. It's basically instant verification.

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Toldry 62 points 3 years ago

Not many governments would have enough tech-savy people to even think of opening a Mastadon instance. Kudos NL and Germany!

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grissee 26 points 3 years ago

a lot of government has one, they're just not paid enough

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kklusz 14 points 3 years ago

I would think that, more than anything else, the issue would be more getting it through all the bureaucratic red tape. See the ESB debacle:

Weaver had been brought to Raytheon, the company the Air Force had hired to write the software for the next generation GPS satellites, because the Raytheon team was behind schedule and over budget. This issue of data transmission to the ground stations and back again was one of a few problems that was holding them back. There is an industry standard way of doing this, a simple, reliable protocol that is built into almost every operating system in the world.

But this team wasn’t using this simple protocol on its own. Instead, the team had written a piece of software to receive the message from that protocol, read the data, and then recode it into a different format, so they could feed it into a very complex piece of software called an Enterprise Service Bus, or ESB. The ESB eventually delivered the data to yet another piece of software, at which point the whole process ran in reverse order to deliver it back to the original, simple protocol. Because the data was taking such a roundabout route, it wasn’t arriving quickly enough for the ground stations to make the calculations needed. Using the simple protocol alone would have made the entire job a snap—as easy as nailing a couple of boards together. Instead, they had this massive Rube Goldberg contraption that was never going to work.

The people on this project knew quite well that using this ESB was a terrible idea. They’d have been relieved to just throw it out, plug in the simple protocol, and move on. But they couldn’t. It was a requirement in their contract. The contracting officers had required it because a policy document called the Air Force Enterprise Architecture had required it. The Air Force Enterprise Architecture required it because the Department of Defense Enterprise Architecture required it. And the DoD Enterprise Architecture required it because the Federal Enterprise Architecture, written by the Chief Information Officers Council, convened by the White House at the request of Congress, had required it.

I'm sure some of the fine folks at 18F would love to help various US agencies or state governments with migrating to Mastodon. I'm not so sure any of them would be able to convince geriatric politicians to do so.

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Rooty 54 points 3 years ago

The fact that a state government used a commercial service to inform the public is absurd, and this was bound to happen eventually.

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Doodoocaca 21 points 3 years ago

Why is it absurd? The best way to reach people is on the platforms they use. People are not going to install some government app or use a special website to see those kinds of messages.

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Koen967 20 points 3 years ago

It is absurd in the way that the previous NL-ALERT I received had a link to Twitter for more information that I couldn't open, since I don't have a Twitter account. When Musk decides to do something crazy with his platform it could have a direct impact on the communication between the government and the people. It is safer to use a self hosted platform so you can always reach the masses when it is needed.

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gloriousspearfish 5 points 3 years ago

Because it is a platform governed by a 3rd party entity in a foreign country. That platform can ban and censor citizen, based on foreign cultural values and arbitrary rules, limiting citizen access to their own goverments information.

The platform governments choose to use for public information and debate should always provide open and public access to that information.

A government should not require its citizen to create a Twitter account, and thereby requiring them to provide their personal information to a foreign country, just to be part of the public debate and to get public information. That is just plainly wrong.

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Doodoocaca 1 point 3 years ago

That's nice but all of that is irrelevant. You can view tweets without making an account.

Also, not one government solely relies on Twitter to disperse information, it is just one additional channel. They also use their own websites, apps, TV and radio.

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gloriousspearfish 1 point 3 years ago

There is some kind of account-wall on Twitter. I have been hit with a popup asking me to sign up or log in plenty of times, in order to be allowed to read the tweets I was trying to read.

So twitter is not allowing everyone to read the tweets without an account.

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sparr 3 points 3 years ago

They could have used a mailing list or an rss feed or half a dozen other solutions that don't require a special website or government app.

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TheThirdPoliceman 6 points 3 years ago

I don't want my government spamming my inbox with updates. I don't know how active government Twitter accounts tend to be but I suspect there are plenty of things that are significant enough to announce via some platform but not significant enough that they merit an email.

RSS would be great and I fully support governments using it. But sadly in this day and age it would reach significantly fewer people than Twitter.

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sparr 1 point 3 years ago

"this day and age" is rapidly coming to a close

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joel_feila 2 points 3 years ago

i can get alerts on my phone from the government. plus you could have people sign up for text messages rather then follow om Twitter. I get that Twitter wasca super fast way to get announcements out to the public and it would go to the people that actually care. But itvis bad for vital communication line to be own by a third party that can't make money since what happens when it shuts down

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Skitals 4 points 3 years ago

Governments have been PAYING to inform the public via commercial services for... ever? And requiring citizens to do the same. Have you ever seen a public notice in a newspaper? At least posting on Twitter is free (for now).

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Miqo 1 point 3 years ago path: 0 1106145 1118632 1127772, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
s_s -1 points 3 years ago

You think they own the servers?

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cerevant 48 points 3 years ago

This is the way. Government, Businesses, Celebrities and News organizations should be hosting their own social media presence. They shouldn’t be beholden to corporate interests to regulate their communications. This also breaks the cycle of exclusive content that causes lock-in. Wins for everyone.

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Redonkulation 47 points 3 years ago

This is really fascinating to me. It would be interesting to see each country set up their own Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin/other federated systems and have those instances constantly talk to each other. Like others have commented, It seems like a great way to keep the communication style and interaction of twitter/facebook, while also protecting the validity of the information through private instances. Really smart decision.

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smeg 12 points 3 years ago
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Redonkulation 7 points 3 years ago

There are a lot of ways they could handle it. Imagine the New York Times or similar organizations with their own customized Mastodon for live updates and Lemmy for linking to articles and for searching. Mastodon being the free to follow and the Lemmy/main site being subscription to make an account and comment.

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Metal_Zealot 43 points 3 years ago
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mintiefresh 42 points 3 years ago

Exciting to see this happening. More governments should do this.

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seaneoo 36 points 3 years ago
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ghariksforge 63 points 3 years ago

No, EU and Germany have been in Mastodon for months.

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Aux 25 points 3 years ago

On Mastodon or their own instances?

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ColonelPanic 49 points 3 years ago path: 0 1081412 1081818 1083674 1083819, hotness: undefined, score: 49, children: 2
TheSaneWriter 31 points 3 years ago

That's really cool. This is a good use-case example of Mastadon, the government can run its own official instance for announcements and information without impacting other instances

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Aux 7 points 3 years ago

That's cool!

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seaneoo 4 points 3 years ago
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jalda 54 points 3 years ago

The EU started their own instance when Musk bought Twitter

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JackbyDev 8 points 3 years ago

Truth Social is technically a Mastodon instance but it was made by Trump and company after he was in office so it was not used for official communications from the US government.

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veganpizza69 4 points 3 years ago

sigh

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gravitas_deficiency 34 points 3 years ago

Lol that’s awesome! I didn’t think governments would start doing that so quickly.

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joel_feila 7 points 3 years ago

otvis great news. the use of Twitter by governments is why Twitter got so famous and could really punch above it's weight class. Now I hope this Gaines momentum

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77slevin 29 points 3 years ago

Didn't the EU do the same shortly after Space Karen bought Twitter? I believe I saw an article around the time I started my Mastodon account.

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barsoap 22 points 3 years ago path: 0 1117936 1120471, hotness: undefined, score: 22, children: 0
Epicurus0319 24 points 3 years ago

Good, other governments should be doing this. (But even if they use threads instead, mastodon users’ll see their updates anyway if mastodon feds with it)

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JoYo 17 points 3 years ago

threads will never federate.

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Da_Boom 2 points 3 years ago

Threads might, but it's more what instances will federate with threads - I think government and news organisations would do well to federate for better reach - that way any announcements they send out can have the largest reach possible. However major and minor mastodon user instances should probably not do so in order to prevent issues with takeover and EEE

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Freesoftwareenjoyer 1 point 3 years ago

You think it was just a fake promise? I haven't thought about it, but it's certainly possible.

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JoYo 0 points 3 years ago

I think it was posturing to the countries that banned Twitter.

look, you get your own Threads in Iran.

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Freesoftwareenjoyer 2 points 3 years ago

Fun fact: both facebook.com and twitter.com have a Tor site to make it harder to censor them.

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Thorny_Thicket 1 point 3 years ago

!remindme 1 year

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lemminer 23 points 3 years ago

Can wait to see mass adoption of fediverse over other countries to provide updates

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arc 22 points 3 years ago

All governments, large NGOs, and news orgs should do this. Maybe there should be a "mastodon in a box" which is a simplified containerized version of the service which makes it easy to set up and secure.

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Skitals 16 points 3 years ago path: 0 1115571 1118509, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 1
arc 1 point 3 years ago

docker is part of it but not everything in and of itself. You probably need a docker compose where database, frontends, backends are separate images but possibly something more than that, kubernetes pods, and storage being separate. Probably cloud based or has cloud based backend options. I think a script could make the process easy and scale appropriately.

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canpolat 20 points 3 years ago path: 0 1065721, hotness: undefined, score: 20, children: 0
Tygr 19 points 3 years ago

I would love US governments / states to start their own instance on the fediverse. Talk about explosive growth to this community.

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glorious_albus 18 points 3 years ago

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nottheengineer 18 points 3 years ago

Can't wait for it to be overrun by germans.

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Mr_Figtree 25 points 3 years ago

They're not going to have open signups. It's government agencies only. Not that there's technically anything stopping Germans from joining the PR departments of our government agencies…

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AGuyAcrossTheInternet 6 points 3 years ago

Oh just give it about three days…

*Preußens Gloria intensifies. Ü

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quinten 2 points 3 years ago

You guys have tried that before...

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xavier666 2 points 3 years ago

Hey, I've seen this one before. It's a classic!

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Obi 17 points 3 years ago

Can I follow that from Lemmy?

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mojo 18 points 3 years ago

Don't think so, also not sure how Mastodon feeds work with Lemmy as they aren't really upvoted/downvoted on. Though the opposite works where you can follow communities/accounts from Mastodon.

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Daftman 1 point 3 years ago

Does that mean having a Mastodon account is better than having a lemmy account. (Cause one can follow the other but not the other way around...)

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mojo 3 points 3 years ago

Pretty different experience, but if you prefer it that way you can. You can actually follow specific communities from Mastodon, but it's not nearly as good of an experience. I just install both apps and have separate accounts for both.

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WheeGeetheCat 3 points 3 years ago

For me mastadon didn't 'stick' but I was never a big twitter user. So I failed to jump from from the big social networks to mastadon because the experience was weird. I guess you can follow lemmy communties but I had no idea how to find them and it mostly looked like following other people like on twitter.

Whereas the UI and everything on lemmy is much more like what Im used to it (reddit) - so it 'stuck' for me.

I still have the mastadon account collecting dust and might go back over there now that I understand more, but as I prefer to follow subjects over people I dont feel like Im missing out

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notenoughbutter 4 points 3 years ago

I saw someone post on Lemmy using their mastodon account

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michaelkovacs98 5 points 3 years ago

Posting to lemmy through mastodon is a thing (hello there!), but yeah, I don’t think you can follow a mastodon account through lemmy unfortunately.

EDIT: I lied! Found the server admin I think at this link: https://lemmy.ml/u/beheerder@social.overheid.nl but I think they need to specifically post to a lemmy server in order to have posts show.

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vojel 16 points 3 years ago

Damn a government that actually do something in terms of digitilization.

Cries in German …

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matt 19 points 3 years ago
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vojel 10 points 3 years ago

TIL that I am a proud German citizen. Our government is leading the digital transition in Europe. 🇩🇪

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Siegfried 3 points 3 years ago

Wait that is also government based?

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MrFlamey 16 points 3 years ago

This is brilliant. I hope we see more countries doing the same thing :)

Maybe they could make accounts be tied to residency or citizenship, and perhaps have communities that only allow posting to those accounts to reduce bot spam and foreign meddling. Maybe that's a terrible idea, but it will be interesting to see where this goes, and if activity pub will be sufficient or need extending.

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Feyter 19 points 3 years ago

If I understood this correct from my interpretation of the dutch server description this is an Instance for dutch government officials.

At least Germany also has such a mastodon instance too for quite a while now. So people on mastodon know that an account there is officially a government account. The BSI (German Office for cyber security) and other offices post there.

This is not an Instance for "normal people" to register on.

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troyunrau 7 points 3 years ago

Yeah, this works great for the "speaking officially" context.

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RedWizard 3 points 3 years ago

I've always imagined federation would allow service providers to own their communication channels. Municipalities, state agencies, etc.

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Meowoem 1 point 3 years ago

This can make it so much more secure for governments than Twitter, it also removes Elon or whoever from being able to bias algorithms in favour of his favourites.

I really think this is going to be the standard for companies and governments

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Marsupial 14 points 3 years ago

Please note that this server does not accept refugees from Twitter and the admins will collapse if you ask them too.

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Drewfro66 12 points 3 years ago

One of the best parts of this - especially if the trend continues - is that it makes the "Extinguish" part of a possible "Embrace, Expand, Extinguish" attack by Meta's Threads more difficult.

Cutting off access to a bunch of tiny self-hosted private instances won't even ping on their radar. But cutting off federation with official government platforms? That's different.

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IanTwenty 12 points 3 years ago

UK government has been taken over by WhatsApp and Twitter - our official inquiries have to beg for access to WhatsApp to see what's going on in gov. Love to see them switch - they could have more control of data retention and promote innovation.

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Feyter 7 points 3 years ago

Oh man... UK is so f* up right now. Hope times get better for you soon.

path: 0 1114639 1118691, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
yanyuan 12 points 3 years ago
path: 0 1068423, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0
Rooki 11 points 3 years ago

Poggers

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shadycomposer 11 points 3 years ago

wait i thought they don't have a government at the moment

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SkyNTP 5 points 3 years ago

"Government" is a pretty broad term. It encompasses both elected or ruling leaders that implement policy (politics), as well as the administrative beaurocracy that implements whatever policy is enacted day to day. It's pretty typical for the beaurocracy to continue functioning under whatever mandate they have and even to make their own descisions if the mandate gives them that latitude, even if the leadership part of the government is being changed or otherwise non-functional.

path: 0 1138888 1142731, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1
shadycomposer 2 points 3 years ago

Understand. I was simply joking.

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Grant_M 9 points 3 years ago

I want to see Canada next!

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V4uban 7 points 3 years ago

Great news!

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Suoko 7 points 3 years ago

Italy will follow soon 🤥

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ahriboy 6 points 3 years ago

And all other EU countries. Then crimew.gay will defederate them all later.

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GayCookie 6 points 3 years ago

Damn, sometimes I'm proud of our government .. until you realize its just a bunch of fuckups in one room!

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NotAPenguin 5 points 3 years ago

Working link: https://social.overheid.nl/...

"This instance has been technically up and running since Friday, July 7, but not yet officially in use. Please be patient

The instance will contain the accounts of government agencies and will not currently accommodate individual officials."

translated by google translate.

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curiosityLynx 3 points 3 years ago

thank you for the working link, was starting to wonder whether something was broken on my side

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Mihuy 5 points 3 years ago

Wow, I never thought about this, but this is probably pretty good to have right? Might be a good way to find info about something if their sites are really confusing etc possibly

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lemmyphantom 2 points 3 years ago

That’s a good point. But I think the fediverse needs less friction for this to benefit more of the general public.

Like any new technology, I think it will take a while for the experience to get smoothed out

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JustinAngel 5 points 3 years ago

Probably a poor decision to be creating accounts on government operated instances. Since they own the server, they're in a position to:

  1. Siphon credentials and attempt reuse to gain access to distinct services
  2. Ban individual accounts
  3. Censor based on post content

I'm all for government support and adoption of open-source software so long as they're not in the position to disrupt how it's used by the public at large.

Edit (my perspective is relevant, but doesn't apply in this case): My nerd impulses outran my willingness to read the link's content. Seems it's not for public registration.

Edit 2: Like my cornbread eating American ass can read Dutch anyway 🤣

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TheWorstNL 81 points 3 years ago

This is going to be a private instance. No normal citizens can create an account.

It's a response to Twitter shielding access to unregistered users. A lot of public services used Twitter to spread information.

path: 0 1079358 1079464, hotness: undefined, score: 81, children: 2
moitoi 26 points 3 years ago

And this is how all Governmental instances have to be, private. Mastodon is a great way to communicate for Government as they control it. They don't rely on a company and can manage the servers.

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JustinAngel 10 points 3 years ago

My mistake.

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8uurg 29 points 3 years ago

From the post of the account linked here (in Dutch): it is going to be a place for official government communication, not for individual government employees (and I presume, by extension, public registration in general)

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JustinAngel 2 points 3 years ago

My mistake.

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fkn 11 points 3 years ago

This is literally all instances... Nothing you do here should be considered private or be linked to your real information.

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JustinAngel 1 point 3 years ago

Agreed, but we have to trust the instances we keep accounts on. Trust is subjective, but I certainly wouldn't trust a government ran instance for anything other than an outlet for information originating from the owning government.

If I run a private instance or know the maintainer of another, then I can have greater confidence in the security/privacy implementations.

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fkn 5 points 3 years ago

I would trust most government instances more than most of the private instances. Would I trust them not to harvest all of that info? Absolutely not. Would I trust them to not masquerade as me? Way more. Governments have way more to lose by being caught.

path: 0 1079358 1079702 1080040 1080363, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 4
JustinAngel 1 point 3 years ago

I've spent quite a bit of time as a penetration tester and one of the first things we do once we recover credentials is check for validity against online accounts known to be good for a given user. We do that because it simulates attackers and government operators alike. It's a guarantee that free credentials will be abused in one manner or another when they're available to government entities.

The obvious control for this is to maintain a unique password for each account but that's not always feasible for users due to myriad conditions.

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mojo 6 points 3 years ago
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blue_zephyr 2 points 3 years ago
path: 0 1079358 1080761, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
Henry 4 points 3 years ago
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TrickyCamel 4 points 3 years ago

I hope that other governments follow suit.

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InternetTubes 4 points 3 years ago
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Comment105 4 points 3 years ago

I tried to start a Mastodon account, but I got the error message "Validation failed: time zone not included in list"

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KiofKi 2 points 3 years ago

Soo... you're located on Mars?

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TheEternalBambzip 3 points 3 years ago

That is pretty cool

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static 3 points 3 years ago
path: 0 1065996, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
sangle_of_flame 1 point 3 years ago

lmao

path: 0 1131915, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
glorious_albus 1 point 3 years ago
path: 0 1066462, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
samokosik 1 point 3 years ago

nice approach :)

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glorious_albus 1 point 3 years ago
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Koordinator_O -3 points 3 years ago

Sounds even more 1984 to me than Twitter or Meta as hoster.

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Feyter 4 points 3 years ago

I think you misunderstood the purpose of this. This is not for citizens to join it's an instance for government officials and offices. This is very good practice to prove a account is the official account.

But honestly I have more trust in my government to not exploit on me then I have in meta/Twitter.

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Koordinator_O 2 points 3 years ago

Possible. I'd rather call it sceptical.

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I_AnoN_I -3 points 3 years ago

Can't find any sources on this. I'd be wary

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Daftman 20 points 3 years ago

Tweakers.net, which is pretty much the biggest techsite in the Netherlands, has an article about it aswell. You can be sure this is very real.

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vaultdweller013 3 points 3 years ago

Im sorry but does tweaker have a different meaning in the Netherlands or is that name on purpose.

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Bongles 4 points 3 years ago

I imagine it's like how you might use tinker.

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vaultdweller013 1 point 3 years ago

So it means sonething more along the lines on tinkerer or old school hacking got it.

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Daftman 1 point 3 years ago

It's along the lines of tuner / or like vaultdweller said tinkerer. The name is from late 90's. It started as World of Tweaking when overclocking and tuning your pc was seen as destroying your hardware and hacking the plannet (31337 H4X0R).

Site started somewhere 1997 and 1999 or so. By now it's a very common site in the Netherlands to check hardware and software related stuff, especially since every computer related shop has a presence in the pricewatch the website offers for the Dutch and Belgian market.

The website is extremely comparable to Tom's Hardware website.

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quinten 4 points 3 years ago

Link in post

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I_AnoN_I -10 points 3 years ago

Yeah there's a link to the account but no proof it is official

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quinten 21 points 3 years ago

It is literally the government's website. How official do you want it?

Overheid = government Social.overheid.nl = social.government.nl

See also: https://www.overheid.nl/english

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Lenins2ndCat -12 points 3 years ago
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quinten 27 points 3 years ago

Why?

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vaguerant 5 points 3 years ago path: 0 1066654 1066705 1067588, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
blobcat 6 points 3 years ago

afaik european comission's instance isn't usually defederated so I don't see why this one would?

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eatham 5 points 3 years ago

Why exactly?

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