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Dutch government has officially launched their Mastodon server (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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).

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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 ?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Ooooh ok, got it. Thank you very much for explaining !

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

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.