We shouldn’t be forced to use toxic platforms that track and profile us in order to get public information.
Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube track and profile their users so that they can target advertising towards them.
Their business models fuel online harms by pushing more and more extreme content to users. Despite this, these platforms are one of the primary ways that government departments share public information.
Tell your MP to support the EDM calling on the UK Government to ensure that all public sector social media content is published on open, decentralised and federated platforms!
#socialMedia #UK #politics #UKpolitics #fediverse #initiative
They don’t need to choose a platform. They have to be forced to put all public-facing communication onto their website without exception. From there, they or anyone else who wants to can copy it to any platform there is.
When covid started I didn’t know anything about it. I wasn’t on Twitter or reddit or Facebook. I was in college, doing that and had a baby. We watched cartoons and when they slept I’d read and write. I had no idea until no one was on the road or at Walmart with me. I had no idea how to even get information about what was happening, so I went to the county website and found nothing. my professors stopped livestreaming and sent helpful information about it the same week so I got it.
Turned out the city had a Facebook page that people were getting their information from. And there was also a Twitter.
Then my kid gets to be school aged. The fucking school used Facebook and twitter to communicate with parents. I missed so many programs, and lacked information about everything that happened there.
Fucking hate it.
Damn… We should really start fighting for a world where people making the option of not using digital technologies are respected, as written in the Off-Punk Manifesto…
This means directly targeting classical liberalism and the governments collusion with capital. Simply getting them to use mastodon or whatever does mot target the root cause.
We have 2 mobile operating systems, both under the control of American big tech oligarchs. That is not freedom. It is the illusion of choice. It is technological tyranny. Most government services require these OS’s exclusively to use many public apps and services.
Most governments are allowed to image your devices and back them up to some police state server indefinitely because you cross a border. That is not freedom or democracy. It is technological tyranny. Companies are allowed to sell you a device and brick it or completely change the value proposition without consequence. The ability to exert control over your purchased hardware and software should not even be an option for any government or corporation.
Dang, that sucks.
Ethics and morals according to whom? There are plenty of toxic people & groups on the Fediverse. We don’t need defederation getting in the way of things. What makes the most sense is encouraging governments to move their sites over to providers that integrate open protocols. That way the information on their sites can make it onto feeds and it’s no another social platform they need to juggle.
Governments will move when these platforms have the reach as the toxic ones do. They’re not on Facebook and Twitter for fun. They’re on them because it’s incredibly easy to reach people without much hassle. The toxicity they can generate is just a happy byproduct for them.
It is important to make distinctions:
- as politicians they can use and campaign in whatever platform they want.
- As Government officials, they must be forced by legislation to use a Government Federated instance so everyone has access to their communication and no Big Tech oligarch has the power to decide how these messages reach the population.
Being government, they ate uniquely positioned to create reach by moving to ethical platforms anyway and forcing the public to follow.
Is this the same UK with the Online Safety Act whose main purpose (in the sense of “the purpose of a system is what it does”) is to legislate all forums and platforms not run by big tech companies out of existence? I somehow don’t think that country in particular will do that, but best of luck to the ORG!
