I read that the official Mastodon instance of the Swiss government will be closing down.
They say there are few active users, low engagement, and minimal interaction, which seems quite plausible. Additionally, they claim that “on platforms like X or Instagram, the Federal Council and the Federal Administration have many more followers.” I believe that too, of course.
However, I do not agree with their decision. I think a government shouldn’t be overly concerned about follower counts and interactions, but rather about providing free, autonomous communication that is independent of third-party companies. In my view, a government shouldn’t operate like a business focused on “numbers.”
Still, I appreciate their experiment - many governments, like the Italian one, haven’t even tried.
Regarding costs and management effort: an instance with 5 users and 3,500 followers (numbers provided by them) can run on a VPS for €3 a month and doesn’t require heavy moderation. The cost for them is nearly zero. Yet, the freedom of information and discussion, especially for a Neutral Country, should always be a priority.
I believe that maintaining control over one’s information channels is crucial, especially in today’s world. But, I fear that decision-makers only consider the numbers, which often favor the flashiest - but worse - solutions.
Encouraging citizens to use closed platforms is, in my opinion, a wrong choice.
Thanks to the Swiss government for at least giving it a shot.
https://www.admin.ch/gov/it/pagina-iniziale/documentazione/comunicati-stampa.msg-id-102585.html
#Mastodon #FreedomOfSpeech #Switzerland #Fediverse #SocialNetworks
@stefano@bsd.cafe The cost isn’t 0, as the risk is potentially unbounded.
Imagine if somebody hacks into the VPS, waits for a Twitter outage, and posts a message from a top government official that Zurich is under imminent nuclear attack from Russia, then conveniently forwards the link to that official government instance to all the media.
@stefano@bsd.cafe
I find it indecent that such social networks, in some cases, become the official communication channels of local government bodies. While a balance is due for a trade-off between efforts and results, not having an indie website for every org is not understandable (and the global cost could be virtually zero with accurate planning).
While a VPS to run a server for their instance isn’t expensive by any means, I wonder what the price of having someone operate it is inflating the actual costs. Is it possible that they’re contracting out the development work and are being overcharged, leading to their view that it’s not worth the outreach they’re getting?
I agree that providing whatever forms of communication possible is the best way to go. But the decision might not be as cut and dry as it looks on the surface. Or maybe it’s laziness? Who knows.
@stefano@bsd.cafe i will send an email to the responsible person urs.bruderer@bk.admin.ch and tell they should think again.
@stefano@bsd.cafe I’m curious - does anyone know if they had enabled the bridges to BlueSky and/or Threads? Seems like that would have been an easy way to get more followers/engagement…