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 I couldn’t agree more. Twitter is a private company, I’d understand if it was the only option but it’s clearly not and encouraging people to use a privately owned platform, especially a foreign extra communitarian one is wrong on so many levels I can’t even start to describe why. I’ll just say the Brits got manipulated and screwed with the whole Brexit mess after Cambridge Analytica leveraged Facebook data and ads to skew the public vote. Who should the Brits go cry to, now?
@stefano@bsd.cafe Beautifully said! Also agree with your stance in this.
Things take time… they will come back to the Fediverse.
@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’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…
@stefano@bsd.cafe I think the cost for governments to offer some online public space is way too low to be unable to afford it. Either in funds or time.