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Labour MPs begin quitting X over ‘hate and disinformation’
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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Good.
Governments should run their own mastadon instances, and provide official accounts for all their public servants, staff, whatever they are called, as well as an account for each agency.
But quitting twitter is a good first step
Interestingly, the European Union has been doing exactly this for about a year now on an experimental basis.
https://commission.europa.eu/get-involved/engage-eu-policymaking/social-media-connect-european-commission_en
https://uk.pcmag.com/social-media/140088/eu-joins-mastodon-social-network-sets-up-its-own-server
https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/press-releases/2024/edps-decentralised-social-media-pilot-end-successful-story_en
I agree. But this is labour MPs. MP != Government even when members of leading party. Only those with ministerial positions are in government.
As Members of parliament outside ministerial government positions are considered to have free speech and not to be representing the government when speaking, The choice of communication media must be down to the individuals.
I think a cross-party Mastodon instance or something like it could actually be a good idea. The hard part would be deciding who's allowed to create accounts and when (or whether) to deactivate an account after a person stops fitting whatever qualification got them an account in the first place.
Being an MP, sure, that's a given. What about people running to be MP? What about people setting up fake parties / independently standing in order to get a place on there? Consider Count Binface. Clearly he should have an account on such a platform, but how the heck would he qualify without letting someone less sane on under the same criteria?
And then there's the fact it would need to be run by incorruptible third parties.
And the fact that fascist-leaning politicians would need to be allowed on there so they can't cry foul, despite the fact they'll all only ever post on X anyway.
But then, only a handful of MPs would use it even if it was the only platform available, so it being a potentially good idea is probably all it'll ever be.
The UK already had the BBC; maybe this would make a good adjunct service the Beeb could offer? Sort of like the social media equivalent of iPlayer.
Every UK citizen can get an account.
BBC already have a Mastodon instance but it doesn't seem to get much use.
Bbc funding would make that difficult.
As it is a licence and a bloody expensive one atm. The % of UK citizens joining are reducing rapidly.
More importantly for a government system. You can see the BBC requiring a licence to set up an account. This instantly makes it unappreate as a giverment distribution and communications system. As wealth has a huge input on access.
Honestly the BBC seems to be hanging on by a thread atm. It has lost a huge amount of trust. And many brits just find the cost vs service much more questionable then in the past.
PS this was the tories intent. But hard to see labour current doing anything to fox it.
Agreed.
Honestly though. For such a service. Id suggest mastidon sorta solves it. as anyone can already post from other servers.
So all you need is a parlimentary server. That alloows a second account for only MPs or those running for MP.
That limitation is hard to argue with. Dosent show any political bias. And only allows people like binface or any other nutty runner during an election period.
But they still have personal accounts they can link that allows them to comment without the parlimentary candidate Accolade during other times. Or with it if we some how end up with PM bin face.
Can you imagine the conservatives trying to work it? Mogg famously didn't use a computer