Labour MPs begin quitting X over ‘hate and disinformation’

submitted by perviouslyiner

www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug…

The only alternatives mentioned were Threads and Bluesky.

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57 Comments

Scrubbles

about time...

Start pushing for mastodon! Honestly there should be an official mastodon instance

Cyborganism

You mean mstdn.social?

Scrubbles

I mean there should be a mastodon.gov.uk

CMLVI

That's.....actually a cool AF idea/inplementation of Fediverse shit. A practical use as well, as they'd control who was on the instance and would be a sorta pseudo-verification process for any accounts on it's own.

Scrubbles

I think it's perfect for governments. You can subscribe anywhere, you know it's legit, and that's a much better way to do notifications than twitter.

CMLVI

Yeah I'm not entirely well-versed in the implications of what that would allow, but it's another use-case that would be cool to see!

Cyborganism

Yeah, but then again, do you want a government controlled social media? 🤔

veee

The government could control social media on their own instance, sure.

I think having government accounts come from an official instance would garner more trust in the platform.

The Soca Vault

People don't trust the government all the time, they are a bunch of sneaky buggers you know.

Scrubbles

It's not.... it's the fediverse. I'm completely fine with them having their own instance, it's not like they control it by any means. Hell they can be defederated. It's a lot better than them choosing some random instance.

Cyborganism

Then it should be only for government officials.

a lil bee 🐝

I think the distributed nature of Mastodon keeps government control from being an issue. It would be kind of cool as a space for citizens to ask for assistance or air grievances while giving the politicians an officially owned space for things like announcements.

Feathercrown , edited

Totally agree. The issues with "government-controlled social media" are a non-issue in a federated environment, and the URL would give them legitimacy.

Flamekebab

I don't want a private company controlling government email servers, why would I want them to control government social media platforms?

electricprism

What you don't like pot holes in your roads? XD We can easily host our own server where the database password is already 123456

John Richard

Be careful. He might sue saying you have to use the platform. He'll claim that not using it hurts his free speech.

perviouslyiner [OP] , edited

Yeah, not sure the UK Labour party are going to be receptive to a free speech argument, given recent events. If anything, an updated law might make X liable for the real-world problems it causes.

CrypticCoffee

Can you explain this point?

flamingos-cant

There was/is a wave of far-right riots happening in the UK, which involved a lot lotting and attacks on Muslims. This was triggered by a stabbing in Southport and a lie that spread on social media claiming that the perpetrator was a Muslim migrant that came to the UK on a 'small boat' crossing the channel (he was actually born and grew up in Cardiff). Musk may be liable because during the riots he made several posts undermining the government's attempts to quell the unrest and his general failure to tackle disinformation spreading on Twitter, such as the Muslim migrant lie.

CrypticCoffee , edited

Fair point. I thought you were implying the opposite.

I read it as implying Labour is anti-free speech for clamping down on racist hate speech and mob mentality.

John Richard

Arresting people for things they say even when they aren't threats is anti-free speech and the UK and many European countries do not allow free speech. You can be arrested for even saying Israelis genociding Palestinians are Nazis.

perviouslyiner [OP] , edited

Politicians and public should consider quitting X, says Liverpool mayor

"*The time is approaching where we’ve got to all examine whether we should, en masse, withdraw from it and for there to be a different platform*"

Dr. Dabbles

Only now? It's been two years of this and *now* they've had too much? No partial credit should be given for people that continued to participate when it was clear what was happening.

ripcord

Also, I don't believe a significant number of them actually will.

Feathercrown , edited

People in the UK need to start pushing Mastodon hard. You could use the tagline "You don't want to switch services again in a few years, do you?"

[deleted]

I hope the canadian mps and mlas follow suit.

threelonmusketeers

Same. I wish other public figures and journalists would as well.

ruk_n_rul

Is it finally time? The beginning of the end?

Otter , edited

Labour MPs begin quitting X over ‘hate and disinformation’

Why does this happen? Lemmy doesn't get mentioned in articles, but Lemmy is still fairly small. Last I checked, Mastodon is doing well against the competitors. BBC even has an experimental instance

https://www.bbc.com/rd/blog/2023-07-mastodon-distributed-decentralised-fediverse-activitypub

arudesalad

Depends on the writer, chances are that those in the bbc who are involved with the mastodon instance are the nerds (like us) and the writer of this article doesn't know as much and is just listing the places the MPs went, and they are politicians so they wouldn't know about the "nerdy options"

Optional

*checks watch*

Uh, sure. Now is good. Several years ago was better, but, yeah.

NickwithaC

The second best time is now.

Churbleyimyam

They could start their own fediverse instance and ruthless ban users who have ever agreed with Jeremy Corbyn.

samokosik

It’s rare to see such a big fuck up as with twitter…

Venicon , edited

Have barely touched Twitter since Muskification ruined it.

Threads is okay but Mastodon would be brill with more interaction.

FundMECFSResearch

Bluesky is really nice. It’s like mastodon but with an algorithm. Still decentralised and FOSS. Plus it bridges with mastodon well.

sigmaklimgrindset

I love that there are so many options for nuSocial tbh. Federation rocks.

threelonmusketeers

it bridges with mastodon well

Does Bluesky use ActivityPub?

mke , edited

No, they use the Authenticated Tranfer protocol (atproto) which they developed, but I believe it's well documented.

FundMECFSResearch

No.

But bridgy works well

They really just should have used ActivityPub

[deleted]

ActivityPub is very bad

Any reasons for that?

AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet

Uh oh, some MPs are about to get sued.

Flamekebab

Don't enable his embarrassing nonsense by calling Twitter "X".

perviouslyiner [OP] , edited

unfortunately their current style guide results in this headline.

cows_are_underrated

Why does no one mention Mastodon AS an alternative(from the MPs)

👍Maximum Derek👍

If they actually worried about hate and disinformation they would have quit before it was called X.

The Soca Vault

Labour MP's need to put their grown up pants on and work for the people instead of being emotional about a platform.