FOSSDLE PieFedHow can we convince the city to set up a Mastodon account?
submitted by
Sunshine (she/her)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/32283041
As currently they’re only using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
History has shown us time and time again that these corporate platforms are unreliable and untrustworthy.
•Twitter has a moderation problem.
•Facebook has been found interfering with the message delivery of crucial information during emergencies, putting people’s lives at risk.
•YouTube often takes down videos for the wildest of reasons and Google had a massive fight with the federal government over Canadian media outlet compensation. Who’s to say they won’t use their dominant position to sabotage the efforts of governments they don’t agree.
We could email the council requesting that they post on the platform.
They could set up an account on one of the larger well established Canadian instances or even better start up their own.
Friend of mine used to volunteer for the local chapter of a well-known national non-profit. He tried to explain all the technical benefits of setting up a website, yada yada. The board didn't care and were bored.
He finally set up a small demo on his own. Just a few screens. Ran a small test. Presented static screenshots, along with charts and stats on viewership and engagements. Had mockups of donation pages, volunteer signup screens, newsletters, etc. That was when people saw the value and got interested.
Nobody cares about decentralized social networks, the technology, or how terrible the other outlets are. For a municipality, you may want to focus on maintaining multiple channels of communications and ways to reach and engage the most users. You could then fold the fediverse into it as one more channel. Something they should keep an eye on. They'll need a way to post the same content to all those channels with the least effort. Something easy that a trained intern or clerk can do.
Guarantee there will be questions of cost of setup, maintenance, and risks. May want to have some answers and slides ready.
And time moderating it, especially if they run their own. At least with Twitter/Facebook/YouTube, you get a lot of moderation for free whether you agree with it or not.
And if they use another instance, there's other liability questions about the particular instance to choose. If they're gonna represent an official city account, you'd expect some cybersecurity certifications to be a requirement and all kinds of stuff, even if it's a free service. The instance admins interfering, possibly steering opinions during city elections, etc.
In this case IMO it might even be better to use something like Wordpress with the ActivityPub plugin, or alternatives to that. I imagine a city mostly posts announcements and stuff, so a blog that serves as both an official website and you can follow and interact with it from the comfort of your preferred social service sounds a lot more appealing than just another social media without that many users. Can even use more plugins to post to Facebook and Twitter as well, all from one place. Given the age of the board, they're also more likely to know and care about Threads and Bluesky compatibility just because they have more users, and bureaucratic decisions are based on numbers. A nice graph showing if they join the fediverse they capture all the users fleeing Twitter by supporting AP and AT.
Pitch a micro instance with little more than the rfc2142-like addresses emulated on there - info, mayor, council, admin or chat master, whatever - useful for tagging, forwarding on the way in and info dissemination on the way out.
Much less work to run, since outgoing is all gonna be pre-vetted.
What is the benefit of using Mastodon, over the cost of learning and maintaining a new platform? Make a business case.
Government entities generally follow the principle of "We go where the people go". If the majority of people are using Twitter and YouTube and Facebook, then that's where the government bodies will host their accounts. You'd need a way to ensure that their message will reach their audience before you can even begin getting them onboard with the process of creating and setting up a whole new social platform. And that's going to be the hardest part to sell, since Mastodon is still among the least-used platforms available. Either show up with the critical mass needed to ensure that they've got an established user base, or show a plan to reach that point.
Both of these options have their pros and cons, and I think it is important to explain these well to the council if you want to have any hope of convincing them.
A line of argument that has had some success in Europe is what has become known as "Digital Sovereignty", basically a fancy term for saying government should control its own infrastructure. So you might want to sell it as an easy way to have a permanent archive of public communication and a method for it that is under their direct control, rather than as a way to find more engagement.
As others have said self hosting has a maintenance and moderation overhead, but this can be lessened by running an instance together with other cities while still retaining most of the benefits of self hosting.
Seeing from the linked cross-post that this is about Port Alberni, and considering that http://portalberni.ca/ returns an empty reply while https://portalberni.ca/ lets me know I have been geoblocked because I'm outside of Canada and the US, I'd say you have an uphill battle before you though. These people made a website (probably paid for it, too), and then killed much of its use by geoblocking most of the world.
Good luck.
And the 302 reponse on the non-ssl port is such a no-brainer.
Offer to help setup the account and show them how to use Mastodon in general.
Also, not necessarily applicable to you but worth keeping in mind: encourage organizations to run Mastodon instances/provide Mastodon hosting for their employees or members in addition to providing email addresses. If an org is providing email to employees or members for business correspondence they could easily provide Mastodon services as well. This enables public discussion with the org in twitter/social media format without a third party controlling the platform.
I guess I could do a presentation on the merits of the fediverse.
Find widely known orgs that use the platform, the BBC comes to mind here. Search for other well known orgs to point out so you don't just have one example. Highlight the fact that other platforms are cross linking to the fediverse (Meta'a threads for example) so a fediverse presence will give the city a presence on those platforms with no extra effort needed. Point out that Twitter has become an unreliable platform due to ownership change and that that situation could replay itself at any time on any centralized platform. Help people get Mastodon working on phones if needed - the official app is quite good. Basically just sell the platform as best you can, don't go heavy on ideology and focus on practical benefits.
Im assuming you've looped in @chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca?
Former Port Alberni city council, fediverse advocate
Not a viable option, why would they do that