Casey NewtonThere are so many ways to break a website and by the time he is done Elon will have personally overseen all of them
DleeweeBTW this is why it was stupid for all those government / emergency services accounts to resume posting on Twitter. Absolutely unreliable in critical situations
happyday@caseynewton I'm wondering if we should look at the functions of Twitter like the Public Library and our cities, etc. should own their instance that gets federated. Then really rich people backed by rich people who must at all costs get their billions back or end in a cage fight won't be able to foist their reality on us.
@happyday @caseynewton wasn't that the goal of nixle? But nobody outside the agencies used nixle.
@maskdmirag @caseynewton Looking at the site, it is for emergency response. I know in my city the city uses Twitter. So in that context, Twitter was far more popular. I like that you divide out emergency service from social. But in the end, aren't emergencies a social event? I'm more looking at the social aspect. The intent of our social platforms is to not improve our lives. To not notify us. To aid in our mental collapse. so there's that. OK. I'll shut up now.
@happyday @caseynewton yeah, I get it, that's why nixle never caught on. Even though I think you could subscribe to text updates? I'm not sure.
@maskdmirag @caseynewton My take is it is very important to identify the intent. Nixl's intent is emergency. Twitters intent is to be the voice of Musk. Facebook's intent is to be cool and make money. None of these intents give a damn about our well being. Well run cities like mine care about us (to a degree, although they have greatly enjoyed Google $$ to grow the city which has caused its own unique challenges).
ProtectiveHen@maskdmirag @happyday @caseynewton I'm on nixle - I think...or some local emergency notification system - local agencies have suggested folks join because of potential disasters in this fire-prone area. But I get your point!
@bok_bok_ba_gok @maskdmirag @caseynewton I'd never heard of nixle so i don't know how the message got out. It is an example to me of a product for the good that didn't tap into the social fabric rather the gov't fabric?
@happyday @maskdmirag @caseynewton Local officials were putting the word out on Nextdoor - so at least it got to the paranoid sector of the population...
@bok_bok_ba_gok @maskdmirag @caseynewton yah. I'm on Nextdoor. There is a subreddit for my town and the folks there said we are all Karens. I see it š . Well, let's all join together and federate Nextdoor into it. I am not sure if that means we need to get the domain name like karen.com...It's a small world after all....
Mark Tomczak@happyday @caseynewton Absolutely. Mastodon is a way better model for municipal broadcast messaging.
@mtomczak @caseynewton I think what you are saying is because Mastodon is federated (through the Activity Pub protocol), it allows each instance admin to control moderation. These could be rules of the city, which is more localized. They could be per individual. The point is, it's not up to 3 people I will never meet in a conference room drinking $7 lattes and deciding who to kick on or off.
@mtomczak @caseynewton do you remember when Microsoft came out with BackOffice? We need a "BackSocial" that is a decentralized social platform with flexible content moderation and a protocol (Activity Pub seems fine) for a city to install and run. Geez. I will really try to shut up now. I've had WAY WAY too much coffee. Apologize.
Ms Starry Night@mtomczak @happyday @caseynewton except for people like me, not exactly a whizz at social media , cannot get good content. I just donāt know how to use this site.
@MsStarryNight @mtomczak @caseynewton I for one am clueless. I've had some luck follwing # (hashtags). Does that make any sense?
cat static šŗšøšŗš¦Fedi.Tips (@[email protected])
Oh my goodness... a LOT of new people... š® Welcome! š If you need help with using Mastodon and the Fediverse, have a look at: ā”ļø https://fedi.tips It's written for a non-technical audience, and hopefully answers most beginners' questions. If you're looking for accounts to follow, there are lots of ways to do it summarised here: ā”ļø https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accounts-to-follow-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-how-do-i-find-my-friends/ If you have any problems, ask me and I'll try to help!
indri@MsStarryNight @mtomczak @happyday @caseynewton Just try to follow lots of accounts and a few hashtags. You can organize the follows on lists if you want to filter the content a bit.
@FediFollows posts regularly posts some suggestions for example.
@FediFollows posts regularly posts some suggestions for example.
nathanpboston@caseynewton @happyday excellent idea. Iām going to ask people at my public library about opening/facilitating an instance.
@nathanpboston @caseynewton Please let us know. I wonder what the cities/towns in Europe are doing. I heard announcements of mastodon rollouts. Would be good to learn what experiences they have had, what they are doing....we could work together.
@nathanpboston @caseynewton I left out the ROW because I am old. I apologize. And the rest of the world. It would be cool to do this together.
@nathanpboston @caseynewton And working with the ROW with a social project is a better use of our time/effort/money than sending military equip to each location for the seemingly eventual war.
@happyday @caseynewton Prior to the dominance of neoliberalism this would have been the natural approach - now it seems to be that govt should subsidize large corporate activities. A 1st step would be to entice a few govt agencies to try out this platform - they must do something now that Twitter has gone private, even though the post-Twitter winner has not emerged.
@bok_bok_ba_gok @caseynewton I don't have enough money to entice a govt agency š . Perhaps it is up to us. hm....
Timo Hetzel@caseynewton Not sure if it was me alone, but at least the local fire department is off of Facebook for their reports.
Daniel Gill@caseynewton I am personally wondering if, in the event Meta's Twitter competitor takes off, why don't these public services stand up their own instances and insulate themselves from the brittleness of the platform? I feel like that could be appealing, especially if the infrastructure for running an #ActivityPub instance eventually becomes commoditized
Travis@caseynewton This is why centralized social media is a problem and people and organizations need to have their own domains, websites, and blogs. RSS needs to be expanded with new features so that it's easier to follow and find sites as well as receive critical alerts - especially for governmnet/emergency service accounts. I wrote about why we need to decentralize the web again on our corporate blog: https://www.nodespace.com/blog/its-time-to-decentralize-the-web/
John@caseynewton people love the status quo ā¤ļø
Ian Servin@caseynewton I dunno if that's fair. As an emergency services person, it's not like we have much of a choice. Changing how we do public alerting and messaging is not something we can do overnight, and for good reason.
My grad school capstone was on social media use in the emerg mgmt world and unsurprisingly agencies are extremely under-resourced when it comes to social media comms. Relying on them to lead vs follow best practices and trends is unrealistic imho.
@airplaneian I hear you but you're giving your community a false sense of security by suggesting that they can rely on Twitter to find out about emergencies. The downside risk of that is enormous imo
@caseynewton Many agencies have spent time in recent months informing their audience about other places they can receive messages
but we can't just stop posting on twitter overnight, that has immediate real world consequences to the people that do still rely on that vector for information
in the world of life safety, you have to be conservative about your decision making... I think expecting us to abandon a platform in protest is not actually the kind of behavior you want from emerg svcs
@airplaneian it's not even about protest ... it's that Twitter can no longer reliably serve as a real-time information source in critical situations. It's like saying "we can't stop using this fire truck any more just because it doesn't have an engineā
@caseynewton sure but even if I think public comms are just as essential as a fire truck, I'm not the one you have to convince
priorities are instantiated by funding and the money comes from elected officials... you gotta convince them first
it's not like we're not having that fight, but we don't have many resources to fight it successfully
@caseynewton I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think the reality of how decisions get made at public agencies doesn't line up with your expectations
we don't need criticism, we need resources and support to do the right thing
@caseynewton I can tell you that agencies are trying to figure out what the best course of action is, but decision making is deliberate by design and unfortunately public comms is one of the areas that has the fewest resources in most agencies
what we really need is resources and best practices around how to abandon twitter so communicators can prove to bosses/electeds that there is a viable path forward
we have to prove we're making the right choice, not just act unilaterally
@airplaneian @caseynewton oh, you can post on Twitter but it's now unlikely that people will see that post...
Jalmari LƤhevirta@caseynewton @airplaneian Anything that's being locked behind a login is not a reliable way for any officials to inform people.
It's like putting the emergency number behind some kind of wall to use.
It's like putting the emergency number behind some kind of wall to use.
Mike Silva@caseynewton Yup. Itās not a reliable utility. Unless, the government is going to regulate it like a utility.
Lemniscate@caseynewton Yup. Fires have been increasing in the area daily and the real time news sources from the fire dept are Twitter and Facebook only.
zBeeble@caseynewton My uncle was (among other things) a #sysadmin for a large university here in Canada. Every so often, he'd receive an #email, subject: Email's down. Always, his reply: "no it's not"
Benj Edwards@caseynewton Time to nationalize Twitter as public infrastructure š
Probably a terrible idea, but I am only half jokingā¦
Kazriko@benjedwards @caseynewton Naa, just let it wither.
Jeff C@caseynewton
I've been thinking lately about emergency comms and comms in areas with poor or no network coverage.
Federated works better than centralized, but ActivityPub still assumes there are servers, and that they have a stable network.
Is anyone working on an ad-hoc social network? Something that's peer-to-peer between handsets over opportunistic connections?
Dan Riley@caseynewton there are reasons why our local EMS still uses SMS
@@caseynewton if anything, commune, municipal, federal, state, etc should be running their own ActivityPub servers, whichever they feel more fitting. The EU has Mastodon and PeerTube. Good call.
Bart Decrem@caseynewton if only weād offered an alternative that didnāt have a big āwe donāt really want new people hereā sign out front
@caseynewton That and we can't trust Musk to do the right thing if there isn't something in it for him.
tootswoot@caseynewton
I wrote to the White House about this very subject earlier today
I wrote to the White House about this very subject earlier today
JohnWYes definitely. I wondering if they realize that all they have to do is come here and bring their followers for the Fediverse "to have relevancy" as they would put it.
OzzyšÆ@caseynewton yep, that rate limit would be hit very fast by non blue tick accounts
e.g. during bush fires in Australia, emergency services use twit to help spread info
300 limit or whatever it is would block those alerts @kcarruthers
e.g. during bush fires in Australia, emergency services use twit to help spread info
300 limit or whatever it is would block those alerts @kcarruthers
Dan Faltesek@caseynewton the best way to get school district closures here (snow) is a banner on their website.
spherulitic@caseynewton nobody can see it anymore. Only people logged in to Twitter which is like three people
Brian Grinter@caseynewton native apps with push notifications - all the way
regphunt@caseynewton Well, yes and no. I think we have to get used to relying on redundant services.
There will be no "one stop shop" in the future, I think.
There will be no "one stop shop" in the future, I think.
Rand Barthel@caseynewton It used to be reliable (or so is my impression) but then Musk fired the people who were keeping it going.
Grumble@caseynewton Seems a waste to carry Twitter over TCP. UDP would be fine and reduce a lot of traffic.
Voron@caseynewton let me rephrase that a bit, BTW this is why all those government emergency services accounts resuming posting on Twitter after it had already proven unreliable is absolute proof of the abject subservient nature of governments to billionaires interests
Florian Egermann@caseynewton @liroyleshed And this is what Mastodon/Fediverse excel at. Your own domain (built-in validation), your own server, but connected to a larger network. Happy to say the German government is active at social.bund.de