The server is now live and in use at social.overheid.nl
The official announcement post by the State Secretary of Digitalisation: https://social.overheid.nl/@avhuffelen/110700825255524685
In the post she mentions that the government supports ‘value-driven’ alternatives to social media. In a letter to the house of representatives she describes Mastodon as a Digital Common Good, and that it fits in the larger strategy of the government of using ‘open source, unless’ (meaning theyll always use open source unless there is a clear explicit reason not to).
and honestly, businesses too. There is opportunity here in the business sector, I think.
Definitely. Your PR account being from your official webdomain (or rather, a mastodon/fediverse-specific subdomain, something like mastodon.intel.com) would be the ultimate verification.
Example:
How do you know this (fictitious) announcement that Intel is going to merge with AMD is really from Intel and not from someone pretending to be from Intel for the lulz? Just look at the home instance of the account making this announcement. Only the official Intel account has this home instance.
I know it’s something of an unpopular opinion around these parts, but I could see this being much more likely if Threads does federate, which I think would be an overal boon to ActivityPub-based instances as a whole.
Could still get hacked, but the point stands that is an extra level of verification.
Not to mention that they can have a extra layer of legitimacy/professionalism with a corporate subdomain and a branded theme.