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).

  • Takapapatapaka@lemmy.world
    22·
    1 year ago

    Hey, noobie question here, I dont know much about fediverse, so don’t mind correct me :

    Is it a good thing ?

    I first had the feeling that it ain’t, but everybody in the comment section seems happy with it. My knowledge of the Fediverse is this :

    • Federation aims to decentralization
    • The aim beyond decentralization is to prevent one entity (like Reddit) to have too much power over the content created and shared.
    • When Meta said they wanted to connect Threads to the fediverse, people seemed concerned and/or opposed to it. It seemed coherent to me as the federation with Meta was seen as a danger for decentralization, because a big entity could have access to the content. (I feel like I probably misunderstood that part though).

    Now, I (personnally) consider that any state is as a big entity as big companies, and that we should feel as much concerned about their power over content and informations. This is of course debatable and maybe the origin of my misunderstanding.

    So here’s my true question : do i miss any point in this, that could make me understand why you consider it a good thing ?

    • Ruud@lemmy.ruud.je
      9·
      1 year ago

      One thing to keep in mind is that this Mastodon instance is purely used by the government to speak officially. It is not a platform where regular folks can create new posts (they can still comment on and like posts made by the government).

      They are basically removing their dependency on Twitter as a platform for sharing information to the public.

    • orientalsniper@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      The big difference between Meta and the Dutch government, is that the dutch government’s aim is not to compete and “destroy” other instances like lemmy.world/etc. Their instance is sort of their official digital megaphone.

    • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yes, anyone who is mad about the meta fedi is just fed misinformation and all this means is that there’s more content to federate with, which is a good thing.