There’s a difference between a public communications platform and internal tooling. X-Twitter is a shithole, but still a place many people can be reached, which, in my opinion, is important enough for politicians to justify its continued usage.
But there’s no public communications function to using MS Office over Libre Office. If anything, there’s a should-be-confidential communications function to it. Exposing that to foreign actors seems reckless even under the most amicable of relations, and what we have now is definitely not the most amicable.
So using X is an unfortunate concession to the Network Effect and its bearing on political public work, but using MS Office (whatever name it goes by these days, I lost track) is a liability.
(That said: get the fuck off of X, people, so our politicians can too. I’d prefer Mastodon, but even bsky is relatively more acceptable than X or Threads. Just go anywhere, please.)
I see your point, but still, that’s no excuse for X, it was never the network of the people, it’s used by politicians, reporters and news junkies. Most people never used it. Politicians and reporters are just addicted to it and too lazy to move anywhere else…
I know a bunch of people that did use it and made a point of quitting it. And that’s just my bubble of people willing to quit in the first place, never mind all the people that didn’t. Hell, there were entire meme communities centered on twitter content. One historian whose blog I read frequently referenced twitter, until he announced that he was moving away. He also lamented that the pricks bullshitting “historical facts” to justify whatever dickery had fewer historians to call them out, now that most had left the platform.
Of course, “most people” is a difficult assertion to measure, but I’m certain there were plenty enough readers on the platform, and I suspect way too many are still on there. Your take seems extremely reductive.
Twitter always had a fraction of Facebook or Instagram users. It was/is popular with certain niches, more or less popular in certain countries, but not the network to find your family or friends.
Politicians and reporters using it should be ashamed of sharing a platform with Nazis and pedophiles.
Twitter is a significantly different medium. Instagram is obviously geared towards pictures and reels rather than microblogs, and Facebook… actually, I concede that I don’t know how Facebook works these days.
I do know that I’ve seen way more people advertise their twitter than their Facebook in my age cohort (20-30). So again, I don’t believe that X is quite so devoid of an audience as you suppose. And in that light, I don’t think people whose job depends on reaching as many people and demographics as possible should be indiscriminately expected to leave that platform.
However, I do agree they should (also) use a different platform to break up the network effect and facilitate migration for everyone else. Because the audience are the ones I’d shame for choosing to stay. They have no economic or political pressure to. They absolutely should be ashamed of sharing a platform with Nazis and pedophiles.
@luciferofastora@NorskSud
Is it such a radical idea that the EU, Parliament + Commission, should have its own Fedi server to base ALL its public discussions & comms on, with easily locatable layers & sub-layers for departments & offices + for nations, regions & municipalities, & even for citizens & the European public?
X, Fb, Insta etc. should all at best be clones/bots, so they wouldn’t lose audience but the audience would know where they come from + exactly how/where to contact s/o.
Not at all, I fully agree with you. My argument isn’t, that X is the best option, merely that there is a justification for (still) using it. As I said, they also should offer a better option to help people get away from it.
@luciferofastora
Sure. 👍 Keep the accounts for that reason but make them secondary & obvious mirrors to their official accounts.
That said, I think it’s too complete an idea (not just the Fedi server but the entire comprehensive & inter-compatible EU IT ecosystem) & EU logic is typically particulate (too many cooks imo), so I don’t see anything like this happening for a long time.
There’s a difference between a public communications platform and internal tooling. X-Twitter is a shithole, but still a place many people can be reached, which, in my opinion, is important enough for politicians to justify its continued usage.
But there’s no public communications function to using MS Office over Libre Office. If anything, there’s a should-be-confidential communications function to it. Exposing that to foreign actors seems reckless even under the most amicable of relations, and what we have now is definitely not the most amicable.
So using X is an unfortunate concession to the Network Effect and its bearing on political public work, but using MS Office (whatever name it goes by these days, I lost track) is a liability.
(That said: get the fuck off of X, people, so our politicians can too. I’d prefer Mastodon, but even bsky is relatively more acceptable than X or Threads. Just go anywhere, please.)
I see your point, but still, that’s no excuse for X, it was never the network of the people, it’s used by politicians, reporters and news junkies. Most people never used it. Politicians and reporters are just addicted to it and too lazy to move anywhere else…
I doubt that’s accurate.
I know a bunch of people that did use it and made a point of quitting it. And that’s just my bubble of people willing to quit in the first place, never mind all the people that didn’t. Hell, there were entire meme communities centered on twitter content. One historian whose blog I read frequently referenced twitter, until he announced that he was moving away. He also lamented that the pricks bullshitting “historical facts” to justify whatever dickery had fewer historians to call them out, now that most had left the platform.
Of course, “most people” is a difficult assertion to measure, but I’m certain there were plenty enough readers on the platform, and I suspect way too many are still on there. Your take seems extremely reductive.
Twitter always had a fraction of Facebook or Instagram users. It was/is popular with certain niches, more or less popular in certain countries, but not the network to find your family or friends.
Politicians and reporters using it should be ashamed of sharing a platform with Nazis and pedophiles.
Twitter is a significantly different medium. Instagram is obviously geared towards pictures and reels rather than microblogs, and Facebook… actually, I concede that I don’t know how Facebook works these days.
I do know that I’ve seen way more people advertise their twitter than their Facebook in my age cohort (20-30). So again, I don’t believe that X is quite so devoid of an audience as you suppose. And in that light, I don’t think people whose job depends on reaching as many people and demographics as possible should be indiscriminately expected to leave that platform.
However, I do agree they should (also) use a different platform to break up the network effect and facilitate migration for everyone else. Because the audience are the ones I’d shame for choosing to stay. They have no economic or political pressure to. They absolutely should be ashamed of sharing a platform with Nazis and pedophiles.
@luciferofastora @NorskSud
Is it such a radical idea that the EU, Parliament + Commission, should have its own Fedi server to base ALL its public discussions & comms on, with easily locatable layers & sub-layers for departments & offices + for nations, regions & municipalities, & even for citizens & the European public?
X, Fb, Insta etc. should all at best be clones/bots, so they wouldn’t lose audience but the audience would know where they come from + exactly how/where to contact s/o.
Not at all, I fully agree with you. My argument isn’t, that X is the best option, merely that there is a justification for (still) using it. As I said, they also should offer a better option to help people get away from it.
@luciferofastora
Sure. 👍 Keep the accounts for that reason but make them secondary & obvious mirrors to their official accounts.
That said, I think it’s too complete an idea (not just the Fedi server but the entire comprehensive & inter-compatible EU IT ecosystem) & EU logic is typically particulate (too many cooks imo), so I don’t see anything like this happening for a long time.