[HN Gopher] EU Voice
___________________________________________________________________
EU Voice
Author : doener
Score : 328 points
Date : 2022-11-06 11:21 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (social.network.europa.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (social.network.europa.eu)
| ancplt wrote:
| I think all politicians should be banned from Twitter and
| replacements. Ultimately, it is just self-promotion and lying.
|
| For international relations, a counterargument might be made:
| Perhaps the preposterous "little rocket man" exchange between
| Trump and Kim Jong-un that resulted in a meeting actually brought
| the countries together.
|
| But domestically I think the influence is harmful.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > Ultimately, it is just self-promotion and lying.
|
| That describes nearly entirety of what comes out of politicians
| mouth regardless of the medium.
| blitzar wrote:
| Q. "How do you know a politician is lying?" A. Because their
| mouth is moving.
|
| You would have to ban debates in the chamber, press
| conferences, press releases, speeches etc.
| franga2000 wrote:
| I wouldn't go that far, but I'd seriously punish any use of
| official "position" accounts for self-promotion or political
| fighting. Social media accounts like @POTUS or official
| government websites should _never_ be used for the incumbent 's
| own political agenda. Want to tweet to announce a new law you
| just passed? Cool. Want to respond to criticism, bark a
| journalists or fight with opponents? Fuck off to your own
| account!
| emaro wrote:
| This is great, it shows one of the strengths of the Fediverse.
| Official bodies can participate in social media without being
| dependent on a foreign, for-profit company. And you can read
| updates with a lot of different applications, be it Mastodon,
| Pleroma or the RSS reader of your choice.
| seydor wrote:
| nobody knows this
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's a fixable problem.
| [deleted]
| seydor wrote:
| not really
| berkes wrote:
| I knew it. I'm not nobody.
|
| Sorry for pointing out, but such absolutists statements are
| easily debunked with a single 'black swan'.
| seydor wrote:
| rmedranollamas wrote:
| I know it too, thanks.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Sorry for pointing out, but such absolutists statements
| are easily debunked with a single 'black swan'._
|
| The parent commenter was making a generalization, like "all
| birds have wings". The discoverability problem is a
| legitimate point. If we allow the colloquial English for a
| moment, it'd be interesting to hear informed opinions on
| how that can be solved.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > on how that can be solved
|
| like everything: marketing campaigns.
|
| Right now media are reporting (embedding) statements from
| EU from private social networks, in the future PR are
| going to include links to the new platforms and
| journalists will start to track them instead.
|
| Exactly how it happened with Twitter, nobody knew about
| it months after its launch.
|
| Nobody mentioned it as a source for important stuff,
| especially not established media outlets/newspapers.
|
| A little reminder: Twitter is 16 years old, was never
| profitable, and, despite the billions poured into the
| platform and into "buying" attention, it "only" has 200
| million active users/day globally, compared to the 2
| billions of WhatsApp user active daily or the 1.7 billion
| active Facebook users.
|
| The vast majority of social network users around the
| World don't even know what Twitter is and why it should
| matter.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| yet.
|
| when I was born nobody knew what star wars was.
| philjohn wrote:
| And the journalist issue is solved by media companies having
| official servers under their domain.
| blitzar wrote:
| This is exactly how the federated "twitter" should work.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| This is what Dorsey and Musk discussed in private according
| to court documents[0].
|
| <jack jack>: "I believe it must be an open source protocol,
| funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn't own the
| protocol, only advances it. A bit like what Signal has
| done. It can't have an advertising model."
|
| 0.https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/now-twitter-belongs-
| elon-h...
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| With Signal given as an example, I don't think your
| conclusion is right. Signal is famous for disallowing
| federation in the network they own. (I'm guessing that
| there's no provision for federation in the Signal
| protocol for that reason, either.)
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Signal is equally (in)famous for using this lack of
| federation to then force advertising for its cryptocoin
| into all of its clients:
|
| https://www.osnews.com/story/133275/signal-embeds-shady-
| cryp...
| woojoo666 wrote:
| Though of course, Jack Dorsey doesn't want to build on an
| existing protocol (like activitypub) and instead is
| rolling out his own (https://atproto.com)
| rambambram wrote:
| I was able to read a feed by following
| https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission for example. So
| the @user is mandatory to reach a feed. You probably know this
| already, but for who doesn't and wants to follow updates by
| RSS.
| olivierduval wrote:
| Sadly, as usual with Europe, a really good idea and... a very
| poor marketing!
|
| Mastodon is supposed to be a kind of Twitter replacement... so
| why not using the "public timeline"
| (https://social.network.europa.eu/public) as the landing page???
| It would allow everybody to see that mastodon is not more
| complicated than twitter and would be more interesting than
| https://social.network.europa.eu/about/more or even
| https://social.network.europa.eu !!!
|
| I really don't get it. :-(
|
| As long as Europa won't be able to make interesting things catchy
| for everybody, all these good ideas will just stay unused and
| lost
| jszymborski wrote:
| In fairness, almost all the instances I know don't show their
| timeline on their landing page.
| Proven wrote:
| miohtama wrote:
| Because the EU officials and subcontracted party do not have
| incentive make the product attractive.
|
| - There is no monetary incentive for developers based on the
| success of the product. Close proximity with the EU is enough
| to win the likely overpriced government contract, which is
| either a fixed price or by-the-hour.
|
| - The EU officials themselves rarely have ambitions or talent
| to make any good web services. Your success as a government
| officer does not depend on the success of a software product,
| but is based on political alignments and taking least risk of
| not screwing up.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| You speak of preconceptions rather than fact.
| decide1000 wrote:
| I am not sure if I can agree with that. The EU has several
| apps and API which are stable and useful.
|
| Do you have an example of such low quality webservice?
| [deleted]
| olivierduval wrote:
| Funnily... the "infinite timeline" prevents the user to see the
| footer with global links and explanations
|
| Sad to see this all messed up :-(
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| This is just a service info page describing the service, not an
| advertisement.
| someone_eu wrote:
| It is worth mentioning that EU also funds the open source
| development required to enable translation engine in Mastodon:
|
| https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/19218
|
| "This project was funded through the NGI0 Discovery Fund, a fund
| established by NLnet with financial support from the European
| Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis
| of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant
| agreement No 825322."
|
| I think it is a much better investment in the future of federated
| social networking, than trying to get control of it by setting up
| a centralized instance for EU-citizens, as someone else suggests
| in the comments.
| beardedman wrote:
| *helps fund the translation engine in Mastodon.
|
| NLnet might have its roots in the EU, but you shouldn't
| conflate the two.
| qwertox wrote:
| I don't get it. Take the "Tagesschau" [0] for example. Now with
| all the ordeal around Twitter, they don't bother mentioning that
| this exists. They could even explain what Mastodon is and what
| makes it special.
|
| [0] Tagesschau (German for Review of the Day) is a German
| national and international television news service produced by
| the editorial staff of ARD-aktuell on behalf of the German
| public-service television network ARD. (Quoted form
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagesschau_(German_TV_programm...)
| codethief wrote:
| Uhhh...
|
| https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/mastodon-twitter-altern...
|
| https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/audio/audio-147719.html
| qwertox wrote:
| One is an article (which I was aware of) and the other one is
| a Podcast / radio format contribution.
|
| What I meant was raising the discussion in one of the 20:00
| live news, where the audience is significantly bigger.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| In both Flemish and Dutch media, I've seen Mastodon pop up
| several times in the last week. It seems to be this is because
| quite a number of Flemish and Dutch Twitter users (known
| journalists, tech commentators, etc.) have started using it.
|
| [1] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/11/01/mastodon-twitter/
|
| [2] https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20221101_97987771
|
| [3] https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2022/10/31/vier-vragen-over-
| mastod...
|
| Also found this in French-speaking Belgian media, but I'm not
| sure how much it's talked about there:
| https://www.rtbf.be/article/depuis-le-rachat-de-twitter-par-...
| seydor wrote:
| EDPS , the organization that hosts (?) this mastodon is funded
| with $20M from the EU budget. It employs 96 people (last data i
| could find). ( Obviously not just for mastodon)
|
| I d actually like to see something like a public funded mastodon,
| like we have public TV
| berkes wrote:
| In case people read this comment as "the EU is spending EUR20M
| on hosting a mastodon": no.
|
| The EDPS does a lot more.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Data_Protection_Sup...
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| People would ask if they can have a mastodon at home and how
| fluffy it is.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Mom: We have mastodon at home.
|
| Mastodon at home: https://images.foxtv.com/static.fox5dc.co
| m/www.fox5dc.com/co...
| orangetuba wrote:
| jbverschoor wrote:
| No thank E-you
| arlort wrote:
| Worth pointing out that this was launched some months ago, it's
| not related to ongoing events with twitter
|
| They also have a peertube instance
| https://tube.network.europa.eu/
| nullcaution wrote:
| They should have called it "euTube", so much wasted potential.
| Ecstatify wrote:
| I don't understand why the EU bothers wasting money on these
| initiatives.
|
| No one uses these platforms.
|
| Why don't they buy a considerable stake in these American
| social media companies instead of trying to reinvent the wheel
| that is deflating as soon as it launches.
|
| https://tube.network.europa.eu URL looks like a scam website.
|
| There is no way tech illiterate people can use these websites.
|
| Their first video that appears on the website "The future of
| data protection: Effective enforcement in the digital world -
| full video" is 1 week old and has 27 views.
| arlort wrote:
| > Why don't they buy a considerable stake in these American
| social media companies instead
|
| I'll assume this is made in jest, as for this
|
| > I don't understand why the EU bothers wasting money on
| these initiatives.
|
| I don't know, and I can't say I believe this should be a
| priority of any kind, but it probably costs them very little
| in both cash and man-hours, has the benefit of being self
| hosted rather than relying exclusively on third parties and I
| appreciate their endorsement of these federated platforms
| however small
| jacooper wrote:
| > I don't understand why the EU bothers wasting money on
| these initiatives
|
| Because they don't cost much? If at all?
|
| > Why don't they buy a considerable stake in these American
| social media companies instead of trying to reinvent the
| wheel that is deflating as soon as it launches.
|
| Because if they did, the US is going to freak out about
| foreign influence.
|
| just look at how the media is reporting on Saudi Arabia
| investing in Twitter.
|
| Saudi Arabia is one of biggest users for Twitter in the
| World(1), its where everything official gets announced,
| almost everyone has a Twitter account.
|
| > https://tube.network.europa.eu URL looks like a scam
| website.
|
| I agree, the URL is very weird, maybe
| mastodon/puretube.official.eu would've been better
|
| > There is no way tech illiterate people can use these
| websites.
|
| > Their first video that appears on the website "The future
| of data protection: Effective enforcement in the digital
| world - full video" is 1 week old and has 27 views.
|
| They can use this as a backup, or as a source of truth for
| any official content from the EU.
|
| 1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-
| active-...
|
| You need to take into account the percentage of users to the
| population, in SA its close to 50%.
| arlort wrote:
| > mastodon/puretube.official.eu would've been better
|
| That's what europa.eu is, it's the official domain of the
| EU, every subdomain of europa.eu is an official website of
| the EU
|
| > > Their first video that appears on the website "The
| future of data protection: Effective enforcement in the
| digital world - full video" is 1 week old and has 27 views
|
| I just thought to check but funnily enough the exact same
| video posted on youtube also has 27 view, the EU just has
| horrific public outreach
| Hoasi wrote:
| > (...) the EU just has horrific public outreach
|
| Given the number of communication agencies working with
| the EU and since the EU had its own communication
| branches, one has to wonder whether having such a low
| outreach is by design and why this is.
| arlort wrote:
| > having such a low outreach is by design and why this is
|
| Not much to wonder about, public interest in the EU is
| abysmally low which is in good part because people don't
| know what the EU is or does.
|
| You'd need a good PSA campaign plus to teach "EU civics"
| as much (or at least almost so) as national civics in
| school.
|
| But both of those are never going to happen because for
| national governments it's much more convenient to keep
| the EU as something that can be blamed when things go
| wrong and pretend it doesn't exist when things go well
|
| So politicians don't talk about the EU when they should,
| newspapers care much less than they should and it
| trickles down to horrible participation rates in EU
| elections and even that is more often than not seen as a
| way for government/opposition national dynamics
|
| It's changing a bit but not enough
| jacooper wrote:
| > That's what europa.eu is, it's the official domain of
| the EU, every subdomain of europa.eu is an official
| website of the EU
|
| They should remove `.network` then
| drstewart wrote:
| >the US is going to freak out about foreign influence
|
| The irony of posing this as hysterical considering 99% of
| this thread is people saying "Good! The EU shouldn't be
| dependent on foreign influences!!"
| jacooper wrote:
| Well, he is asking why the EU is not trying to influence
| US tech.
| Ecstatify wrote:
| The Norwegian pension fund already owns roughly 1% of
| many of the large tech giants, not sure what percentage
| would cause the US to start freaking out, especially as
| the EU is a close ally.
|
| Meta Platforms Inc 1.01%
|
| Twitter 0.89%
|
| Alphabet Inc 0.85%
|
| Apple Inc 0.84%
|
| Amazon.com Inc 0.81%
|
| reference: https://www.nbim.no/en/the-
| fund/investments/#/2021/investmen...
| hef19898 wrote:
| That's very far from a controlling stake, by design if
| memory serves well regarding the Norwegian pension fund.
| Also, Norway _is not_ part of the EU.
| dools wrote:
| " Saudi Arabia is one of biggest users for Twitter in the
| World(1), its where everything official gets announced,
| almost everyone has a Twitter account."
|
| Yeah and how many middle eastern activists and journalists
| are now shitting themselves because the Saudi's just put a
| cowboy edge lord in charge of their DMs
| huffer wrote:
| > > Why don't they buy a considerable stake in these
| American social media companies
|
| also because there's this thing with physical location of
| the data: europeans' private data must never leave the EU
| pelasaco wrote:
| > Because they don't cost much? If at all?
|
| You are probably wrong here, but would be nice if EU was
| transparent enough to tell us how much it costs. It is a
| server management, patch management, content management,
| and etc.. i can imagine that isn't as cheap as you think,
| done by EU employees that are normally well paid.
| jacooper wrote:
| Its an Instance only for EU officials, there aren't many
| users.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Their staff is around 32k. people. But still server
| maintenance, content management, etc.. I would love to
| know how much such services costs to us.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I live in Brussels and have many friends in the EU
| bubble. EU employees are not as well paid as you think.
| The main perk has to do with how they're taxed which is
| greatly advantageous and makes their salary look higher
| than most peers.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Well, they are well paid if you analyze their output. I
| worked there. I know how goal oriented they are.
| viraptor wrote:
| > Why don't they buy a considerable stake in these American
| social media companies
|
| One is cost - a peertube instance costs thousands of costs
| including employee costs, while a considerable stake in
| youtube would cost billions. Two Second is control - why pay
| lots to hopefully get some special rules that need to be
| maintained over time to (for example) prevent any ads
| affecting the content when you can host yourself and not have
| the issue in the first place.
| simion314 wrote:
| >I don't understand why the EU bothers wasting money on these
| initiatives. >Why don't they buy a considerable stake ....
|
| What? instead of investing in a server and some open source
| code we should bive Elon a few millions? Are you Elon or how
| does this logic work ?
|
| News websites can link to twitter or any other website as
| easily , is not like the average EU citizens is actually
| following any EU institutions (no idea about politicians, who
| is the regulat guy that wants political pam), I only see
| twitter embeded or screenshot in news webistes, the
| experience would not differ if the text is on a higher
| quality website but with less active users.
| Ecstatify wrote:
| It's not about the cost of the service, it's that it's a
| pointless endeavour it's never going to succeed. Every
| social media company succeeds or fails based on the network
| effect.
|
| Where did I mention Elon?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > It's not about the cost of the service ... Every social
| media company succeeds or fails based on the network
| effect.
|
| So you're saying it's not about the money, it's about
| sending a message?
| Vespasian wrote:
| A mastodon instance like this does not need to be
| "successful" in order stay online.
|
| People are interested in what the government has to say
| and mostly multipliers (aka Journalists) are reading the
| actual news.
|
| It's good to have a accessible publication Plattform that
| is not subject to US policies (private or public ones),
| just in case the environment in Twitter gets undesirable.
|
| I assume running this servers costs roughly nothing and
| they can shut it down at any time.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Where did I mention Elon?
|
| If EU would buy a big share of Titter it gives money to
| Elon, if from FB you give the money to Mark etc.
|
| You are implying that is pointless me to have a person
| website because I will not succeed to be more popular the
| FB or Twitter. The joke is on you I have a personal
| website and I run a blog and some static pages. EU is not
| attempting to defeat Twitter,
|
| It makes sense (if your logic circuits work) that you
| should have a backup communication method because
|
| 1 Twitter or FB because they might block you and your
| then need to fight with AI bots to unblock your stuff
|
| 2 there might be users that do not use Twitter or FB
|
| 3 Twitter and FB might not respect user privacy so it is
| imporal to publish only on those
| Ecstatify wrote:
| I never mentioned Elon or the implications of buying
| twitter, you went off on that tangent.
|
| > You are implying that is pointless me to have a person
| website because I will not succeed to be more popular the
| FB or Twitter. The joke is on you I have a personal
| website and I run a blog and some static pages. EU is not
| attempting to defeat Twitter
|
| Again never said that.
|
| Backup communication methods don't work if no ones uses
| them do they?
|
| > 1 Twitter or FB because they might block you and your
| then need to fight with AI bots to unblock your stuff
|
| Normally when you have a controlling stake in a company
| you can have an input in how it operates.
|
| > 2 there might be users that do not use Twitter or FB
|
| There's also people who don't use the internet? what's
| your point?
|
| >3 Twitter and FB might not respect user privacy so it is
| imporal to publish only on those
|
| EU agencies already post on Facebook and Twitter, what's
| your point ?
| simion314 wrote:
| My point is that it makes sense EU agencies post on many
| medias and it makes no sense to limit to only one and
| force the citizens to make accounts on Twitter, this days
| you are forced to login to read it. What if I have no
| account or maybe an AI blocked me, I can't read some
| useful information.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > It's not about the cost of the service, it's that it's
| a pointless endeavour it's never going to succeed. Every
| social media company succeeds or fails based on the
| network effect.
|
| I think that's a valid concern if your main goal is to
| create a _social_ network, but less so if you 're trying
| to create a reliable and trustworthy organ for government
| communication.
|
| > Where did I mention Elon?
|
| This:
|
| > > Why don't they buy a considerable stake in these
| American social media companies instead of trying to
| reinvent the wheel that is deflating as soon as it
| launches.
|
| does not refer explicitly to Elon, but Twitter is a much
| more common organ of government communication than any
| other big American social-media company, so it seems
| disingenuous to pretend that this wasn't at least
| _suggestive_ of buying a considerable stake in Twitter
| (and so giving money, indirectly, to Elon).
| Ecstatify wrote:
| Disingenuous, huh? previous poster interpreted "buy a
| considerable stake in these American social media
| companies" as give Elon Musk money.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > previous poster interpreted "buy a considerable stake
| in these American social media companies" as give Elon
| Musk money.
|
| Which social-media companies did you mean? If Twitter is
| among them, then that _is_ , at least indirectly, giving
| Musk money; and, if not, then it's hard to see how buying
| that stake would help to ensure communications
| reliability, since Twitter seems to be much more common
| than any other American social-media company as an organ
| of government communication.
| Ecstatify wrote:
| I don't understand this link with Twitter, maybe because
| it's in the news now. I never mentioned any specific
| company. The previous poster wanted to go on some Elon
| rant/tangent. My point was to invest in a platform that
| people actually use. If I'm the EU I want to have a
| platform where I can spread my message to as many people
| as possible. The EU is already spending huge amounts of
| money advertising on these platforms. Why not purchase a
| seat at the table.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I don't understand this link with Twitter, maybe
| because it's in the news now. I never mentioned any
| specific company.
|
| Exactly, which is why I'm asking: when you said "buy a
| considerable stake in these American social media
| companies", which social-media companies did you mean?
| Ecstatify wrote:
| I meant the concept of buying a social media company to
| gain access to a network/captive audience. I was not
| talking about a specific company.
|
| If I was talking about a specific company I would have
| said "Why don't they buy a considerable stake in {insert
| social media company}"
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I am guessing that you missed that the legality of US
| companies in the EU is very much under question ?
|
| > the US takes the view that foreigners don't have privacy
| rights. I doubt that the US has a future as the cloud
| provider of the world, if non-US persons have no rights under
| their laws
|
| https://noyb.eu/en/new-us-executive-order-unlikely-
| satisfy-e...
|
| This has been a looong time in the coming, maybe since at
| least the Patriot Act (2001), and _definitely_ since the
| Snowden scandal...
|
| It's indeed the US companies dominance in the EU which
| explains all the denial around this, and of course the still
| good relations between the countries : compare with the ban
| in the USA of the Chinese company Huawei... (which is an
| issue in EU too !)... or what the reaction would be if it was
| Russia instead of the USA !
| berkes wrote:
| As far as can be counted, the user count of just mastodon
| users, has surpassed six million [1].
|
| > No one uses these platforms.
|
| Six million is not no-one. It's _relatively_ few, but
| absolutely a great number. I 'm certain you'll have a hard
| time finding social networks with these amounts of users,
| that don't belong to one of the tech monopolies. Or with such
| numbers where the EU has no account or official presence.
|
| [1] https://bitcoinhackers.org/@mastodonusercount/10929745506
| 607...
| scrollaway wrote:
| It's also not just users. Mastodon instances can have
| plenty of readers who never make an account.
|
| Websites like Twitter often push hard to create an account
| but the 1:10 rule apply... if there's 6 million users,
| there's probably around 60 million readers.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > the user count of just mastodon users, has surpassed six
| million
|
| That must make the users of Gab hate them even more...
| riffic wrote:
| > No one uses these platforms.
|
| _nO oNe UsEs MaDtOdOn_
|
| I'm personally really tired of this trope, so instead of
| offering reasonable replies I'm just going to return the same
| spirit of ridicule back to you (despite HN guidelines, lol)
| Ecstatify wrote:
| So you're arguing that lots of people use Mastodon?
|
| Even on Hacker News no one is talking about it
|
| Mastodon: 536 results
|
| Facebook: 276071 results
|
| Twitter: 371583 results
| yrgulation wrote:
| The EU and any political organisation need to stay away from our
| social networks.
| piva00 wrote:
| That's why they are introducing their own federated server to
| keep their communications under their own corner of the
| internet instead of _your_ social network.
| yrgulation wrote:
| I already tried at least one mastodon server where the eu was
| present even if it shouldn't have been. It's not their
| business to establish propaganda channels subsidised by tax
| payers. They should focus on solving democracy within its
| existing institutions first.
| [deleted]
| pelasaco wrote:
| who are paying for that? Why EU decides to manage such
| infrastructure?
| seydor wrote:
| it s in the budget of some agency supervising the data
| protection supervisors.
|
| This is not where a lot of money is wasted however. If you want
| to look for EU waste, look into the various agencies travel
| grants, endless committees and conferences, overhiring and
| bureaucratic reports that are many times longer than the actual
| output. I think in these times of fiscal tightening, people
| shopuld be more aware of the cost of EUrocracy
| pelasaco wrote:
| this is kind of whataboutism. I would say both are
| unnecessary.
| williamvds wrote:
| It's quite sensible really, why would you leave a method of
| disseminating official statements vulnerable to the whims of a
| private American corporation? Discussion still can and will be
| held on platforms not directly controlled by governments.
| [deleted]
| johnywalks wrote:
| > whims of a private American corporation
|
| Exactly. Private corporations that adhere to US law and have
| demonstrated that they don't operate in good faith.
|
| Each country should control official channels of communication.
| nimbius wrote:
| >Private corporations that adhere to US law
|
| the sentiment methinks is misplaced. the US is a 23 trillion
| dollar GDP. sooner or later, _all_ private corporations
| adhere to its law.
|
| a better observation is that technocratic trappings of
| neoliberalism are more akin to neo _feudalism_ than most
| western governments are willing to confess in 2022, lest they
| anger the spirit of Thatcher and Reagan or god forbid induce
| some sort of mass reform.
|
| Vint Cerf said it best at the southern california linux expo
| when he explained how the digital frontier is really no
| different for sovreignity than air, land, sea, and space are.
| You either delineate the domain and maintain stewardship of
| it, or youre at the mercy of others with the digital
| equivalent of bluewater navy and satellites. the EU masto
| instance is a shot across the bow for major US corporations
| in that a contested battleground has been abruptly created in
| the absence of leadership and command at the largest fleet
| carrier (twitter)
| ben_w wrote:
| I mostly agree, but:
|
| > the US is a 23 trillion dollar GDP. sooner or later, all
| private corporations adhere to its law.
|
| While the EU and China are not _quite_ as large as the USA
| on their own, they are close enough that many multinational
| corporations already face the challenge of being the
| servants of three masters.
| junon wrote:
| Not only that, but US digital law hasn't caught up to
| modernity. One can make the argument that European laws have,
| at least to a much greater extent.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Or, instead of this kind of teleological framing, that they
| are entitled to their own values, but are not entitled to
| enforce them on the rest of the world.
|
| P.S.: In a perhaps different sense, it has been decades
| since modernity ended.
| Sargos wrote:
| >Each country should control official channels of
| communication.
|
| I don't want to create 100 accounts to access each countries
| totally unique and special websites. It's a bad system and
| ultimately will lead to less discourse and not more.
| dools wrote:
| You don't have to create an account to read posts on
| mastodon
| williamvds wrote:
| Forgive me if I'm mistaken, I've never used mastodon, but I
| expect part of the "federated" bit means being able to
| "follow" users from other Mastodon instances, including EU
| Voice. So you'd need just one account on a Mastodon
| instances to follow every EU government/institution
| announcements on EU Voice. If not on Mastodon, RSS feeds
| still exist.
| parminya wrote:
| It's completely correct. You can follow say
| @EU_Commission@social.network.europa.eu from an account
| on say mastodon.nz.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I don't want to create 100 accounts to access each
| countries totally unique and special websites. It's a bad
| system and ultimately will lead to less discourse and not
| more.
|
| However, unless you are a resident of 100 countries, it's
| probably not particularly essential that you do so, is it?
| I mean, I can imagine my being interested in the official
| channels of communication for governments of countries in
| which I am not a resident, but I cannot imagine why they
| should care to make it particularly easy for me to access
| those communications. It seems that the most that I should
| be able to ask is easy read-only access without having to
| sign up for a special account.
| ben_w wrote:
| Jes, kaj estas tre malfacila kie homoj diras kun lingvoj ce
| mi ne komprenas.
|
| Do, ciuj homoj devas paroli Esperanton.
|
| ;)
| enkursigilo wrote:
| Mi ne genus, se ciuj scius Esperanton. :d
| amelius wrote:
| > whims of a private American corporation
|
| It's worse. Whims of one American individual.
| nannal wrote:
| Who has clear biases and voiced support for one of the two
| american political parties.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Considering the clear biases of the previous moderators,
| perhaps we should give him and the new regime time to prove
| they can do a better job?
| [deleted]
| tpartcv wrote:
| piva00 wrote:
| It's thoroughly exhausting to read this kind of comment. It's
| pedantic and soapboxing at the same time, the two worst types
| of comments I come across in HN.
|
| > I was under the impression that the above entities already
| have the largest megaphone of all through the uncritical
| mainstream press.
|
| Where do you get this impression that the mainstream
| press/media is _uncritical_ of the EU? The EU is a large body,
| obviously they would have a large megaphone, what 's your
| actual issue with the EU governing bodies creating their
| federated platform to share their statements? And how exactly
| is that showing their want to control the Internet discourse?
| Just by participating in it are they trying to control it, in
| your worldview?
|
| Again, abstain from this soapboxing (at least on HN), it's
| definitely low-quality comment.
| notright5 wrote:
| notright5 wrote:
| piva00 wrote:
| Those are big and bold statements, I think you'd need to
| properly lay out these claims instead of writing hot takes.
| It'd do much more for a healthy and engaging conversation
| than empty platitudes based on your ideology :)
| chickenchicken wrote:
| Sure Elon
| hardware2win wrote:
| I dont think this "free market" thing exists and is used in
| practice, yet alone is viable.
| djbebs wrote:
| Do you see any major mainstream media actively publishing
| things that go counter to key EU policy?
|
| Ones who aren't being actively censored by the EU that is.
|
| Show me a mainstream media based in the EU actively
| supporting Russia in the Ukraine conflict then.
| mqus wrote:
| Additional to my other complaint: see here for a mainstream
| medium in germany (imho it should not be as popular as it
| is) reporting on "Ukraine reportedly attacking Kachovka
| dam": https://www.bild.de/news/2022/news/russland-krieg-
| gegen-ukra... . But since you did not define EU policy or
| "supporting Russia" I'm not sure if that covers your wants.
| Btw It took 2 minutes to find that article, there are
| surely more.
| chickenchicken wrote:
| What kind of argument is that? There aren't any media
| advocating killing yourself with a Butter knife either.
|
| Not every view point is equally valid.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Do you see any major mainstream media actively publishing
| things that go counter to key EU policy?
|
| Yes, approximately all the time. For a time in England, you
| couldn't open a newspaper without finding an article
| critical of - sometimes imaginary - EU policies.
|
| You will be hard pressed to find an article supportive of
| Russia outside RT but you can find plenty questioning the
| timing and amount of weapons given, how we track where the
| money we give go and especially the idea of allowing
| Ukraine into the EU.
| mqus wrote:
| "not publishing anything that go counter to key EU
| policies" is now the same as "Mainstream media do not
| support russia"?
|
| I think that media very often call out bullshit takes of
| the government, EU or national. But being against russia
| just isn't a bullshit take. That said, Media do cover also
| when Ukraine does things wrong, but those things are just
| not as common. You can't report 50/50% when the situation
| is 99/1%.
| bojan wrote:
| It's not a "Ukraine conflict", it is a Russian invasion on
| a neighbouring sovereign country called Ukraine. It's as
| much a "Ukraine" conflict as certain events of 1939 were
| "Poland conflict".
|
| How do you even support the attacker in this war _and_
| remain true to the facts is beyond me. So it 's really
| difficult to understand what do you even mean.
| piva00 wrote:
| > Show me a mainstream media based in the EU actively
| supporting Russia in the Ukraine conflict then.
|
| It's "Russian invasion of Ukraine", not "Ukraine conflict",
| first.
|
| What point do you want to make with this though? I don't
| need to find a contrarian to every point to prove anything,
| that's also just being a contrarian and usually mainstream
| media avoids being a contrarian. If you live in Fox News-
| world that might seem alien but MSM is not in the job of
| being a contrarian.
|
| Burdening me to prove my point by forcing me into an
| impossible situation won't change much, I could also tell
| you that support for Ukraine is so unanimous that no MSM in
| the EU holds the contrarian position you want them to.
| That's not wrong or the EU silencing it, it's simply a
| position that almost no business in the EU would dare to
| hold because they'd suffer a massive hit from public
| opinion, most EU citizens do not support Russia (as it
| should be), why should a MSM vehicle take the contrarian
| point of view?
|
| Show me proof for your statements, please, I can't prove
| you a negative, I believe you should be quite well aware of
| that.
| ulgrt wrote:
| It is easy to ask general, somewhat self-righteous questions
| here and elsewhere without providing any answers. That the
| comment you respond to has been censored does not make it any
| less difficult.
|
| In general, opinions about the mainstream press come from
| reading it for decades. No one can provide a "proof" that can
| be captured in a comment box. It seems to me that the issue
| is calling the platform "EU Voice", which should probably be
| for all people.
| piva00 wrote:
| > It is easy to ask general, somewhat self-righteous
| questions here and elsewhere without providing any answers.
| That the comment you respond to has been censored does not
| make it any less difficult.
|
| It's also easy to escape through a throwaway account while
| using my history against me, instead of answering the
| aforementioned "self-righteous" questions :)
|
| Please, don't come with the tiresome "CENSORED!" call out,
| if people flagged/downvoted it then you should look at that
| as a signal.
|
| > It seems to me that the issue is calling the platform "EU
| Voice", which should probably be for all people.
|
| This is exactly the pedantry I call out in my comment, if
| that wasn't absolutely clear...
|
| You are interpreting the name "EU Voice" to have the
| meaning you want and then beating this strawman.
|
| > In general, opinions about the mainstream press come from
| reading it for decades. No one can provide a "proof" that
| can be captured in a comment box.
|
| So you are stating it's... Just a feeling?
| notright5 wrote:
| piva00 wrote:
| I'm surprised you are still posting, others hot takes of
| yours are:
|
| > The Economist, FT and Bloomberg are obsessed with both race
| and class. Not content with the meager profits of economic
| reporting on a budget, they have become peddlers of social
| ressentment for a long while.
|
| > Only media approved by the Democrat Party is free of hate
| speech and white nationalism
|
| > They are not capitalist.
|
| > They are sociologists / journalists / non-technical
| economists earning 50k (barely percentile 60), and telling us
| daily how action X is immoral (exactly what bishops and
| priests used to do).
|
| It might be very exhausting to live in your head, hope you
| find some peace one day.
| chickenchicken wrote:
| Are you a script?
| beardedman wrote:
| Great idea, terrible execution. Seems they want to maybe bring a
| product or marketing person on board.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > EU Voice is open for registrations only to EU institutions,
| body and agencies.
|
| Disappointing. Better then nothing, but why not provide a
| platform for everyone, or at least every EU citizen?
| bojan wrote:
| I'd like that as well. Possibly scaling (=funding) issues?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| It's a matter of will of course. The EU talks a lot about
| digital sovereignty and right now, with a lot of people
| looking for alternatives to twitter, they have an incredible
| chance to advance that.
| notsound wrote:
| If you limit it only to government officials/orgs, moderation
| isn't an issue. Plenty of good, trustworthy mastodon instances
| exist.
| mqus wrote:
| It's federation. You also wouldn't expect every citizen to get
| an @europarl.europa.eu e-mail-adress. The platform is
| decentralised by design, so just by joining, the EU is
| contributing to "providing a platform" imho.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I don't see why the EU shouldn't give every citizen an
| @europa.eu email address.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I've often hoped the US would do this as well. Postal
| addresses are dependent on having a physical address--home,
| apartment, etc. Would love if people could habe a digital
| address that were not dependent on paying rent but
| citizenship.
| lrem wrote:
| For the same reason not every US citizen is entitled to a
| .gov address?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| .gov is intended to signify offical US government
| websites. .eu domains can be registered by anyone.
| arlort wrote:
| .europa.eu is the closest equivalent to .gov
|
| It's the base url used by all EU institutions
| capableweb wrote:
| europa.eu is a domain, .eu is the TLD. There is no TLD
| equivalent of .gov for Europe.
|
| European agencies use bunch of different domains, not all
| of them are a subdomain under europa.eu, although many of
| them are under that one.
|
| You can see some examples of organizations/agencies that
| are not here: https://european-
| union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/ins...
| arlort wrote:
| > There is no TLD equivalent of .gov for Europe
|
| Which is why I said:
|
| > is the closest equivalent
|
| Also it's a distinction without a difference in the
| context of the discussion, a tld is just another kind of
| domain. In the same way .gov subdomains are reserved for
| US government and signify to the users that the content
| of the page has official value subdomains of .europa.eu
| are reserved for EU institutions and agencies
|
| The same way it'd not be smart for the US government to
| give out john.smith@gov email addresses it'd not be
| particularly clever for the EU to give out
| francois.martin@europa.eu
|
| And no, all official agencies and institutions use
| .europa.eu subdomains, the only exception in that page
| seem to be other bodies such as research groups which are
| not official branches of the EU
| googlryas wrote:
| Then make a citizen.eu site or something like that and
| hand out addresses!
| zajio1am wrote:
| Because there is no reason to do so? Providing e-mail
| address is service successfully provided by private sector,
| no need to use public money to destroy competition in
| private sector and centralise a service to one provider.
|
| Most of EU engagement in digital services is to encourage
| market sector, not replace it with a public monopoly (see
| e.g. eIDAS).
| orwin wrote:
| For information, this idea was actually talked about during
| a h2020 meeting, but discarded (probably because free
| market stuff)
| franga2000 wrote:
| I agree it would be neat to give emails to EU citizens and
| a "fediverse" account would be a cool addition to that, but
| that's a completely different situation to the launch
| discussed here. A government-only ActivityPub server is
| part of essential G2C communication, not just another nice-
| to-have service the EU provides.
| Xylakant wrote:
| How would you resolve the local name part? Do I get to
| claim xylakant@mail.europa.eu or is there a dispute
| process? hans.mueller@mail.europa.eu is going to be
| contentious.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Cost of moderation would be significantly higher.
| espadrine wrote:
| Moderation choices themselves would also have geopolitical
| readings from trading partners. It would be quite touchy.
| Joeboy wrote:
| I've been wondering about the handling of PR / legal /
| moderation issues on The Fediverse. Surely if it becomes
| popular, those burdens will fall on the shoulders of well-
| intentioned volunteers who just wanted to run a server, who
| will generally be ill-equipped to deal with them? I guess it
| could be OK if you're running a small invite-only server for
| people you know, but not sure how it's going to work for
| larger instances. Which, looking at the history of email, are
| probably where most people will want to be.
| 7steps2much wrote:
| Assuming the fediverse becomes popular enough there will no
| doubt be large websites that finance themselves with
| ads/subscriptions.
|
| After all git is a decentralized system as well and big
| silos like GitHub exist.
| ploum wrote:
| It is better to have an official instance just like you have
| official websites. It means that accounts on this instance are
| official, that you can take their words as official statement.
|
| Having one big instance for every EU citizen is just political
| centralisation and is not a lot better than the economical one
| done by Twitter.
|
| We have to unlearn that "everything centralized is good and the
| only way to go"
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > It is better to have an official instance just like you
| have official websites. It means that accounts on this
| instance are official, that you can take their words as
| official statement.
|
| The EU could verify official accounts on their instance.
|
| > Having one big instance for every EU citizen is just
| political centralisation and is not a lot better than the
| economical one done by Twitter.
|
| It would be an alternative. People would of course remain
| free to choose other instances.
| julienreszka wrote:
| I have no Idea hot to use this thing, the ux is really not that
| great imho
| simongray wrote:
| You are not supposed to use this website so UX really doesn't
| apply.
|
| This is the Mastodon instance of official EU accounts, not a
| website where you can sign up. You can follow any of these
| official EU accounts from other Mastodon instances since
| Mastodon is federated. Your gateway to Mastodon is the website
| of the instance where you sign up or one of the many Mastodon
| client apps.
|
| What would likely happen is that you see something "retweeted"
| (boosted) on your timeline by some other account you're
| following and this perhaps makes you aware of one of these
| official EU accounts, the exact same way it works on Twitter.
| You don't need to care about the fact that it is posted on
| another instance, however in this particular case you can
| consider it a form of verification.
| riffic wrote:
| anyone can run their own instance and your dns verifies who you
| are.
|
| hint hint, all media outlets.
|
| you don't even need to use Mastodon. just put the underlying
| protocols (ActivityPub) in your CMS and assign internal users
| through your LDAP.
| LightG wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| Think this and a few other people are helping me make the
| decision to set up on Mastodon.
|
| The trend seems to be going that way.
| grammers wrote:
| It's a first step, but to me it feels like they just cross-post
| from twitter.
| yurishimo wrote:
| That's how everything starts. Same thing w/ Twitter and the
| migration to Instagram for photo-centric content. It takes time
| to move people over and the cost to cross-post is basically
| free.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Yeah, I too wish that CSPAN were as popular and subscribed to as
| CNN, but for some reason, people don't find uncommented live
| streams of House committee and city council meetings interesting.
| c80e74f077 wrote:
| The announcement : https://edps.europa.eu/press-
| publications/press-news/press-r...
|
| > The launch of the pilot phase of EU Voice and EU Video will
| help the EDPS to test the platforms in practice by collecting
| feedback from participating EUIs. The EDPS hopes that this first
| step will mark a continuity in the use of privacy-compliant
| social media platforms.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| It always baffled me that so many governments relied on a private
| solution that only has 5% of the world population as users
| (Twitter) as the preferred mode of communication with their
| citizens.
|
| It's good to see a solution made by the government instead.
|
| The next step is to make it mandatory for officials to use this
| platform (and Twitter or Facebook in addition if they want to, I
| don't care) for all their official communication.
| seydor wrote:
| Do they rely on twitter? They use it, but almost every public
| organization has a website (wordpress). Twitter is a megaphone
| that they should use (like any other mass medium) to reach
| citizens
| est wrote:
| > It always baffled me that so many governments relied on a
| private solution
|
| You can't exactly use tax payer money to develop an in-house
| solution
| scotty79 wrote:
| I don't use Twitter but seen numerous tweets cited in all the
| other media I consume.
|
| Twitter is sort of backbone, fairly useless on it's own, but
| important for what it enables in wider context.
|
| It's not much weirder that people use private Twitter than that
| people use private google.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I'm not talking about people, I'm talking about government
| officials.
|
| The fact that the British PM will post information, in his
| official capacity, on Twitter that will not be posted on
| gov.uk is ridiculous and should be illegal.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| It doesn't matter how many people are on twitter, because
| all the journalists are already there. They pick the
| official's tweets and turn it to news.
| blitzar wrote:
| tbh I assume, naively, that organisations that post
| official things would post them via wire service and
| twitter at the same time.
|
| You are right, it should be illegal, at the extremes it
| totally breaks down - "I announced it publicly" could
| legitimately be "I stood at the back door of Downing street
| and whispered it out loud".
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'm sure where he searches the web in offcial capacity he
| uses Google.
| robswc wrote:
| >that will not be posted on gov.uk
|
| I agree it _should_ be posted on official websites.
|
| Unfortunately we're racing to the bottom in how information
| is communicated and an app that delivers 10 second bits of
| nonsense is winning.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Why replace press releases and web pages with a social
| microblog? "Official communication" sounds like something
| better handled in long-form reports than short notes jotted out
| into a social maelstrom of hot takes. Perhaps the next step
| might instead be to get government off social media altogether.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Yes I totally agree with that, but this is already an
| improvement over a non-official communication channel.
| piva00 wrote:
| One is a pull-based system (official press releases, web
| pages), the other is a push-based announcement system. They
| can communicate the same messages but delivery is quite
| different.
| Reventlov wrote:
| Good to see more and more "serious" organizations being on
| Mastodon.
| notright5 wrote:
| chickenchicken wrote:
| Incorrect. The EU is very serious. It's as much serious as it
| possibly gets.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| Starting salary as a contractor (temp up to 6 years) is
| just above 2000EUR
|
| https://epso.europa.eu/en/help/faq/2228
|
| For a permanent official it starts at around 5000EUR/m
|
| https://euemployment.eu/ad-5-salary/
|
| Not too outrageous for the expected skills (min 3 languages
| fluently, bachelor of specific profiles, long admissions
| procedure, etc) and the responsibility. Would be horrible
| if the jobs for the people writing Europe's laws and
| managing millions in funding were _not_ attractive.
| notright5 wrote:
| hardware2win wrote:
| Then why bother?
| type0 wrote:
| ekianjo wrote:
| So its the propaganda channel of the EU on activitypub?
| [deleted]
| Gareth321 wrote:
| Every time these alternative/privacy focused/decentralised social
| media platforms appear they absolutely BUTCHER the UX. I thought
| "oh cool, let's sign up!"
|
| 1. I click "sign up." So far so good.
|
| 2. I am redirected to something called "Mastodon." No idea what
| this is. Nothing about it on the previous page. Is this a bug? Do
| I trust it? No options to sign up here. Only "get the app" and
| "find a server." I'm on my PC and don't need an app so I guess I
| find a server?
|
| 3. Now I'm presented with a list of servers. What on EARTH am I
| meant to do with this? Does each person get their own server? Do
| my friends all have to sign up on the same server? None of this
| makes any sense. I just want to post cute pictures of my cats!
| I'm now three layers deep into some kind of bizarre sign up
| process. I'm out. This is absurd.
|
| For context, I run a team of developers building cloud services.
| There is almost ZERO chance that an ordinary person will follow
| these steps or use this service.
|
| This needs _one_ button to sign up, asking for exactly _one_
| piece of data: their email address. After that, they should be
| automatically redirected to the portal to begin using the service
| _immediately._ This clusterfuck was obviously designed by
| developers without a care in the world for regular users.
| [deleted]
| c80e74f077 wrote:
| On the linked page:
|
| > Where can I register?
|
| > EU Voice is open for registrations only to EU institutions,
| body and agencies. However, you can still interact with EU
| Voice from many other compatible platforms. The Mastodon
| developers maintain a list of Mastodon platforms open for
| registration.
| Kye wrote:
| Why would you expect to be able to sign up to "the official
| ActivityPub microblogging platform of the EU institutions,
| bodies and agencies (EUIs)"? The link could offer some
| explanation, but the idea is to redirect you to the main
| project's page where you can pick an open instance. This one
| obviously wouldn't be open.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Why would you expect to be able to sign up to "the official
| ActivityPub microblogging platform of the EU institutions,
| bodies and agencies (EUIs)"?
|
| Maybe because of that CTA "register" button in the top right
| corner of the page (left to the "sign in" button) ?
| gsora wrote:
| Mastodon is a community effort, and as such members of the
| community will work on stuff like UX. I'm not saying that
| you're wrong, but rather contribute back instead of slamming a
| (very advanced and usable) project down just because your
| registration experience was bad.
|
| This is open source, not a company with billions to spend on
| UX: they do what they can.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| I think we need to better distinguish between comments about
| the current state of things (like GP) and comments about the
| future (like yours). GP is saying that _currently_ the UX
| sucks, and this matters for people who want to use a social
| platform _right now_ (think: non-programmers, technically
| challenged people, the mainstream, etc). Only enthusiasts are
| going to want to suffer through all the research and hurdles
| necessary to use to Mastodon because they think it 'll be
| better in the future
| omginternets wrote:
| The point is that these open source initiatives are exactly
| competing on UX with billion-dollar companies, and that they
| will continue to lose.
| Fiahil wrote:
| > This is open source, not a company with billions to spend
| on UX: they do what they can.
|
| This is not an excuse, all it takes to have a decent -or even
| a good UX- is one person asking the right questions and
| following up by interviewing a few folks during the sign up
| process.
|
| It could be done in less than 2 hours or during a coffee
| break.
|
| Getting the right experience and setting aside the time to do
| it is just business as usual for any product owner, even if
| they work during they free time.
| gsora wrote:
| Well if you want to do that, I'm sure they'll appreciate
| your inputs. I would if I could.
|
| I'm sure this new influx of users will bring many UX
| designers into the space, and the improvements will be
| tangible.
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