In response to Joe Biden and the White House enabling ActivityPub federation via Threads, a number of people asked: “Why didn’t the White House just self-host their own Mastodon server?”
Here’s some very basic musings on what it would take for that to happen. and what some of the hurdles are. Don’t consider it a definitive answer, but a jumping-off point.
The EU already has one for anyone interested https://social.network.europa.eu
Other governments:
- CH 🇨🇭: https://social.admin.ch
- DE 🇩🇪: https://social.bund.de
- FR 🇫🇷: https://social.numerique.gouv.fr
- NL 🇳🇱: https://social.overheid.nl
Hope a gov.uk one comes through someday
Would be a great instance to block
Could they? Yes. Of course they could.
Would they? IDK.
Should they, though? I don’t see how it would hurt anything.
Personally I think the biggest hurdle will be moderation and defederation as it pertains to the first amendment. I believe there was already a supreme Court case where blocking a user on Twitter (from an official govt account) was deemed unconstitutional. This precedent might mean a govt instance is not allowed to defederate with any other server unless they defederate with all(?) This is pure speculation on my part, but I can guarantee it would go to the courts.
I think it would make sense to allow blocking users and entire instances that are very clearly not American based and thus don’t have the same rights here, but obviously should be open to all Americans since we’d be paying for it, presumably.
How about a nice game of Chess?
I was wondering the same thing. It seems more proper to run a separate government Mastodon server. Otherwise, they’re showing preferential treatment to one company.
Although… they probably can’t handle self hosting? But really? The all mighty US can’t self host a server?
Other governments have done it, even the BBC have as well
They’d just pay a contractor to stand up a server on azure or AWS. Most of the labor would be moderation which is probably why they won’t do it.
They couldn’t remove anything without Republicans crying censorship. And because it’s government run, first amendment protections apply. Which means they couldn’t remove a lot of what moderators already do.
remove anything
Uh, a US Government mastodon server wouldn’t have any way to sign up and comment. I assume it would be all one way announcements.
Who cares about randos who want to talk to the president? People were posting dead bodies on Biden’s announcements on Threads.
5 years ago the courts ruled that Trump could not block Twitter users on first amendment grounds. This same ruling could be used as a foundation to force a future government Fediverse server to federate with any other server and host all their unmoderated comments.
With Twitter, a user could still break the TOS and get banned. With a Fediverse server… Not so much. It’s as free as sending an email to the US government filled with nothing but 2mb of racial profanities.
Yeah, I don’t have a complete answer here. I think that Terms of Service requiring standards of behavior are quite reasonable - people in Congress, for example, are required to conduct themselves to a certain standard or be ejected. Same goes for courtrooms.
There may be a “minimum threshold” for content or communities that are blocked, on the basis of materials provided (hate speech, harassment campaigns, doxxing, CSAM), but I’ll readily admit that this is conjecture.
Would be entertaining to watch it unfold. I’m sure team 45 would try to horn in if it happened. Might bring a massive influx of users. Mixed feelings. But a good writeup.
Truth Social is already literally a Mastodon instance. They just don’t federate with anything else.
Trump could open up federation, but that would ruin their safe space, I mean echo chamber.
They would also be instantly defederated by like 90% of the fediverse
And 9% of the rest would just be griefing them
Gab is in kind of the same place, with the same conclusion.
“Oh no, keeping a walled garden actually increases the value of my echo chamber! Better not open anything up to dissenting views!”
