ciferecaNinjo

Do you think it's politicians' job to provide technology education?

Of course. Public education comes from the public sector. We should be electing politicians with administrations who are smarter than the general public. Any tech education that comes of Twitter abandonment is welcome.

But there is a need for politicians to reach their constituents, and if they can be effectively reached by an imperfect method,

Leaders should lead, not follow. Politicians can reach and be reached on a Mastodon server, where all their constituents have access.

Asking ~8 billion (or however many) people to make a personal change first is a non-starter. Demanding many orders of magnitude fewer people (politicians) make the first move to break the dystopian cycle is far more sensible.

then I can accept them using it while also promoting better methods.

Posting on Twitter is an assault on promoting better methods. Mirroring everything on Twitter facilitates the Tyranny of Convenience (great essay by Tim Wu) by making Twitter the superset. It’s important and socially responsible to withhold info from Twitter so that it cannot be the superset.

RMS gives good advice for orgs who think they need a Facebook presence:

https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html

Politicians don’t need a Twitter presence, but to the extent that they are not convinced, the bare minimum action they can take is implement some of the advice on that RMS page.

Any random 3rd party joe shmoe can make a Twitter bot that mirrors a politician’s msgs to Twitter. In fact, force Twitter to do the work simply by not feeding Twitter. Motivation for Twitter’s self-preservation would appropriately ensure gov resources are not spent on Twitter. Make Twitter be the host of dodgy mirror bots without engagement, where you need Mastodon to actually engage with a politician.

There are moral problems with crossposting to Twitter.

• Twitter is financed by advertising. I do not finance public services to then finance the advertising revenue of private corporations. Politician’s IT staff, time, and resources used to feed Twitter are not free. Public money is used for the tooling and the operations on that platform of inequality. So people who are excluded from Twitter are financing content fed to Twitter involuntarily via taxation. And those who are priviledged to be on the Twitter platform are hit with ads as a precondition to reaching content they already paid taxes for -- due to an inappropriate intermingling of public and private sectors.

• Network effect: making Twitter a superset of content exacerbates the stranglehold Twitter has on the world. The private sector will do its thing, but the public sector has a duty to work in the public interest. A public office adding to Twitter’s network effect disservices the public interest.

• Twitter is a politically manipulated venue with a bias toward right-wing populism. People who vote for a green party or socialist party politician do not endorse feeding an extreme right-wing US agenda with worldwide consequences. They do not have an equal voice on that platform which is wired for right-wing propaganda.

Recall how Trump took power in 2016: Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. FB and Twitter are pawned by right-wing extremists.

Shopping – Right to safe, high-quality products that can be repaired, replaced, or returned if needed.

It’s an illusion.

Right to repair started in the US and has been implemented in various states, but still does not exist in Europe. They have been discussing a r2r bill in Europe for over 10 years now. And if you read what they have so far, it’s weak. You can’t even get a repair manual unless you are a licensed professional.

Cannot repair my washing machine because the Dutch manufacturer will not tell me the secret unlock code.

I had a Belgian product die under warranty. No protection. Manufacturer ignored my request for warranty service. Belgian regulators ignored my complaint that the manufacturer ignored me.

Travelling – Compensation for delays or cancellations.

Flixbus was a no-show. Complained to the regulator. No response.

Strange loopholes in EU law too. If the bus route is under 250km, there are no protections for delays or cancellations. You can be stranded in Amsterdam because the bus to Brussels ditched you, and because that trip is under 250km there are no useful passenger rights.

Banking – Secure payments and fair contracts.

Secure payments yes, but FATCA guarantees all contracts are unfair, which discriminate against people on the basis of their national origin.

If you want to do a cash transaction above ~€1k or so, prepare for hostile treatment. A friend asked to withdraw €5k (IIRC) of her own money and the bank called the police, who then brought her in for questioning.

ATMs are really thinning out amid Bill Gates war on cash, which is really taking hold in Europe. Instead of making banking enticing, they are treating cash with hostility to force banking on people.

Surfing – Protection of personal data and safeguards against scams.

Most gov services block Tor. The data protection authorities take no action on most GDPR complaints. Public libraries refuse wifi access to people without mobile phones (the people who need it most).

I have a right to use twitter to the same extent as you have a right to use lemmy.

Not in the slightest. Twitter is like a private road controlled by a single gatekeeping corporation whose private property rights are the only rights to speak of -- and it’s run by a right-wing populist who controls who can participate. Lemmy is like a network of public roads without centralized ownership, where the concept of rights is not even needed because there is no central corporate control.

The right to choose to use twitter is markedly different from making it a universal right to be able to access twitter.

Why are you talking about a universal right to access Twitter? AFAIK, no one here endorses that.

Either you lick Musk’s boots or you bounce. Those are your choices. Politicians who lick Musk’s boots and drive exclusion cannot effectively represent the people.

Public protest existed for centuries prior to Twitter

Those are different times. We are in Twitter times. Shouting on a street corner brings a smaller audience than posting on Twitter. Higher effort and less exposure; for not licking Musk’s boots. And because of network effect, non-Twitter methods have lost ground to an unequitable elitist platform that exludes people without mobile phone numbers as well as those wise enough not to share their number with Twitter, and those who object to feeding a right-wind ad surveillance platform. The open letter audience someone would have in a free world is dimished because the audience has their eyes glued to Twitter, who poached them by exploiting network effect.

I tested by accessing ACLU’s timeline anonymously without an account. Is it different for different accounts?

(edit) just tested trying to access the acct of someone arbitrary.. a broken login popup attempted to render. So I guess different accts are different.

People don’t have a right to use Twitter -- b/c it’s a private company that excludes people (e.g. people without mobile phones). That’s the first problem.

I heard a rumor that (like Facebook) Twitter was closing read access so only members could /read/ posts. Did that ever happen? Maybe not, because I was just able to reach a twitter timeline without having Twitter creds as a test. If that exclusivity plays out, then politicians will be writing messages that a segment of people are excluded from viewing. It would not be enough that they can be reached by other means. Politicians would also have to copy all of their messages to an accessible space somewhere.

It’s also insufficient that I can reach them outside twitter only by non-microblogging means. E.g. by letter. A letter is a private signal not seen by others. Microblogging is an open letter mechanism. It’s important to deliver your msg to a polician in a way that the msg has an audience. Take away the audience and you take away the power of the signal.

“Support” is vague. Your link is unreachable to Tor users so I can’t see what it’s about.

I boycott Twitter wholly. Will not set foot there. In fact, it’s mutual. Twitter kicked me off their platform when I refused to share a mobile phone number. Thus I inherently support dropping TWTR by not consuming it.

It’s embarassing and very disturbing that the public sector (especially in Europe) uses shitty corporate exclusive walled gardens like Twitter and Facebook. When a politician uses Twitter or Facebook exclusively, they should be sued for free speech infringement. The #1 purpose of free speech is to express yourself to policy makers. When they use an exclusive gatekeeper to block some people from reaching them, it’s an assault on free speech.

Whether they do Mastodon or not does not matter so much. Would be useful if they did, but the real focus should be on just getting them off exclusive tech. They can work out for themselves that Mastodon is useful and inclusive.