undefined | Better HN

0 pointsnumbsafari4y ago0 comments

At least in the case of the US, you need to distinguish between _the government_ and _politicians_. I would agree with your position that, when a politician is acting in their official capacity or when the government as an entity itself is seeking to communicate, that communication should be done in an open manner using the infrastructure of the state.

However, when a politician, or a political group, seeks to communicate, it should _not_ be done on that same infrastructure. There are all sorts of negative implications of real First Amendment protections for speech "in the commons". If, for example, the government owned twitter, it would have to support and allow Neo Nazis, the KKK, cult leaders, and all sorts of other corrosive participants to have access. Private entities have greater leeway.

So, if you are saying the government and officials in their official capacity must communicate via some protocol (RSS, ActivityPub, printed letterhead, etc.) that can be shared and accessed equally by other platforms or tools, I'm on board.

But if you are arguing that Twitter should somehow be nationalized, I think that way lies dragons.

0 comments

4 comments · 2 top-level

7speter4y ago· 2 in thread

Or just make a twitter where government officials have create update and delete privileges and make it read only for the public.

TremendousJudge4y ago

That sounds like a regular webpage.

7speter4y ago

A single place where all government officials, maybe elected officials, can make announcements that you can filter (or follow officials youd prefer to follow, would that make it web app enough?) by branch or state? Haven’t seen such a webpage yet.

riffic4y ago

> So, if you are saying the government and officials in their official capacity must communicate via some protocol (RSS, ActivityPub, printed letterhead, etc.) that can be shared and accessed equally by other platforms or tools, I'm on board.

This option, completely. Thank you for the further substantiation of this idea.

An example of this would be a system set up specifically for members of the House of Representatives, each member having access to an account (member@HOUSE.GOV) and access is provisioned through normal directory services like LDAP. We do corporate/institutional email like this today, so the public is more than familiar with this principle.

Then, as a further extrapolation of this idea, we will have have all of the fire departments and police departments and departments of motor vehicles and what have you all running their own individual systems (or bidding for managed services that provide this), allowing for common subscription through standardized protocols - why are all of these groups sharing one giant Twitter.com namespace? Who knows but it's a tired system.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse