• @[email protected]English
    5•2 years ago

    Wow, I never thought about this, but this is probably pretty good to have right? Might be a good way to find info about something if their sites are really confusing etc possibly

    • Aurelius_test_accountEnglish
      2•2 years ago

      That’s a good point. But I think the fediverse needs less friction for this to benefit more of the general public.

      Like any new technology, I think it will take a while for the experience to get smoothed out

  • NotAPenguin
    22•2 years ago

    Working link: https://social.overheid.nl/@beheerder/110684642686045200

    "This instance has been technically up and running since Friday, July 7, but not yet officially in use. Please be patient

    The instance will contain the accounts of government agencies and will not currently accommodate individual officials."

    translated by google translate.

    • curiosityLynx
      3•2 years ago

      thank you for the working link, was starting to wonder whether something was broken on my side

  • @[email protected]English
    5•2 years ago

    Probably a poor decision to be creating accounts on government operated instances. Since they own the server, they’re in a position to:

    1. Siphon credentials and attempt reuse to gain access to distinct services
    2. Ban individual accounts
    3. Censor based on post content

    I’m all for government support and adoption of open-source software so long as they’re not in the position to disrupt how it’s used by the public at large.

    Edit (my perspective is relevant, but doesn’t apply in this case): My nerd impulses outran my willingness to read the link’s content. Seems it’s not for public registration.

    Edit 2: Like my cornbread eating American ass can read Dutch anyway 🤣

    • @[email protected]English
      29•2 years ago

      From the post of the account linked here (in Dutch): it is going to be a place for official government communication, not for individual government employees (and I presume, by extension, public registration in general)

    • fknEnglish
      11•2 years ago

      This is literally all instances… Nothing you do here should be considered private or be linked to your real information.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•2 years ago

        Agreed, but we have to trust the instances we keep accounts on. Trust is subjective, but I certainly wouldn’t trust a government ran instance for anything other than an outlet for information originating from the owning government.

        If I run a private instance or know the maintainer of another, then I can have greater confidence in the security/privacy implementations.

        • fknEnglish
          5•2 years ago

          I would trust most government instances more than most of the private instances. Would I trust them not to harvest all of that info? Absolutely not. Would I trust them to not masquerade as me? Way more. Governments have way more to lose by being caught.

          • @[email protected]English
            1•2 years ago

            I’ve spent quite a bit of time as a penetration tester and one of the first things we do once we recover credentials is check for validity against online accounts known to be good for a given user. We do that because it simulates attackers and government operators alike. It’s a guarantee that free credentials will be abused in one manner or another when they’re available to government entities.

            The obvious control for this is to maintain a unique password for each account but that’s not always feasible for users due to myriad conditions.

            • fknEnglish
              3•2 years ago

              I didn’t say they wouldn’t be abused. I said they wouldn’t be impersonated.

    • The_WorstEnglish
      81•2 years ago

      This is going to be a private instance. No normal citizens can create an account.

      It’s a response to Twitter shielding access to unregistered users. A lot of public services used Twitter to spread information.

      • @[email protected]English
        25•2 years ago

        And this is how all Governmental instances have to be, private. Mastodon is a great way to communicate for Government as they control it. They don’t rely on a company and can manage the servers.

    • 👁️👄👁️English
      6•2 years ago

      This is likely exclusively for the government departments or employees, not personal use

  • @[email protected]English
    16•2 years ago

    Damn a government that actually do something in terms of digitilization.

    Cries in German …

  • 001100 010010English
    88•2 years ago

    Imagine a world where every government has its own instance.

    “Breaking News: North Korea has defederated from the United States, as well as hundreds of other countries.”

    • Niello
      31•2 years ago

      i’ll take country defederation dramas over the shit we have now any day.

    • @[email protected]English
      12•2 years ago

      Nah they’re too petty for that. They’d make a huge show about how they’re going to block the US and everyone else. Then they’ll block.
      Then they’ll quietly unblock everyone.

      Three months later they’ll do all over again.

  • @[email protected]English
    4•2 years ago

    I tried to start a Mastodon account, but I got the error message “Validation failed: time zone not included in list”

  • @[email protected]English
    48•2 years ago

    This is the way. Government, Businesses, Celebrities and News organizations should be hosting their own social media presence. They shouldn’t be beholden to corporate interests to regulate their communications. This also breaks the cycle of exclusive content that causes lock-in. Wins for everyone.

  • @[email protected]English
    97•2 years ago

    That’s actually hilarious because the coalition of ruling parties of the Netherlands was so unstable that it fell apart today.