This is how it's done! Chicago Transit Authority abandons X.
"After careful consideration, CTA has decided to suspend the use of its general information (@ cta) and service alerts (@ ctaAlerts) accounts on Twitter/X.com, as this social media platform no longer provides the value it once did for us to effectively reach and communicate with our riders."
Simply walk away. Don't look back. No need for elaborate explanations. Leave.
https://abc7chicago.com/post/chicago-transit-authority-deactivates-social-media-accounts-formerly-known-twitter-agency-confirms/15748349/
The city government spinning up its own instance makes sense. You could then have accounts for the various departments, transit, road and highway, parks and rec, the library, the mayor’s office…
Reasonable, but I think there would be more reliability and adoption if provided by the federal government. For example, I don’t really trust states like Alabama to run services like this properly.
Why not all of the above? Each state can run their own and smaller cities and towns can use it. If larger cities want to host their own, then they can do that instead of relying on state instance.
Running an instance is pretty trivial from a sysadmin standpoint, so I do lean towards smaller entities just running their own, to prevent monolithic censorship.
They can just disable comments so they don’t have to moderate anything. A county could run just a read-only instance that would have a community for every department that needed to do public communication. The road department could post about a bridge closure, the conservation district could promote a volunteer event, and so forth.
Every city in the western world already has at least one rack of servers running 24/7. The have their own domain names, they have a web presence, etc – running a mastodon instance on existing infrastructure hardly qualifies as wasteful.
Each city running its own? No, that’s way too much duplication of effort. Maybe have one run by the federal government, like the .gov domain.
If it’s unified under the federal government, then an asshole president can mess with it.
If it’s distributed, with states and major cities having their own instances, then it’s more asshole-resistant.
Why would we ever elect an asshole president though?
The city government spinning up its own instance makes sense. You could then have accounts for the various departments, transit, road and highway, parks and rec, the library, the mayor’s office…
“Asshole resistant” sounds like marketing terms used to advertise a dildo to a community that enjoys consentual non-consent.
Like they want a dildo that doesn’t go into assholes easily.
How about a state/province level instance for municipal affairs?
Reasonable, but I think there would be more reliability and adoption if provided by the federal government. For example, I don’t really trust states like Alabama to run services like this properly.
I trust my city government a hell of a lot more than I trust the incoming federal administration.
I would trust a guy named Shank who sells fake IDs on the bus more than I trust the incoming federal administration.
At least you know Shank is on your side. No ulterior motive working for the billionaire class. He’s just as fucked by the system as you are.
Why not all of the above? Each state can run their own and smaller cities and towns can use it. If larger cities want to host their own, then they can do that instead of relying on state instance.
Running an instance is pretty trivial from a sysadmin standpoint, so I do lean towards smaller entities just running their own, to prevent monolithic censorship.
They can just disable comments so they don’t have to moderate anything. A county could run just a read-only instance that would have a community for every department that needed to do public communication. The road department could post about a bridge closure, the conservation district could promote a volunteer event, and so forth.
Every city in the western world already has at least one rack of servers running 24/7. The have their own domain names, they have a web presence, etc – running a mastodon instance on existing infrastructure hardly qualifies as wasteful.
“Asshole resistant”
I love that concept.