@darius It looks great that EU has their own Mastodon server running: https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission/108220439624357877

@darius I think of it as similar to the government putting up a poster in a privately owned public meeting place (with permission), which doesn't strike me as that strange.

@darius it is like they are going about this in a way to hit every single item on "checklist of flags we train people to look for in spotting fakes for phishing attempts" and i'm not even remotely in the field, yet i keep needing to stare into the middle distance about it

@darius but what if they can read my public posts? What then?!

@darius Though ...

Like the government is normally really slow at being allowed to do anything, so it's quite possible it'll take them a few months to actually get approval to host an instance.

So maybe letting neutral or better entities on somewhere as test case, and then saying after trial period is over and if this works out for your group you should host your own thing elsewhere?

(Like I thought who ever was running the IRStaxsecurity feed on twitter was doing a good job with their PSAs. https://nitter.nl/IRStaxsecurity/ )

@darius hard agree!

@darius i didn't bookmark it, but i surfed the web sites of many municipalities in western PA and i'm pretty at least one of them was hosted on Tripod.

@darius I think its more like a rebel inside trying to drag the #bureaucracy into the real world but having to make the "case" to justify the government actually doing it

@darius how would a government go about setting up its own server? I'm filing a bunch of FOSS-related legislation here in NH and am wondering if maybe I should add something about social media services...

@darius this is slander against Bob, who is clearly a trustworthy guy

@darius this is also how I feel about celebrities joining general-purpose instances. Like an actor coming to town for a star-studded film festival and staying on someone's couch.

@darius Washingtondc.craigslist.org/found/FBI for tips

@darius
Its just a stopgap until they can give Lockheed a $77m contract to stand up a mastodon instance

@darius
true, but the alternative is elorgmushmelonspersonalpage.com/users/~InternalRevenueService

@darius Agreed, but I think it's understandable in the short run: getting permission to create an official account on a 3rd-party site is probably pretty straightforward; getting permission to stand up a server (or server-like container), obtain a subdomain, update DNS, get the application STIG'd and approved, and deploy the application to the Internet… I bet that's at least 6-12 months, easy.

Mastodon makes it fairly easy to migrate accounts in the future, so it seems reasonable.

@darius angelofdoom.geocities.com/gov/BureauLandMgmt

@darius its a strange idea.

it may be the best way for them to get to know what people are actually like,

but given their track record i wouldnt expect them to do anything other than use it as a datamine..

@darius @gizmomathboy To me it has the vibes of “very early days of something important, before federal IT can get their act together”