<story><title>Official Mastodon server of the Dutch government</title><url>https://social.overheid.nl/@avhuffelen/110700825255524685</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andsoitis</author><text>Why not just use a website? What advantage do citizens get by going to a social media site to keep a pulse on govt comms?</text></item><item><author>izzydata</author><text>Honestly I think this makes a lot more sense than Twitter. It always felt wrong to me that Twitter was used for anything resembling official communication. Whether it be a local news network, fire station, local government or the president of the United States. All on the same platform that is filled to the brim with pornography and obscenities. Of course you can curate your feed and only follow what you want, but in my mind Twitter is a single website. I&amp;#x27;m used to dedicated forums so when Twitter rolled around I figured it would just be a little bit bigger, but still mostly informal, unofficial people goofing off online. Once everyone and everything started using it I left. I don&amp;#x27;t want to mix online identities with real life identities.&lt;p&gt;So, despite Mastodon being a federated system it makes a lot more sense to use a dedicated instance for official purposes like this to me. I imagine they don&amp;#x27;t federate with anything anyway and don&amp;#x27;t even allow account creation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vanilla_nut</author><text>No strong reason, but Mastodon allows various goverment officials and agencies to create accounts on the same server and probably has more functionality baked in than most self-hosted alternatives. It&amp;#x27;s got a better interface than a CMS and even allows those government officials to follow and interact with other accounts in an official capacity.&lt;p&gt;Personally it feels ready-made for government presence on the web.</text></comment>
<story><title>Official Mastodon server of the Dutch government</title><url>https://social.overheid.nl/@avhuffelen/110700825255524685</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andsoitis</author><text>Why not just use a website? What advantage do citizens get by going to a social media site to keep a pulse on govt comms?</text></item><item><author>izzydata</author><text>Honestly I think this makes a lot more sense than Twitter. It always felt wrong to me that Twitter was used for anything resembling official communication. Whether it be a local news network, fire station, local government or the president of the United States. All on the same platform that is filled to the brim with pornography and obscenities. Of course you can curate your feed and only follow what you want, but in my mind Twitter is a single website. I&amp;#x27;m used to dedicated forums so when Twitter rolled around I figured it would just be a little bit bigger, but still mostly informal, unofficial people goofing off online. Once everyone and everything started using it I left. I don&amp;#x27;t want to mix online identities with real life identities.&lt;p&gt;So, despite Mastodon being a federated system it makes a lot more sense to use a dedicated instance for official purposes like this to me. I imagine they don&amp;#x27;t federate with anything anyway and don&amp;#x27;t even allow account creation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cmelbye</author><text>The advantage is that the information can be aggregated along with posts from other sources rather than having to visit many different websites individually. It&amp;#x27;s easier to consume, the same reason why RSS was useful.</text></comment>