cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/32283041

As currently they’re only using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

History has shown us time and time again that these corporate platforms are unreliable and untrustworthy.

•Twitter has a moderation problem.

•Facebook has been found interfering with the message delivery of crucial information during emergencies, putting people’s lives at risk.

•YouTube often takes down videos for the wildest of reasons and Google had a massive fight with the federal government over Canadian media outlet compensation. Who’s to say they won’t use their dominant position to sabotage the efforts of governments they don’t agree.

We could email the council requesting that they post on the platform.

They could set up an account on one of the larger well established Canadian instances or even better start up their own.

  • @seaQueueEnglish
    12•1 month ago

    Offer to help setup the account and show them how to use Mastodon in general.

    Also, not necessarily applicable to you but worth keeping in mind: encourage organizations to run Mastodon instances/provide Mastodon hosting for their employees or members in addition to providing email addresses. If an org is providing email to employees or members for business correspondence they could easily provide Mastodon services as well. This enables public discussion with the org in twitter/social media format without a third party controlling the platform.

      • @seaQueueEnglish
        3•1 month ago

        Find widely known orgs that use the platform, the BBC comes to mind here. Search for other well known orgs to point out so you don’t just have one example. Highlight the fact that other platforms are cross linking to the fediverse (Meta’a threads for example) so a fediverse presence will give the city a presence on those platforms with no extra effort needed. Point out that Twitter has become an unreliable platform due to ownership change and that that situation could replay itself at any time on any centralized platform. Help people get Mastodon working on phones if needed - the official app is quite good. Basically just sell the platform as best you can, don’t go heavy on ideology and focus on practical benefits.