"There's a guy in Montreal ... who goes by @heliomass on Mastodon and he created a great set of French and English STM bots. So all in one place you can see what the status is of Transit in Montreal, and it's great. That's what Twitter used to have, that the transit agencies should have built themselves ... but whatever."
@paige, 2025
https://video.fedihost.co/w/rnNZ3FxnH977sFUDpQTwC7
(1/2)
"These agencies, these universities, these governments ... they've got so used to having a FB account, or an InstaGram account, that I don't think they can see how peculiar it will look to people in the future, that the PM's address is Justin@hotmail.com. Why would you put public information on a thing you don't own, when we now have the tools to get away from that."
@paige, 2025
https://video.fedihost.co/w/rnNZ3FxnH977sFUDpQTwC7
(2/2)
If you look into the "comms" budgets of NZ public services, you'll find that every year they give huge pots of money to corporate platforms, to "promote" public service messages to kiwis using them. At the same, they've been considering making those same companies give money to legacy news media companies, instead of funding public interest journalism (FDNBB), and now they're cutting funding to public media.
This is absurd.
(1/?)
#SocialMedia #PublicService #GovernmentCommunications #FDNBB
Any platform making money in NZ from ads should be obliged to carry public service messages from government agencies without charge.
That would potentially free up a similar amount of money as the FDNBB (if it even works), which could then be put into funding public media and public interest journalism. Instead of just given directly to news media corporations, no strings attached. Many of which now own or are owned by monopoliatic digital platforms (OneRoof, TradeMe).
(2/?)
I get the argument for public agencies having a presence on the dominant platforms. Go where the people are, and all that. But in 2025, while public services are being cut to the bone by an austerity-mad executive, there's just no argument for giving foreign-owned corporate platforms free public money.
(3/?)
Every public agency that wants to publish updates for the public should be doing so on their own servers, which broadcast over RSS, AP, ATProto, Nostr, and any other open protocol kiwis are using. With the corporate platforms obliged to signal boost them if they want to make money here.
If the platforms decide they'd rather turn down ad money from NZ businesses than promote public service messages for free, fine. That money can be spent advertising in domestically-owned media instead.
(4/4)
Oh I'd go further than that - if they don't pay tax here then we stop using our taxes to enforce their "IP".
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