Update: so TheConversation.com just published this article: Canada’s public broadcaster should use Mastodon to provide a social media service
So the CBC could use the Mastodon platform and build its own server to provide access to Canadians who want social media without the reliance upon predominantly American corporations. Ideally, this could be provided globally as an important service in an age when platform interests and national interests have increasingly aligned.
My original post:
I think the progressive politicians, news agencies, celebrities, scientists, and pro-democracy organizations must leave Twitter and instead use federated and distributed technologies such as Mastodon or similar technologies to reconnect where no billionaire can do a hostile takeover owning all the data, infrastructure, and algorithms.
Chief twit, Elong Musk, can now sell years of user data to any entity worldwide to pay off his loans. If any democratic government tries to regulate him, he can rig the algorithms against them, so only the political parties in his favour would win elections. If people leave, that will put EM in a difficult financial position, and the entire network will turn into a right-wing echo chamber that will hopefully collapse.
Global news networks shouldn’t be owned by one private company. Ideally, we would want a federated and distributed social network managed by democratically elected bodies in each region, similar to city/school/park councils who can moderate their instances using their local IT resources and following their local rules. The technologies already exist and are open source, but it takes social and political will to protect our democracy.