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Comment by CrampusDestrus | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand this.

Is this a state-operated social network for its citizens or is it a public announcements platform?

Because if it's PA then going with Mastodon seems pretty excessive

Usually the way public announcements work is that you write one post and some intermediate service posts it everywhere for you. It’s not that crazy to add a new service, and this is probably in response to Twitter getting rate limited.

but the problem is that Mastodon is not a service. they could just as well have deployed a static website with RSS feeds.

also the fact that they allow other users on the instance seems pretty strange. shouldn't the only accounts be from the government members?

They also have that. https://www.government.nl/rss

There are only official persons/entity accounts on that instance, if you're thinking about the global feed that's just a composition of people those accounts follow.

It makes sense really. About a week ago there was “code red” storm in the Netherlands, and first phone alarm contained something along the lines of “for more details see this Twitter account”.

Then they removed any mention of twitter from from the second message.

Doesn't sound like they needed a microblogging platform, just a web page that could be easily updated. Their use of Twitter in the first place would appear to be the crux of the problem.

Twitter has a built in notification system. People can subscribe to get alerts from it. Theoretically people can do that with RSS but, let's be honest, most people don't use RSS. I saw in another comment that they do have an RSS feed though if that's your cup of tea

1. if the tweet was from someone outside of the government then creating a mastodon instance does not make any sense

2. if the tweet was from the government then why couldn't they also put up something on a webpage on their own sites?

>2. if the tweet was from the government then why couldn't they also put up something on a webpage on their own sites?

IIUC, they did. That website being https://social.overheid.nl/

Or am I missing something?

The source of the tweet isn't the issue at play.

The tweet / Twitter is the issue.

A Mastodon instance is something the issuer of the message controls. Twitter is not.

Web sites don't "notify" people of content, but social media does.

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