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Comment by gwervc | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad no more taxpayers money is going to fund such bullshit. Alas, they probably found another irrelevant action to burn money already. In the end this is just a convoluted way to transfer money, ie corruption.

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Corporations regularly try stuff only to discover that it doesn't work; rather than being called corruption, this is hailed as "innovation" and leads to quotes such as Edison talking about learning 1000 ways to not make a lightbulb.

Governments are regularly criticised for not being innovative enough, and for continuing to use obsolete ancient technology like fax machines and Latin for so long beyond the point of usefulness that it actively harms the rest of society — quin tu istanc orationem hinc veterem atque antiquam amoves?[0]

[0] From page 8: https://archive.org/details/michelle-lovric-how-to-insult-ab...

What is the innovation you're talking about in this case? They installed Mastodon and created 40 accounts, only to conclude that nobody cares about it (but somehow it's a massive success at the same time). Is that where we are with innovation?

Why is it not innovative? It is a new way of government and citizen interaction, which sounds like it is well worth the attempt. Since it didn’t catch on, the citizens voted, but offering a new communication channel for citizens doesn’t sound like it belongs onto the long list of EU critique

Innovation is not packaging existing technology in a new shell. That’s creative at most.

So by extension, there is basically no innovation currently going on right now?

New CPUs arent innovative. x86 is still the same and the rest is just better production technology. New production processes aren't innovative either. EUV is just a different light source anyways. New companies finding uses for generative AI are just OpenAI API wrappers anyways.

Your logic spun to a strict degree would mean that nothing except inventing is innovative, which is an expectation that will not hold up in the real world.

You got it right there ;)

AFAICT they call it a success because the users were happy with the quality of service, and close it because noone wants to fund it. If that reading is correct, then the 40 are happy to use a server paid for out of someone else's budget and think the admin has done a good job, but don't want to become the new admin or pay for running the server.

It reminds me of many stories of open source projects: Happy users — who don't want to pay or take over the work.

It's bullshit to make it easier for MEPs to get in touch with their constituencies? Do you also hate democracy?

IIRC, if a representative posts on one instance and a constituent replies on another, the original poster is unlikely to see the reply. Not a good way to communicate with constituents.

This is not how Mastodon works, the point is exactly that cross-instance communication can work smoothly, and it does. Replies show up on your notifications just like any other similar platform, whether they come from your instance or another.

I haven't used Mastodon much, but I have seen replies that weren't visible. There was a big thread with several generations, some visible to the original poster (who showed me this), some not.

Guessing… server blocking? Grandparent replies (the thread was big)?

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