The NGI Policy Summit hosted a series of policy-in-practice workshops, and below is a report of the session held by Redecentralize.org.
Despite the incessant outcry over social media giants’ disrespect of privacy and unaccountable influence on society, any public sector organisation wanting to reach citizens feels forced to be present on their enormous platforms. But through its presence, an organisation legitimises these platforms’ practices, treats them like public utilities, subjects its content to their opaque filters and ranking, and compels citizens to be on them too — thus further strengthening their dominance. How could we avoid the dilemma of either reaching or respecting citizens?
Redecentralize organised a workshop to address this question. The workshop explored the alternative of decentralised social media, in particular Mastodon, which lets users choose whichever providers and apps they prefer because these can all interoperate via standardised protocols like ActivityPub; the result is a diverse, vendor-neutral, open network (dubbed the Fediverse), analogous to e-mail and the world wide web.
Leading by example in this field is the state ministry of Baden-Württemberg, possibly the first government with an official Mastodon presence. Their head of online communications Jana Höffner told the audience about their motivation and experience. Subsequently, the topic was put in a broader perspective by Marcel Kolaja, Member and Vice-President of the European Parliament (and also on Mastodon). He explained how legislation could require the dominant ‘gatekeeper’ platforms to be interoperable too and emphasised the role of political institutions in ensuring that citizens are not forced to agree to particular terms of service in order to participate in public discussion.