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Comment by simion314 | Hacker News Reader

>I don't understand why the EU bothers wasting money on these initiatives. >Why don't they buy a considerable stake ....

What? instead of investing in a server and some open source code we should bive Elon a few millions? Are you Elon or how does this logic work ?

News websites can link to twitter or any other website as easily , is not like the average EU citizens is actually following any EU institutions (no idea about politicians, who is the regulat guy that wants political pam), I only see twitter embeded or screenshot in news webistes, the experience would not differ if the text is on a higher quality website but with less active users.

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It's not about the cost of the service, it's that it's a pointless endeavour it's never going to succeed. Every social media company succeeds or fails based on the network effect.

Where did I mention Elon?

> It's not about the cost of the service, it's that it's a pointless endeavour it's never going to succeed. Every social media company succeeds or fails based on the network effect.

I think that's a valid concern if your main goal is to create a social network, but less so if you're trying to create a reliable and trustworthy organ for government communication.

> Where did I mention Elon?

This:

> > Why don't they buy a considerable stake in these American social media companies instead of trying to reinvent the wheel that is deflating as soon as it launches.

does not refer explicitly to Elon, but Twitter is a much more common organ of government communication than any other big American social-media company, so it seems disingenuous to pretend that this wasn't at least suggestive of buying a considerable stake in Twitter (and so giving money, indirectly, to Elon).

Disingenuous, huh? previous poster interpreted "buy a considerable stake in these American social media companies" as give Elon Musk money.

> previous poster interpreted "buy a considerable stake in these American social media companies" as give Elon Musk money.

Which social-media companies did you mean? If Twitter is among them, then that is, at least indirectly, giving Musk money; and, if not, then it's hard to see how buying that stake would help to ensure communications reliability, since Twitter seems to be much more common than any other American social-media company as an organ of government communication.

I don't understand this link with Twitter, maybe because it's in the news now. I never mentioned any specific company. The previous poster wanted to go on some Elon rant/tangent. My point was to invest in a platform that people actually use. If I'm the EU I want to have a platform where I can spread my message to as many people as possible. The EU is already spending huge amounts of money advertising on these platforms. Why not purchase a seat at the table.

> I don't understand this link with Twitter, maybe because it's in the news now. I never mentioned any specific company.

Exactly, which is why I'm asking: when you said "buy a considerable stake in these American social media companies", which social-media companies did you mean?

I meant the concept of buying a social media company to gain access to a network/captive audience. I was not talking about a specific company.

If I was talking about a specific company I would have said "Why don't they buy a considerable stake in {insert social media company}"

A mastodon instance like this does not need to be "successful" in order stay online.

People are interested in what the government has to say and mostly multipliers (aka Journalists) are reading the actual news.

It's good to have a accessible publication Plattform that is not subject to US policies (private or public ones), just in case the environment in Twitter gets undesirable.

I assume running this servers costs roughly nothing and they can shut it down at any time.

>Where did I mention Elon?

If EU would buy a big share of Titter it gives money to Elon, if from FB you give the money to Mark etc.

You are implying that is pointless me to have a person website because I will not succeed to be more popular the FB or Twitter. The joke is on you I have a personal website and I run a blog and some static pages. EU is not attempting to defeat Twitter,

It makes sense (if your logic circuits work) that you should have a backup communication method because

1 Twitter or FB because they might block you and your then need to fight with AI bots to unblock your stuff

2 there might be users that do not use Twitter or FB

3 Twitter and FB might not respect user privacy so it is imporal to publish only on those

I never mentioned Elon or the implications of buying twitter, you went off on that tangent.

> You are implying that is pointless me to have a person website because I will not succeed to be more popular the FB or Twitter. The joke is on you I have a personal website and I run a blog and some static pages. EU is not attempting to defeat Twitter

Again never said that.

Backup communication methods don't work if no ones uses them do they?

> 1 Twitter or FB because they might block you and your then need to fight with AI bots to unblock your stuff

Normally when you have a controlling stake in a company you can have an input in how it operates.

> 2 there might be users that do not use Twitter or FB

There's also people who don't use the internet? what's your point?

>3 Twitter and FB might not respect user privacy so it is imporal to publish only on those

EU agencies already post on Facebook and Twitter, what's your point ?

My point is that it makes sense EU agencies post on many medias and it makes no sense to limit to only one and force the citizens to make accounts on Twitter, this days you are forced to login to read it. What if I have no account or maybe an AI blocked me, I can't read some useful information.

> It's not about the cost of the service ... Every social media company succeeds or fails based on the network effect.

So you're saying it's not about the money, it's about sending a message?

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