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EU Voice

social.network.europa.eu

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Re: EU Voice

#191

Post by woojoo666 »

gsora wrote: post #156
Gareth321 wrote: post #150

Every time these alternative/privacy focused/decentralised social media platforms appear they absolutely BUTCHER the UX. I thought "oh cool, let's sign up!" 1. I click "sign up." So far so good. 2. I am redirected to something called "Mastodon." No idea what this is. Nothing about it on the previous page. Is this a bug? Do I trust it? No options to sign up here. Only "get the app" and "find a server." I'm on my PC an…

Mastodon is a community effort, and as such members of the community will work on stuff like UX. I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but rather contribute back instead of slamming a (very advanced and usable) project down just because your registration experience was bad. This is open source, not a company with billions to spend on UX: they do what they can.

I think we need to better distinguish between comments about the current state of things (like GP) and comments about the future (like yours). GP is saying that currently the UX sucks, and this matters for people who want to use a social platform right now (think: non-programmers, technically challenged people, the mainstream, etc). Only enthusiasts are going to want to suffer through all the research and hurdles necessary to use to Mastodon because they think it'll be better in the future

Re: EU Voice

#192

Post by rsynnott »

berkes wrote: post #73
Ecstatify wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why the EU bothers wasting money on these initiatives. No one uses these platforms. 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. https://tube.network.europa.eu URL looks like a scam website. There is no way tech illiterate people can use these websites. Their first video that appear…

As far as can be counted, the user count of just mastodon users, has surpassed six million [1]. > No one uses these platforms. Six million is not no-one. It's relatively few, but absolutely a great number. I'm certain you'll have a hard time finding social networks with these amounts of users, that don't belong to one of the tech monopolies. Or with such numbers where the EU has no account or official presence. [¹] h…

It's also notable how many journalists (and even news outlets; the Irish paper of record just created an account, say) are suddenly using Mastodon. Realistically, the target audience of EU twitter feeds is mostly journalists; very few normal people will follow any sort of government twitter feed, but journalists will. Government bodies tend to use Twitter as a sort of low latency press release mechanism, and Mastodon will do fine for that, should there be problems with Twitter.

Re: EU Voice

#193

Post by lastdong »

pelasaco wrote: post #92
jacooper wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why the EU bothers wasting money on these initiatives Because they don't cost much? If at all? > 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. Because if they did, the US is going to freak out about foreign influence. just look at how the media is reporting on Saudi Arabia investin…

> Because they don't cost much? If at all? You are probably wrong here, but would be nice if EU was transparent enough to tell us how much it costs. It is a server management, patch management, content management, and etc.. i can imagine that isn't as cheap as you think, done by EU employees that are normally well paid.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_...

It’s public, as it should be. I haven’t search hard enough for this specific project, but if you email the right channel they should provide more details.

Re: EU Voice

#194

Post by rsynnott »

Telemakhos wrote: post #42
iLoveOncall wrote: post #22

It always baffled me that so many governments relied on a private solution that only has 5% of the world population as users (Twitter) as the preferred mode of communication with their citizens. It's good to see a solution made by the government instead. The next step is to make it mandatory for officials to use this platform (and Twitter or Facebook in addition if they want to, I don't care) for all their official c…

Why replace press releases and web pages with a social microblog? "Official communication" sounds like something better handled in long-form reports than short notes jotted out into a social maelstrom of hot takes. Perhaps the next step might instead be to get government off social media altogether.

Governments, in practice, tend to use Twitter as a sort of low latency press release system; the target audience is really journalists, and the tweets tend to link to longer-form things. Mastodon will do fine for that.

Re: EU Voice

#195

Post by rsynnott »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #51
mqus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's federation. You also wouldn't expect every citizen to get an @europarl.europa.eu e-mail-adress. The platform is decentralised by design, so just by joining, the EU is contributing to "providing a platform" imho.

I don't see why the EU shouldn't give every citizen an @europa.eu email address.

I mean, I think there'd be considerable risk to that. You'd in effect be giving the government direct access to a terrifying amount of personal information.

Re: EU Voice

#196

Post by nradov »

jacooper wrote: post #85
Ecstatify wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why the EU bothers wasting money on these initiatives. No one uses these platforms. 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. https://tube.network.europa.eu URL looks like a scam website. There is no way tech illiterate people can use these websites. Their first video that appear…

> I don't understand why the EU bothers wasting money on these initiatives Because they don't cost much? If at all? > 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. Because if they did, the US is going to freak out about foreign influence. just look at how the media is reporting on Saudi Arabia investin…

A Twitter employee was literally working as a spy for Saudi Arabia. He passed private account information on Saudi dissidents to their intelligence service, which probably got some people tortured or killed.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/former-twitter-employee-is-con...

If Twitter was penetrated by one spy then there are probably others who just haven't been caught yet.

Re: EU Voice

#197

Post by adav »

c80e74f077 wrote: post #161
Gareth321 wrote: post #150

Every time these alternative/privacy focused/decentralised social media platforms appear they absolutely BUTCHER the UX. I thought "oh cool, let's sign up!" 1. I click "sign up." So far so good. 2. I am redirected to something called "Mastodon." No idea what this is. Nothing about it on the previous page. Is this a bug? Do I trust it? No options to sign up here. Only "get the app" and "find a server." I'm on my PC an…

On the linked page: > Where can I register? > EU Voice is open for registrations only to EU institutions, body and agencies. However, you can still interact with EU Voice from many other compatible platforms. The Mastodon developers maintain a list of Mastodon platforms open for registration.

Does their response to that FAQ really answer the question? It has me slightly baffled.

Re: EU Voice

#198

Post by rsynnott »

seydor wrote: post #105
pelasaco wrote: post #87

who are paying for that? Why EU decides to manage such infrastructure?

it s in the budget of some agency supervising the data protection supervisors. This is not where a lot of money is wasted however. If you want to look for EU waste, look into the various agencies travel grants, endless committees and conferences, overhiring and bureaucratic reports that are many times longer than the actual output. I think in these times of fiscal tightening, people shopuld be more aware of the cost…

The EC employs about 32k people, EU institutions as a whole about 60k. That's actually... pretty modest, all things considered. The EU has a population of 450M. Ireland, a country with a population of 5 million, has about 40k civil servants (and 300k people in the wider public service).

If you imagine that the EU civil service was paid for on an equal basis per capita, that would imply that, say, Ireland was paying for about 600 EU public servants, or about 0.2% of its own public service. That seems like... probably good value for money? (In practice, not all EU members are net contributors, so it'd be somewhat more than that for rich countries, but still a drop in the bucket).

Re: EU Voice

#199

Post by rsynnott »

ancplt wrote: post #26

I think all politicians should be banned from Twitter and replacements. Ultimately, it is just self-promotion and lying. For international relations, a counterargument might be made: Perhaps the preposterous "little rocket man" exchange between Trump and Kim Jong-un that resulted in a meeting actually brought the countries together. But domestically I think the influence is harmful.

This is nothing to do with politicians; it's for EU government bodies. There are only three accounts attributed to individual people, and they're civil servants, not politicians: https://social.network.europa.eu/explore
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