Check Out This Petition For the Canadian Government to Build it’s Own Mastodon Server to Engage with Canadians
It is long overdue for the federal government to NOT be relying on corporate Social Media networks and be at the mercy of their whims and policies, and their ability to pull the rug from under us without warning or reason.
Check out this petition for the Canadian Government to join the Fediverse and build it's own Mastodon server to engage with Canadians.
The Fediverse is a term coined to describe a "federated universe", including Mastodon, and many others, that are built upon an open standard called ActivityPub. Here's how Wikipedia details it:
"The fediverse (a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe") is an ensemble of social networks which can communicate with each other, while remaining independent platforms. Users on different social networks and websites can send and receive updates from others across the network.
ActivityPub, a W3C standard, is the most widely used protocol that powers the fediverse. Noted fediverse platforms include Mastodon, Lemmy, PeerTube, and Pixelfed."
Chris Alemany has initiated this petition. He is based in Port Alberni, BC. He's a University instructor, Computer Technician at Vancouver Island University (VIU) , and a geek who loves to tinker, most recently with his own Mastodon instance (server). He's also spearheading this federal petition to get politicians on Mastodon.
Chris's post on Mastodon does a stellar job at describing why this petition, so to quote him:
"I do hope the petition inspires more Parliamentarians to make the leap, but I also hope it inspires a larger discussion about Parliament as an independent entity creating its own, verified, trusted, social media space that is not controlled by outside forces.
Like email, like the Our Commons website, and all the other services they provide, Canadians should be able to always know that their parliamentarians are using reputable, secure, and law-abiding services under no one's control but Parliament’s itself.
We really should never have allowed ourselves to become so beholden to commercial platforms for basic communication but we didn't have options before. Now we do. It would be highly irregular at this point for a parliamentarian to use a Gmail address as their official contact for constituents.
Hopefully this is the starting point of realizing the same for Social Media. With apologies to @chad [who operates MSTDN.ca], essentially, the only truly trusted address for a Parliamentarian on Social Media should end with @.parl.gc.ca."
In literally a matter of days, this petition already has 671 signatures and counting! The minimum to be considered is 500 signatures.
In another post, Chris continues...
"If you're on another social media platform (Facebook, X, Bluesky, Threads, TikTok), or if you have a group of friends on text or email that might be interested in getting Canada's Parliament on the #OpenSocialWeb please do share and send the links to the petition."
It is very quick and easy to "sign" the petition, and no actual signature is even required. They DO require your legal name, address, email address, and phone number, as shown below.
Click each checkbox to agree to the terms, then hit "submit". You'll get a verification email to confirm, and you're done.
Please take a moment to "sign" this petition. We didn't have open social media options a decade ago, but now we do. It's important for our elected leaders, and frankly everyone else, to use a decentralized social media network like Mastodon to communicate with constituents who prefer to access information that way. Frankly, we should all prefer to do that.
You must now literally be signed into corporate Social Media networks to use them. You even need to pay for your posts to have a real opportunity to be seen.
We can continue to use corporate Social Media, though we shouldn't, and it's important information is freely accessible. Yes, actual websites to communicate information is still very much an option, but it's clear people want to communicate using Social Media and using an open platform like Mastodon, where profit is NOT the motive, is the way to go.
It's especially important that our elected leaders set this important precedent and use a decentralized platform like Mastodon instead of a corporate-control platform whose ONLY priority is profit.
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