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461 points GavinAnderegg | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.423s | source
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llm_nerd ◴[] No.42150659[source]
Whatever one's feelings about these microblogging services, one truth that has become clear is that none of them -- X, Bluesky, Threads, or anything similar -- should be considered "the commons". They're private businesses with their own motives that are often in complete conflict with your own.

A lot of people made the mistake of treating Twitter like a commons and have been burned. My local police force posts all notices about traffic, missing people, foiled crimes, etc., on Twitter out of inertia. That is wholly inappropriate, and wasn't appropriate even when before it become some brain-worm infected oligarch's rhetoric megaphone. The same goes for many organizations, politicians, and so on. It was never the right choice. And the solution to one bad choice isn't to move to the same mistake on some other service. These people and orgs need absolute and complete ownership over their own platform.

Mastodon / ActivityPub seems like it might scratch that itch, but what a bloated sloppy mess that is. The right idea, with the wrong implementation.

Honestly would prefer all these people and places just published RSS feeds.

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1. snowwrestler ◴[] No.42152190[source]
Your local TV channels and newspapers aren’t commons either; they’re as privately owned as Twitter or Bluesky. Yet local governments make good use of them too, and have for many decades.

Things do not need to be publicly owned or distributed to be useful to society.

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2. tshaddox ◴[] No.42152304[source]
Hmm, that makes me think that maybe it would be a good idea to have non-commercial public-access television.