Could the US Government Self-Host a Fediverse Server?
Could the US Government Self-Host a Fediverse Server?
Reflecting on some of the hurdles for procuring a Fediverse instance for the US Government. There are a lot of hoops to jump through, but is it worthwhile?
In response to Joe Biden and the White House enabling ActivityPub federation via Threads, a number of people asked: "Why didn't the White House just self-host their own Mastodon server?"
Here's some very basic musings on what it would take for that to happen. and what some of the hurdles are. Don't consider it a definitive answer, but a jumping-off point.
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Would be entertaining to watch it unfold. I'm sure team 45 would try to horn in if it happened. Might bring a massive influx of users. Mixed feelings. But a good writeup.
Truth Social is already literally a Mastodon instance. They just don't federate with anything else.
Trump could open up federation, but that would ruin their safe space, I mean echo chamber.
They would also be instantly defederated by like 90% of the fediverse
And 9% of the rest would just be griefing them
Gab is in kind of the same place, with the same conclusion.
"Oh no, keeping a walled garden actually increases the value of my echo chamber! Better not open anything up to dissenting views!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Social#Platform
Truth Social is modeled heavily after Twitter; users are able to make posts ("Truths", similar to tweets) and share other users' posts ("ReTruths", similar to retweets). The Truth Social platform uses a custom version of the free and open-source social network hosting software Mastodon as its backend, which omits several features, including polls and post visibility options.
The platform uses the Soapbox frontend instead of Mastodon's native frontend. TMTG has advertised for developers with skills in using Elixir, the programming language used to build Pleroma.
On October 21, 2021, the Software Freedom Conservancy group stated they suspected Truth Social had violated Mastodon's AGPLv3 license by not offering its source code to all users. The Mastodon developers then formally requested that Truth Social comply with the terms of the software license, with Truth Social publishing its source code as a ZIP file on the website on November 12, 2021. On February 22, 2022, the source code download was moved to the website's legal section. A mirror of the source code is available at GitHub, where it was uploaded by uninvolved individuals.
Truth Social is such a freaking dumpster fire. It would be the absolute worst candidate to be used by governments. Some politicians? Sure. Actual departments? Ehhhh
I know, I just always think it's humorous that its technically a fediverse project, although it seems it doesn't do federation (that I know of, and thank god for that).
Ironic considering the user base, not that there's any shortage of irony on "truth" social.
Literally just saw this in my feed: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-sues-truth-social-co-founders-says-not-entitled-stock-shares-rcna146106
The server does not have to be open for registration.
Sure, but I'm thinking they'd make some noise on their own, and/or infiltrate other instances en masse (potentially).
Ah, I didn't realize what you meant by Team 45.