Hey, there! Log in / Register
Boston City Hall adds Bluesky to its social-media offerings
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Good!
.
Why not Mastodon?
Or avoid all of the twit type sites and just run a blog on the city's website. That would be far better for citizens to know they are getting updates from official sources and without ads or the owner's politics.
Social media gives push notifications
Unfortunately, Mastodon just doesn't have the reach of other social media.
Website posts are very useful, but are only seen when people think to go to the city website. It's best to use multiple forms of notification, especially for those things that are unanticipated and time-sensitive. Bluesky, email, posts on the city website complement each other. No single medium will reach everyone.
What's the city's goal?
If the point is to release emergency updates (snow days, water main break, etc) than the city should post to all of these sites simultaneously, ideally with a link back to an official website that has more information.
If the point is to be interactive, occasionally post snark, tout things which aren't critically time sensitive, congratulations and promotions, etc: Just use a blog. People who care enough about this will check it periodically or follow the link from elsewhere.
Getting info out
Dead bird site is dead for that anymore, and full of bullshit, too.
Bluesky is where it is at for getting info to people without muskoxen shitting on everything.
It is a blog
It is a blog. It's called microblogging, which is a subset of blog.
If you don't like it, don't subscribe. You can even block them very effectively!
People
You go where the people are, is why.
When I read this article, I asked myself "what took them so long, twitter has been in the toilet and in decline for a number of years now" but the answer is numbers. But the answer is more than a 'okay this is what we're doing now' decision. Its metric based.
Remember there's 928304092384 sites out there that are social media or work like social media, but only a handful are used by businesses and government. That's because if you only have oh so many resources, you will want to focus your social media team's efforts on where the most of the people are so you get the best reach. Twitter was one of them for a long time. But now I think now enough people have left and migrated to bsky that businesses and gov't see enough change in 'the numbers' to warrant changing focus.
Unfortunately Mastodon just doesn't offer the reach yet, and with its semi-disconnected topology, getting 'reach' on mastodon is harder than other sites. I am sure data supports this decision not too. The reach isn't there yet.
A city-run blog won't work because you need to go and *check* when there's updates. Social media everyone is looking at for a myriad of reasons, so your reach is far better to post on there for it to be seen. Most aren't savvy enough to use RSS feeds (for private blogs) and the advent of social media, seems like the push how to do so fell by the wayside.
It's sad that it is like this. The requirement to be on a website in order to get reach to people or to receive updates. Esp when its gov't and the gov't isn't running the show, so we're at the mercy of private entity.
Gatekeepers suck
Far too many governments and small businesses use twitter and facebook as the primary source of information distribution. Both of those systems won't display the content fully without an account. So if you're unable to unwilling to create an account, the information is inaccessible. It's extremely frustrating.
It's the digital equivalent of requiring patrons to use a staircase to gain entry.
If the city wants to accessible to all, nothing should be posted to any 3rd party sites that isn't also on a city run system first. (And groups like Uhub should only link to the city's website, not the twit or whatever it's called on Bluesky.)
Get over it
If you like Elongation, continue your fetish for nonsense.
Governments have a responsibility to communicate without bullshit.
Swirls
Swirls darling, he's on our side. He just doesn't like that bsky also is gatekeeping in a way too and thinks that all public information that comes from gov't agencies should be available free, without login or any issues getting access to it.
I can get behind the notion, but I also see the value in having a login. but I think social media companies still do a dis-service here because while they allow direct links posts, they put up a login box to make the users think they need to login, but often you can click the X to get rid of it and view the post. Its not every post (nor can I say its gov't account vs personal thing) but it does work, but is sneaky and inconsistent.
On FB and Instagram you can have public profiles that can be access without logging in. Bsky at least when you do this, doesn't pop up anything asking you to login, it just lets you see the account in full.
Thats the other thing FB, Twitter, and Insta do, lock you from seeing everything except a handful of 'selected' posts (not recent), nor can you access any archival data, unless you have a direct link. I mean I get it, costs FB money in server and internet usage for people to be able to do that at will, forever on all posts. But his is where some regulation would help that would force regulations like "if its from a registered gov't account, access is barrier free to all posts, forever as long as the account exists". But because lobbyists, it will never happen. sigh.
Thanks, Cybah
I appreciate the explanation.
All the same, everything the city posts is also available on their website, if you like.
The information is all available though
If your concern really is about "access to information" from government officials and government entities then you should rest assured that all of the essential information that goes on social media or otherwise requires an account is available in other forums that can be reached without it.
Of course you might have to put more effort into manually going to websites instead of having it set up so that the information is fed to you in accordance with your account preferences. In the end it's up to the individual to do their own calculation of convenience vs. privacy when it comes to getting the information they want.
City posts tons of stuff on Boston.gov
The main exception is the Boston Fire Department, which still posts on ex-Twitter (even BPD moved from bpdnews.com to police.boston.gov).
That's not how it works
You can't state that government owned infrastructure, is the exact same thing as a global monopoly corporation. The difference is that you get to vote and participate in government, you DO NOT get a vote in BlueSky.
The idea that using Mastodon means joining some third rate server is absurd boths-sidesism that really shows how much people really don't understand internet civics AT ALL.
The government should *RUN* a fedi server (of any kind) because it is PUBLIC infrastructure and stop deferring it's responsibilities to third parties that do not have the interests of the people at heart. The government MUST start dealing with it's public directly and stop hiding behind platforms.
Sure, join BlueSky, Twitter, or whatever their calling the portal to hell this week. But NEVER think that replaces the responsibility to talk to the public using public protocols on government owned infrastructure.
I walked into Mastadon months
I walked into Mastadon months ago , looked around, got confused and walked out. I could not figure out how it all worked and the explanation videos were way too long. I don't see the use in using a service that has such a high access point in comparison to the others. I haven't used Bluesky much yet but I know how to use it and may use it more once I feel more compelled.
Your points hit it right on the head. I worked somewhere and was in charge of social media years ago and some people really wanted us to engage with the Google social media app (I forget which one but it may have been the first one.) I even met with a rep from Google to discuss it and gave it a try (I was in Cambridge and it was a fairly connected account) and it was a mess. I asked outright "how exactly do I get more followers" and her answer was to spam my other social media accounts we ran. I looked at her with side eye. I had built up our Twitter by directly engaging with people who were talking about the places we represented and it worked well. Facebook was organic in its growth for us. I gave up on Google fairly fast because it would take too much work to build a follower base.
but the blog you want already exists
Boston.gov/news already exists, and has for, I think, decades.
Anyway, people WOULD know they are getting updates from official sources on bluesky because the City of Boston is directly listing those accounts as official accounts.
Also, there are no ads on Bluesky, won't be any time soon, and there's not really any good way of ever integrating them, so that's not a concern. They would be easily blockable anyway, even if they did ever show up.
How does Bluesky make money?
I've heard it was founded by original Twitter people and has crypto underpinnings. That's why I won't use it. Just because exTwitter is horrible doesn't make other services good by default.
If you're not on Bluesky already, how is one to know a post is "official" as opposed to from an account that only claims to be official?
How does Twitter make money?
(It doesn't)
Bluesky is open source project and a benefit corporation so their goal isn't to maximize profits, anyway. Which means it probably won't use an algorithm to feed you garbage like everyone else does.
But, cool, you can use whatever you'd like. How does Adam make money to support his global media empire anyway?
Sure, OK
A quick google search shows they've just accept a whole lot of money from crypto people and "pledge" not to shift to web3, etc in the future.
I don't trust any of these people. Open source is great but just because you can see the code doesn't mean the company can't do whatever they want.
If a bunch of crypto bros announce a round of funding for Uhub, I'd be a lot more skeptical of Adam's coverage going forward. (Although as a longtime user, pleased he was finally getting a nice payday.)
But but but
It’s not run by Elon. You know the big orange guys bff so it’s bad, very very bad. Don’t get me wrong it’s a cesspool but this is more to do about taking your ball and going home than anything else.
Uh ..
If you're not on bluesky, then you're not going to be seeing bluesky posts in general, so you won't have to know who's official or not. If you are on bsky, then you figure it out the same way as every other entity on social media. Accounts link to official pages, which in turn link back to official accounts. It's super easy. If you can't figure it out, then you probably shouldn't be anywhere near social media to begin with.
Official accounts on BlueSky
You can know if an account is the "official" account if its @domain is from that organization/person's own website. Here's an example post from The Onion's satirical news site's official account:
The only way to have their domain show up like that is to own its DNS and then you post a secret value to your DNS space that BlueSky tells you in your profile and if they look in DNS space and see it, they write your domain that you own there. Otherwise, what shows up there is the site that your account was setup on (which for most people is @username.bsky.social if they signed up directly with Bluesky).
And anyone can make their account official as purchasing a DNS domain is really very cheap these days if you want a domain to make yourself official.
They mint power, not money.
They mint power, not money. And, I like the notion that publicly owned servers should be the main, overt, easy go to for communications rather than the de facto off loading of the comms to a private firm without the editorial and ethical strictures with the ideals old-school journalistic institutions at least somewhat aimed for.
These tech firms who we as a people created the space for their success, who we allowed as a self governing nation to achieve their monopolization to gain dominance give themselves way too much credit for their success.
Bluesky / Mastodon bridge
Anyone on Bluesky can have their posts appear on Mastodon by following @ap.brid.gy.
Similarly, anyone on Mastodon can do the opposite by following @[email protected]
Note that interaction can't occur unless the accounts on both sides are bridged. So if someone sees my Mastodon post on Bluesky, any reply they send doesn't get back to me on Mastodon unless they follow the bridge account.
More info here, with answers to your questions about differing posts sizes and other stuff:
https://fed.brid.gy/
Now they can all be unresponsive...
on yet another platform of communication.
Helping reinforce the Bluesky
Helping reinforce the Bluesky echo chamber.
Re: X is the real echo chamber
X/Twitter throttles engagement with tweets that have links. Links to news and articles originating outside of the right wing echo chamber.
After
After so many years of having magats reply to posts that were retweeted.. I think I can speak for many twitter users who have said they've had enough and welcome the echo chamber.
You just get tired of it.. cute picture of a cat, and 923487093284 nasty replies under it. Most are unrelated to the picture. Sighhhh.
One app to rule them all
There's a very helpful app called Openvibe that let's you compile your BlueSky and Threads and Mastodon accounts in one place. A little complicated to set up, at least on Android) but worth checking out.
There's this other one
Called EMail, which is really cool and was invented by a gentleman who now lives in Belmont, lovely fellow, very interesting. Anyway, you can get messages to an "inbox" that only you can access and you get notifications when new messages arrive. You can also send messages from an "outbox" through a series of tubes
And the city has lots of e-mail you can sign up for
There are weekly city meeting/events listings by neighborhood, you can be reminded about your street trash pickup, your excuse tax payments and more.
City email
Can I use city email to report on residents and businesses who I think are not paying enough excuse taxes?
Original post updated
I made it sound like Boston was abandoning ex-Twitter for Bluesky. It's not - city departments will continue to use that other network, they're just adding Bluesky in a big way. Of course, as regular users abandon Elon's Increasingly Smaller Rightwing Echo Chamber, even as they're flocking to Bluesky (and Threads), the latter will assume more importance for city social-media efforts.
I miss useful face to face meetings like open office hours
Pepen does them , and broadcasts then on Facebook and instagram. I never used twitter, X or that Trump social , whatever it's called.
I just signed up for Bluesky.
I wish Wu was more accessible face to face though.
Not impressed with Twitter/X/whatever it wants to call itself.
I played with Twitter for a month or two before giving it up, and I wasn't all that impressed with it back then. (I know back then it was 240 characters.) Facebook was more my style, and I gave that up in 2019 when that website started getting weirder.
I’ll see it as long as the
I’ll see whatever Boston has to say as long as the news picks up what’s important.
Its
not It's
It's a good idea
Despite what some people might hope, they don't appear to be abandoning Twitter. The more ways to get information out the better.