Haha I think they might be talking of how Mastodon doesn’t insert ads or bought posts right next to your own posts, so a professional institution like a parliament no longer risks having erection pills or a crypto ad that fakes association with a celebrity next to a post by a political party leader.

The EU itself also has a Mastodon instance with the funny, overly clear name of https://social.network.europa.eu/

But only the institutions of EU, not for EU residents.

I like this idea because it becomes very easy to verify authenticity especially now that verification badges on X is just subscription badges without verification. You simply set up a subdomain of the form social.country.tld (much like the German parliament did) and you’ll know forename.surname@social.country.tld is an authentic representative for a political party or whatever. No money involved other than running the instance, which will be a tiny cost for something as niche as one offering a voice for the parliament alone.

So I hope this takes off even more around the world. It is certainly a more democratic way to do social than paying some dude in America that runs his personal garden to have badges.

I know it’s supposed to make them sound good and might indeed be meant for leaking, but all I can think of is the demands on quality assurance and risks of failures down the road if such precision is paramount for the operation of the vehicle and assumed by the teams building it.

So give me a less finicky vehicle, please, and leave that precision for devices not subject to highly varying road conditions at very high speeds and housing people.

Exactly, and there’s honestly no need for them to have 100,000+ people in them either. 1,000 people goes a long way too. There’s a point of critical mass when you can have sustained discussions and there are enough upvotes to form a sensible feed by popularity in the community, and that critical mass isn’t that huge IMHO. There also often comes a moment when greater popularity is detrimental and worsens it.

I could also jump onto Lemmy almost right away as my most loved communities were already forming here. I think Lemmy has a better outlook than Mastodon in this regard because the community is waiting for you, rather than Mastodon is expecting you to form your circle, which can take a lot of effort in the midst of fediverse confusion.