This has always irked me. Perhaps it's heavy handed, but I would love a law that (1) requires governments at all levels to use open-access websites (and radio, a local newspaper of record, &c.), and (2) requires services like Facebook to syndicate any news and updates.

Interesting that you would name a newspaper of record as a valid outlet for government news/updates. I feel like Facebook could make an argument for being essentially that today - after all, it is where the eyeballs are, which is why people use it for marriage announcements, birth announcements, classifieds, obituaries.... and on and on.

But newspapers can't ban you permanently from ever reading again (including bans that track you via device or IP or other factors) for a one-time mistake like a drunk rant where you said the wrong thing. Imagine a hormonal 16 year old makes a violent (but ultimately just them spouting off with no real intent to follow through) threat against a local police department.

In the modern world, they basically lose digital citizenship for their mistake. There's no route for reconciliation or re-entry into society when it comes to major tech platforms and bans. With prison, you theoretically pay your time and then can re-enter society. Not so with online bans.

If by 'lose digital citizenship' you mean 'kicked off Facebook' I think that's probably overstating. I got my first domestic internet connection in 1996 and have never had a Facebook account yet don't in any way feel deprived of 'digital citizenship'. Perhaps I'm unique!

I understand that in Italy without a facebook (ie whatsapp) account it is very difficult to live a day-to-day life due to the fact that most vendors (eg doctor's offices) assume all customers have one.

Nope, you’re not :)

I wonder if Facebook could be legally compelled to offer read only accounts in the case of banning.

Seems like a simple solution.

By doing this, you are making them legally legitimate to convey imprudent information.

No, the simple solution is to enforce public authorities not to use Facebook (or similar platform) as their main communication channel.

You know the saying "it’s easy to make a Twitter clone, it’s not easy to become Twitter". Well government don’t need to become Twitter, so what is stopping them to provide a "public" Twitter clone just for those communications ?

A newspaper of record has additional advantages. For example, the newspaper can't accidentally delete or automoderate an already published article, and anybody can cut the article out of the newspaper and save it without having to pay for electricity and digital storage media in perpetuity.

You can also screenshot and print a post on facebook. It's probably cheaper than buying a newspaper.

You can download scanned versions of respectable local newspapers for free (or at least, already paid for by taxes) in many US and Canadian cities if you have a public library card, by checking if you have a PressReader resource with the library. For example (just because it's a big city), the New York Public Library offers the service [0]. This is useful if there is interest in reading in-depth content about local news.

[0] https://www.nypl.org/research/collections/articles-databases...

There is also comparatively more at stake when a newspaper gets facts wrong, versus misinformation on a Facebook post. When a newspaper mistakenly publishes false information at the time (which should not happen too often due to internal fact-checking teams or at least a trained editor and journalist), they issue a correction out of journalistic ethics. But when a Facebook post publishes a falsehood, there is far less obligation to issue a correction notice or remove the post.

Or stealth edit but by then people would have moved on to the next consumable news article.

This is such a straw man. You’re really comparing physical newspapers to Facebook? Even my boomer parents let their physical subscription go.

A "straw man" is an intentionally weak opponent in an argument. I don't think I've done that (where, in this thread, would I have the occasion to?)

I'm not comparing physical newspapers to Facebook. The Internet has obviously won. What I've said is that governments of all levels should not be allowed to solely distribute important public information solely via private platforms. A newspaper was just an obvious example, one that already has a legal precedent.

The government should be creating their own services for both state and local governments to create websites. Instead, you got a 10,000 vendors charging outrageous prices that can't even get something like security right. Something like 18F would be awesome for these cities to start using. Unfortunately, politics is very corrupt so politicians are always going to want to pay a friend of a friend a million dollars to say that it was the vendors fault than to do something right, and the vendor will have some reason why it wasn't their fault. Rinse, recycle, repeat.

This is probably already the case : I can access my local government entities' FB pages without logging in to FB. Google indexes the pages so you don't need the FB search feature to find them.

Part of the problem is that radio and newspapers require payment and governments are loath to pay for even paper for flyers in many cases.

The US already has a federal law mandating Government Access Television, and many states have corresponding laws[1]. The costs for it are already built into our cable and other distribution costs.

Similarly, every state that I'm aware of has both a Public Access Radio station and carries NPR broadcasting.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government-access_television

Same! What a sad state the internet is in when a megaevil corp is used by local services to provide updates. I thought that was what Twitter was for?

I know several pacific islands were going to ban Facebook but apparently it's heavily in use by businesses.

Regina Lepping, a young entrepreneur from capital city Honiara, said the announcement had sent many small business owners scrambling to find alternatives to Facebook.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-15/solomon-islands-backt...

I've interacted with local businesses that use a Facebook page as a replacement for maintaining a website that they own. The rationale I've read is that their time is best spent providing their quality service versus learning website development (even with a block-based website builder), and hiring a web developer is too pricey, when they can create a Facebook page that is easy to set up.

Most importantly, it's easy for them to update and maintain a Facebook page, versus an independent website.

The federal government should launch its own platform for the US government and state and local governments to push all their updates. Something like Star Wars' Holonet.

Where I live they use nextdoor for that purpose. I’m not sure which is worse.

Nextdoor infinitely worse. It's such a toxic cesspool.

But... they are both toxic cesspools. [Insert office meme of Pam saying both pictures are the same]

Also educational institutions