#Venezuela's Maduro slams #Twitter after accounts blocked
'Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday said Twitter was an "expression of fascism" after accounts linked to his government were suspended, accusing the U.S. company of persecuting his followers.
...It was not clear why the accounts were suspended, or how many had been affected. Earlier, Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said 180 accounts were hit...'
@jd 😁
There were some attempts from the Government on impulsing alternatives for mayor social networks, the most know being something like Chavezbook that didn't take off. It was just a bad Facebook copy.
Government has a love-hate relationship with social networks, looking for having presence, but also actively working against freedom and net neutrality.
Lately they've been threatening a forced end to anonymity for Venezuelan users in social networking sites and other services.
@jd they should create theyre own instance, like the french gov did with mastodon.etalab.gouv.fr :)
@href fascicating! why did the french govt do this? what is their goal? When did they start this?
@jd it's not the govt per se, it's an organization called Etalab, which is part of the DINSIC which is "Interministerial direction of the digital and the information and communication system of the State". They also made the OpenData platform of data.gouv.fr.
There's no-one on the govt in that instance, it's mostly people working in the administration, professors in public schools, …
@href Interesting. I can imagine universities making an Instance to distro info and unite their community on social media, as well.
@jd afaik there's already one french univ with its own instance as well: https://mastodon.iut-larochelle.fr
@href also http://mastodon.mit.edu/ in the #USA
@jd so cool :)
read above ^^^
Obviously #Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro's mistake was depending on an American based corporation.
What if his government set up a #Mastodon instance and encouraged Venezuelans to set up their own? Decentralised communication instantly breaking the American tech monopoly.
Problem solved.