TL;DR:

Pilot Project Conclusion: The Swiss Federal Chancellery’s Mastodon instance pilot project, launched in September 2023, has ended as the conditions for continuation were not met.

Low Engagement: The six official accounts on Mastodon had around 3500 followers in total, with low engagement rates compared to other platforms like X and Instagram.

User Decline: The number of active Mastodon users globally is decreasing, contributing to the decision to end the project.

Closure: The social.admin.ch instance will be closed at the end of the month.

Article translated in English :

Confederation closes its Mastodon instance

Bern, 25.09.2024 - Since September 2023, the Federal Chancellery has been operating a Mastodon instance for the federal administration. The pilot project, limited to one year, ends today as the conditions for its continuation have not been met.

As part of their statutory information mandate, the Federal Council and the federal administration have also been communicating on social media for many years and are constantly examining whether platforms not used until now are eligible.

In September 2023, the Conference of Federal Information Services decided to launch a pilot project on the decentralised Mastodon platform. The Federal Chancellery then opened the social.admin.ch instance, on which members of the Federal Council and departments could manage official accounts. The pilot project was limited to one year.

Mastodon has useful features for government communication. Thanks to its decentralised organisation, the platform is not subject to the control of a single company or to any state censorship. Its source code is open, it complies with data protection and is not driven by algorithms.

Too few active users

On the social.admin.ch instance, three departments managed five accounts, and the Federal Chancellery managed one account for the entire Federal Council. The six accounts of the Confederation had around 3,500 subscribers in total.

On platforms such as X or Instagram, the Federal Council and the Federal Administration reach many more subscribers with comparable accounts. In addition, the contributions of the Mastodon accounts of the Federal Council and the Federal Administration have rather low engagement rates (likes, shares, comments). Finally, the number of active users of Mastodon worldwide is once again falling.

The Conference of Information Services of the Confederation therefore considers that the conditions for continuing the pilot project have not been met, and activities on the Mastodon accounts of the Federal Council and the federal administration are suspended as of today. The social.admin.ch instance will be closed at the end of the month.

  • ddh
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    2432 months ago

    “We’ve also closed the wheelchair ramps as the stairs are more popular.”

    Sometimes avoiding corporatism or maintaining your privacy feels like an accessibility issue (I’m looking at you, open source projects who direct their community to Discord).

    • cabbage
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      872 months ago

      It’s accessibility, and it’s also sovereignty.

      Another way of rephrasing this decision is “we have decided to stop publishing information on our official website, as we receive more interaction on X”. Which is pretty questionable.

    • @FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      382 months ago

      As a disabled person I don’t think that’s a fair comparison to use.

      People on mastodon have a choice, it’s an awful choice which comes with privacy and contributing to corporate trash, being advertised at non-stop compromises, which in my opinion no one should have to make.

      But you can still see it. Disabled people just straight up can’t use the stairs. It’s not that it’s a shit compromise for us. It’s that we are physically unable too.

      • @SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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        202 months ago

        I dunno. You could throw yourself down the stairs. It’s an awful choice, but you could still do it…

        The point is, a choice with all kinds of negative consequences to it isn’t really a choice.

        • @FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 months ago

          I can’t throw myself up the stairs. Go in g down isn’t the problem, I could scooch down on my bum. (but then I would need someone to carry my wheelchair down).

        • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
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          82 months ago

          Agreed. By @FundMECFSResearch’s distinction, you (well, Americans) could choose to not pay taxes. You literally are able to not do it. Of course, you then have to deal with the consequences, but it falls in the same category of “optional.”

          Gender-affirming surgery is “optional.” Eating food other than cat food is optional. Simply having the ability to make a choice between two options is not sufficient to justify saying both options are satisfactory.

      • @unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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        122 months ago

        With these sites its actually not even a metaphor at all. Its a literal accessibility issue because closed sites like twitter and reddit dont allow open API access for apps building features for blind or deaf people.

        • @FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          82 months ago

          Yes definitely for hard of hearing and hard of sight people it can be an accessibility issue. I’m mostly deaf myself.

          But comparing the situation for abled people in the way it was above doesn’t really work.

      • @oxomoxo@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        The term “accessibility” is not the exclusive domain of the physically disabled. Accessibility affects all people across race, gender, class, age and disability.

    • @sleen@lemmy.zip
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      122 months ago

      (I’m looking at you, open source projects who direct their community to Discord)

      This is surprisingly very common. Even for stuff that prioritise privacy. The interesting part is why discord is kept under the covers by everyone - despite its security offences, and anti-user practices.

      There isn’t much talk about discord like there is about browsers. However, it might be just an undeveloped branch of the oss community.

      • @LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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        92 months ago

        A good quality open source “federated discord” would be as important as lemmy or mastadon. But there isn’t much hype around it. Afaik matrix is still far behind discord quality wise and the architecture has limitations for anonymity and encryption.

        Discord is just high quality and so easy to use because making a server is so easy.

        • @dustyData@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          We stopped developing quality self-hosted forums and somehow now everyone is all over live chats. Chat is the worse form of communication to create permanent records of support issues. It’s the flipside of Wiki’s problems. They use hidden wikis to host discussion of wikipedia articles, moderation and other topics and the thing is a nightmare because it is not suited for conversation. FOSS development needs something that can do both. Live group chat for general discussion, with a static discussion forum for single issues, and a wiki where it can all be archived as structured articles. There’s currently nothing popular that fills the bill.

          • @LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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            12 months ago

            Yeah. Discord can create FAQ and “threads” now that I believe work better for this. You can take some question and the answer and discussion and put it in a threat in some channel for issues. Presumably once you have a quality chat server, it is easier to add threads / articles / issues to it than starting from a forum.

        • @lambalicious
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          22 months ago

          Discord is just high quality and

          What are you smoking and can you share the contact info of your dealer?