1/2 Today in, "Chris writes to Politicians” 🤣
I wrote to the British Columbia Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness today in relation to this news that she was negotiating with Meta to try to get access to Facebook to post emergency updates. How did we allow ourselves to be so beholden to these corporations for basic communication!
Here is my letter:
Dear Minister Ma (EMCR.Minister@gov.bc.ca)
CC: My Local MLA Minister Josie Osborne
I understand and agree with why you feel you must try to get Meta to allow you to post Emergency messages on that platform, especially during the fire season when we all now face so much uncertainty.
However, you must also acknowledge that:
Meta has made it clear its concern is curating its own content and “news” for its own financial benefit separate from any public benefit consideration.
You will never be able to control the algorithm on any Meta platform, so while you may post, you are still never guaranteed that your message can reach 100% of the people 100% of the time.
You as a Minister and as a representative of the Government of British Columbia cannot rely on third parties to get timely messaging out to communities and citizens. You are government, you have the means and responsibility to get the message out directly.
The question is how do you, as government, use social media directly? This has not been possible before, but it is now.
The answer is the Open Social Web. You may cringe at this example (and rightly so), but the pioneer and most famous person using the Open Social Web tools for public communication is Donald Trump with his “truth.social”.
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