I'm seeing a lot of comments here about how its the government's fault for relying on a private service for public communications.<p>The sentiment, while understandable (and not entirely unfair), assumes that the government has armies of technical folks available to maintain ActivityPub/RSS/$RandomHarryPotterSpell$. A Twitter account (well, before the Musk takeover anyway) offered:<p>a) The ability to disseminate information to essentially anyone with a mobile device and an internet connection.
b) Low setup costs, maintenance overhead, and technical expertise needed.<p>As a taxpayer, I would like my government to be cost-effective in resource allocation - Pre-Musk Twitter was one such cost-effective way to maintain a 1-->many communications infrastructure. That said, I fully agree that they should explore alternatives in light of Musk's antics.<p>It is important to also remember that government can be slow when it comes to embracing tech. ActivityPub is only 5 years old, and that's a short-time by govt standards, RSS is effectively (and quite sadly) dead for the everyday folk. This may or may not surprise the readership here, but Ontario's healthcare system still uses faxes to transmit patient records: <a href="https://www.dww.com/articles/ontario-government-to-eliminate-fax-machines-within-next-five-years-to-promote-patient#:~:text=To%20Health%20Care-,Ontario%20Government%20To%20Eliminate%20Fax%20Machines%20Within%20The%20Next%20Five,And%20Access%20To%20Health%20Care&text=On%20February%202%2C%202023%2C%20Ontario%27s,Convenient%20Care%20(the%20Plan)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.dww.com/articles/ontario-government-to-eliminate...</a>.