The world is changing around us, and so are the tools we use to engage with the public. In this blog post, we would like to reflect on the reasons to stop using certain social media, and start embracing open alternatives. 

X is bad.

The University of Groningen recently published a statement on their departure from the social platform X. The colleagues from the communications department correctly point out that the dynamics on the platform have changed, benefitting the spreading of misinformation at the cost of effective communication with the public. However, for the PF some further considerations include the specific culture being fostered on X, which includes the rising levels of harassment against researchers and the diverse community of our university. We cannot in good conscience contribute to a platform that removes all safeguards for respectful engagement with our colleagues, students, and citizens. 

Meta is also not great.

Despite some marked differences in how misinformation is spread on Meta’s platforms (acting more as a bubble), the recent policy changes announced by Mark Zuckerberg lead to the same problems criticized above: missing safeguards against misinformation and hate speech. Furthermore, Meta’s platforms (except for Threads) are more suited for sending out information, rather than engaging in meaningful dialogues. 

Are there no great alternatives?

Currently, many friends and colleagues are migrating over to Bluesky. This seems like an obvious choice: Bluesky still enforces sensible community guidelines, runs on the AT Protocol (in principle enabling a federated social network, but more on that later), and as a nice bonus already has a sizable user base.  

However, the AT Protocol (the protocol behind Bluesky) does not truly allow us to move beyond centralized control over social media platforms. For instance, it relies on centralized hosting and other services run by Bluesky, thereby limiting the amount of data autonomy from its users. This is different from ActivityPub: this protocol behind Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube and potentially infinite other platforms, allows in principle anyone to host their own platform that communicates with other platforms via the ActivityPub protocol. Data is then owned and governed by the respective host of the platform. 

Data autonomy for academia. 

That’s precisely what SURF decided to do, when they launched their Mastodon pilot. Via the page https://social.edu.nl/ anyone with a SURFconext account (and that is pretty much all staff and students at Dutch universities) can create a Mastodon account and interact with all other users on all platforms that use the ActivityPub protocol, with the added assurance that all data shared is stored in the SURF servers. It is also possible to migrate your account away from the SURF instance, should you prefer to have your account hosted elsewhere. Users thus always remain in control of their own data. 

But it’s also campaigning season. 

It’s true that Bluesky has a larger user base, at least within our small RUG bubble. This is an important consideration for the upcoming elections: we want to engage with as many of our potential voters as possible. We are therefore making use of both of our accounts on Bluesky and on Mastodon for now. However, in the long run, we will give preference to communication via Mastodon, for the reasons named above. To us, this is the choice most consistent with what we stand for: a democratic, transparent, autonomous, and open university. 

We have recently also opened a LinkedIn account where we post news updates, you can also follow us there.