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Would a mastodon instance for UK politicians be a terrible idea? An unofficial one assuming Parliament/Councils/officialdom doesn't create one? Pre populated with MP accounts which they could claim? What about unelected politicians, e.g. PPCs? How would it be funded/moderated?
Or should I forget about it, stop procrastinating, and get on with this project plan I'm meant to be writing?!
Are there any MPs on mastodon already?
@jtonline https://respublicae.eu/@CarolineLucas
But she's not an MP anymore.
@jtonline but in all seriousness, sure, getting a more reasoned discourse going away from the hellscape that is Xitter has surely got to be a good thing ? Rory Stewart would be a good starter-for-ten given his relative youth and ability to communicate #TheRestIsPolitics
@davehay unfortunately Binface isn't an MP yet. Maybe they'll get another chance when Sunak slopes off to make bin loads of cash in California!
@jtonline I see what you did there and I am here for it - I’ve bin recycling trashy jokes for the longest time
@davehay and why not, some of them are wheely good :)
@jtonline and often green
(she/her) @jtonline Going to be the only person saying this but: I think this is a terrible idea for individual MPs. I do not want either Nigel Farage MP or Jim Allister MP on the fediverse.
@agvbergin I guess there is a decent risk of the instance being defederated due to MPs like that!!!
@jtonline To me the value is in centralising the instance in a trusted org. A lot less value if the instance is privately owned/managed.
@fabienmarry absolutely, although there are probably alternatives short of Parliament hosting it themselves, e.g. democlub/My Society kind of thing.
low-key @jtonline was thinking the same for NYC; but would never do it w/o a non-profit/NGO structure given my experience ±20 years ago campaigning for USGOV (and state & local) social media platform for the government.
the leadership nipped it at the bud because it would have competed with the bros greasing theirs palms & portfolios. they didn't care it put the onus on incumbents w/o sugar daddies who still have to pay for all their tech from penny pinched budgets & campaign contributions
@jtonline @andypiper Sounds like a great idea to me. An @parliament.gov.uk instance guaranteeing people are who they say they are.
and likewise for all @gov.uk actually (PM, minister, departments etc), it's INSANE how many governments announcements are made via picture / photographed printed letter on Twitter.
@fabienmarry @andypiper the picture on social media approach to announcements is a whole other cause of much grumbling!!!
@jtonline not like you to grumble.
@fabienmarry @jtonline it would be a very good move. Sadly I’m no longer in touch with a couple of contacts I used to have on the Westminster tech side (such connections died after my layoff). I doubt that pointing to the progress the EU is making on these topics would go down well locally, mind.
@andypiper I hear there's a new government…
@andypiper @fabienmarry pointing to the progress the EU are making would be welcome here though!
@jtonline I think that's an interesting idea but I'd suggest you be very clear on any account pages about which accounts have and haven't been officially claimed! There's an instance that does something like this for news services, but is maintaining the accounts themselves, and puts a blue checkmark emoji next to accounts that are not literally operated by the service(s) in question :(
@mcc that's a very good point. There are/were instances that mirrored tweets which caused a lot of similar confusion. I was imagining that unclaimed accounts would not post anything at all and just serve as a kind of reservation. Although even that might not be straightforward with name clashes!
@jtonline That seems reasonable, I guess in that case I'd just expect the bio to be clear the account is reserved but unclaimed.
@mcc definitely, although I can still imagine that causing confusion. If anyone is foolish enough to try this, it would be interesting to research whether dormant accounts or missing accounts would be better.
@jtonline A dormant account creates a possibility for people to follow it in anticipation of being claimed, I guess, which would be good. There might be ways to just be OVERLY cautious, like have the account display name be "Jeremy Corbyn (RESERVED)" and the avatar be like, I dunno, a loading throbber
@jtonline Mastodon has that account migration feature, so if they ever get online but don't want to live on your server, then they can use that, scoop up the followers you queued up for them, go to the alternate server and the spot on your server will serve as a waypoint directing people to the correct account
@mcc that sounds good, and account migration would be important when MPs resign or lose an election.
@jtonline In the U.S. "official" social media accounts of a representative's office are treated differently from their personal or campaign accounts and the former actually do seem to just go dormant when they are voted out of office. But there may be specific features of U.S. law causing this which don't apply for y'all.
@mcc I've been doing a bit of prototyping/hacking- unfortunately I can't do the following/migration thing without running a server but I've managed to make local politicians discoverable just using a static site, e.g. @ToniaCraig (the automated/robot indicator, non-person profile image and a warning in the description will hopefully avoid too much confusion!)
@jtonline If you ever write up a tutorial on this I'd be happy to read/boost it!
Can @'s sent to that message be received by anyone?
@mcc that's a good idea, I should definitely write something up about it sometime. For now, there's a work in progress github repository... https://github.com/OpenEastleigh/eastleigh-politicians
I'm not sure whether there's any way to get hold of @'s to the profiles. Maybe @andypiper knows some trick that might work?
@jtonline I don’t know if any of the MySociety mob are on here but they might have the span of contacts or experience to chip in on that.
@parsingphase they would definitely have the right experience. I'm also imagining @Floppy would have thoughts :)
@jtonline @parsingphase that sounds like a @DemocracyClub thing!
@Floppy @parsingphase @DemocracyClub democlub are awesome.
@Floppy @parsingphase @DemocracyClub still needs some work but after a bit of hacking @LizJarvis has joined the fediverse! 
@jtonline I feel like Germany have probably already done this
@sarahdalgulls that seems likely. I vaguely remember seeing a few experiments around but nothing in the UK that I know of.
@jtonline sounds like a good project.
@andypiper good enough to add another domain name to the collection?!
@jtonline you should do it, for sure!
@andypiper or perhaps I could lobby my MP to encourage Parliament to host an official instance :)
@jtonline I didn’t keep up with your boundary changes and all, but I assume your friendly local MP is still the friendly one?
@andypiper the very same :/
@andypiper I think I'm convinced enough to prototype something for the two Eastleigh MPs (already have the domain!) based on some webfinger trickery and other nasty hacks.