The Swiss government announced on Tuesday that it would be using the decentralised, independent social network Mastodon, alongside social network X (formerly Twitter), which has been heavily criticised since it was bought by Elon Musk.
The experiment will last for a year and will be followed by an assessment to determine what further action is to be taken. While it lasts, the Swiss government will continue to use its other social networks.
Created in 2016 by German developer Eugen Rochko, the site presents itself as a free and open source decentralised social network without no advertising and where the preservation of private data is sacrosanct.
The Swiss authorities were attracted by these characteristics and by the absence of recourse to a central server, which allows the platform to escape the control of a single company or state censorship.
They also stress that Mastodon respects the protection of users’ data by limiting collection to the minimum necessary for operation and (by) explicitly excluding the sale and trading of data. These are areas in which other social networks and X in particular have come in for criticism.
Since he bought Twitter last year, Elon Musk has turned the platform upside down, with massive redundancies – 1,500 employees remain out of 8,000 previously – right up to its recent name change.
