ResPublicae.eu admin @praetor@respublicae.eu

The #Wikidata query to find #ResPublicae accounts for MEPs has been updated on our frontpage:
https://w.wiki/62$8

It now includes languages and political groups so that you can more easily find accounts you want to follow (or mute!).

ResPublicae.eu has launched! We want to make it easier to join the #EU policy discourse on the #fediverse.

For now we just mirror on #Mastodon about 1500 #Twitter accounts of EU officials and MEPs as listed by Wikidata and https://european-union.europa.eu/contact-eu/social-media-channels_en.

Example topics:
https://respublicae.eu/tags/IPCC
https://respublicae.eu/tags/EPlenary

Special thanks to @mastohost for the excellent service and @robertoszek for being so helpful with #Stork / #pleromabot.
https://pleromabot.robertoszek.xyz

Due to the growth of the #fediverse, which may have passed 10 million registered users depending how you count, we had to update our #DigitalServicesAct (#DSA) disclosures.
https://respublicae.eu/about/more

Other possibilities exist. The principle of least astonishment could be a guiding factor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

We could mark posts from certain accounts unlisted if they regularly post to hashtags in ways which don't belong.

We could also forcefully add CWs to posts, but so far we don't. It's hard to come up with a CW which would be applicable for all accounts, or for entire classes of accounts equally. A catch-all CW like "From birdsite 🐦" is broadly correct but also potentially unhelpful.

Some accounts with no followers are sometimes considered problematic too, even though they're hard to find. Someone may accidentally stumble on something they were not prepared for.

I've surveyed a few accounts from known-controversial quarters and I've marked a few as forced-sensitive. I've also disabled mirroring RTs where they're mostly not about EU policy.

The #EuropeanParliament has a page on "Appropriate behaviour rules":
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/en/transparency/appropriate-behaviour

The Rules of Procedure, at Rule 10(1), state that:

«The conduct of Members shall be characterised by mutual respect and shall be based on the values and principles laid down in the Treaties, and particularly in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Members shall respect Parliament’s dignity and shall not harm its reputation.»

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/RULES-9-2019-07-02-RULE-010_EN.html

Rule 176 deals with sanctions.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/RULES-9-2019-07-02-RULE-176_EN.html

Another account seems to convey generic anti-establishment messaging. Its videos were not reported but I've made them forced sensitive.

Reports with specific clarifications on why a post is problematic are very welcome. (Often posts walk a fine line on topics like immigration, promotion of diversity.)

It's less helpful to send reports with no comments, about no specific posts or about generic policy disagreements (such as reporting anti-renewables posts, generic snipes against other parties).

I've reviewed incoming reports about a couple accounts, possibly triggered by one of them getting one (1) follower on troet.cafe.

The most serious report was about a probably transphobic post. On the fediverse it would at least need a CW for offensive content, discussion of state violence. The account is now limited.

To understand better, I'd like a private discussion with someone (preferably trans) who knows German and is up to date with current trans policy discussions in Germany.

An alternative list of #ResPublicae accounts is now also linked, with the names of national parties and citizenships.
https://w.wiki/6eaK

People sometimes have strong opinions about specific national parties but not necessarily about the European Parliament groups.

Easier lists should make it easier also for moderators of other instances to apply account-level blocks as needed according to their rules (which sometimes don't map easily to EU-level concepts).

Currently going through a backlog of about one week. No wonder activity was lower than usual as of late!

Amid long-delayed changes at #Twitter, it seems our mirroring bot no longer works correctly from its usual location, though it seems to work from another machine. It could be that our #TwitterAPI key was revoked and/or our IP address blacklisted. Or maybe something weirder.

More #MastoAdmin trivia/transparency for #ResPublicae.

The main operating cost for this instance is arguably RAM. 4 GB is more than enough, but it's nice to have some buffer. A DB crashing for lack of memory is not fun.

CPU usage varies a lot (but predictably) with traffic. We're on cheap shared CPUs, and 40 % steal CPU at the peak doesn't sound great, but the min idle CPU is over 10 %, so we never really run out of CPU due to bad neighbours. #Scaleway seems to be good enough at scheduling.

Ah. The date has been moved.
https://betweenthelions.link/@ne1for23/109861011947999276

Mysteriously, our API access is still working. It's still February 13th in Honolulu for a few hours though...

In light of the #TwitterAPI confusion, #ResPublicae accounts may go silent any time now.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/06/elon-promises-a-free-api-for-good-bot-content-again-demonstrating-he-has-no-idea-how-any-of-this-works/

The #TwitterDevelopers forum was also shut down.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230201030451/https://twittercommunity.com/

We'll work on a solution (or not) whenever we receive official information on what's going to happen to our API keys. We're definitely not going to pay 100 $/month though.
https://github.com/robertoszek/pleroma-bot/issues/120

The top 5 most followed accounts include:

@vonderleyen
@EU_Commission
@CopernicusEU
@EUClimateAction

#ResPublicae followers were well over 50,000 yesterday.

Activity is now picking up again with the new #TwitterMigration wave.

Follow links to the sources through Nitter to verify posts.

Due to unexpected output in Twitter's v1 API, some quote tweets have been posted on #ResPublicae as if they were authored by the quoted user.

The issue is now handled by our mirror sofware #PleromaBot thanks to swift action by the developer. It lasted perhaps a few hours while a new version was being tested.

The cases we noticed were deleted manually.

We apologise for the confusion.

Don't forget to donate to your friendly local #Nitter instance! Think of all the surveillance and abuse you and your friends are saved from every time you use Nitter... 🛡️

https://lacontrevoie.fr/participer/#don offers many avenues for contribution, including membership and donations.

Several other Nitter instances are hosted by non-profits you can donate to:
https://github.com/xnaas/nitter-instances