The province of Drenthe has examined its social media policy and comes to the conclusion that it remains active on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. X may be phased out. But both social media channels are important for the province to keep using it, despite the risks.
The province not only uses social media to distribute information, but also to listen, connect and to involve the residents in policy and decision -making. And also to actively refute disinformation.
One of the reasons to look critically at one’s own social media use is the changed moderation of disinformation on X and Facebook. The fact checkers have been fired, so that the public must indicate whether messages are disinformation or not. The same thing happened at Instragram and Threads (just like Facebook owned by Meta).
For the time being, Meta has only stopped fact checkers in the United States, but together meta-owner Mark Zuckerberg wants to fight US President Donald Trump against European rules that require large online platforms to control the accuracy of messages.
Apart from that: all these social media channels run based on algorithms that determine what you see and make it increasingly difficult to see something that is not in your timeline or recommendation.
So the province weighs whether it should be present or such a channel and what it should or should not do there. This is mainly based on democratic values such as freedom of expression, how open is a platform for different users and opinions and how a media channel deals with data safety and the privacy of users. And to what extent prevents or fights the fake news and propaganda platform? Is contentmoderatie fair and transparent?
X and Facebook do not score well when it comes to the privacy of users and they also score no more than average on disinformation and moderation, the province judges. X even scores in the provincial assessment ‘average/doubtful.’ That is why the province of X will keep an eye on and possibly reduce.
The province comes to the conclusion that the new social media channels bluesky and threads can be of added value as an opportunity for an alternative approach and will also use it. According to the province, Threads connects with the Instagram audience and promotes short interactions, while Bluesky is used as a transparent and democratic alternative to show openness and to keep talking with the residents and experts involved.
But also at Threads, the province is already seeing a considerable downside in the field of privacy. That is why the province is going to use the communication on that channel ‘Better and monitor for the time being.’