Isn't a better question what could be gained from a government-run social media site?
The only reason this article gives is that government agencies could use it to broadcast messages to the public. But that's backwards. Government agencies want to broadcast their messages where large numbers of people might see it... Twitter happened to be such a place, but if it stops being so, they can find where the people are able to see their messages.
(Note: all these agencies have web sites, so we're talking about better/lower-friction means of communication, not the question of communicating at all.)
It seems incredibly inefficient for the government to build their own social media site for the purpose, since they'd have to somehow get large numbers of people to use it. Is it not far more efficient to just go to where large numbers of people are already going? $500 million/year is a hell of a lot to spend on something that seems to have no particular use or value.
(Not to mention the question of content moderation, which surely sinks this idea all by itself.)
The only reason this article gives is that government agencies could use it to broadcast messages to the public. But that's backwards. Government agencies want to broadcast their messages where large numbers of people might see it... Twitter happened to be such a place, but if it stops being so, they can find where the people are able to see their messages.
(Note: all these agencies have web sites, so we're talking about better/lower-friction means of communication, not the question of communicating at all.)
It seems incredibly inefficient for the government to build their own social media site for the purpose, since they'd have to somehow get large numbers of people to use it. Is it not far more efficient to just go to where large numbers of people are already going? $500 million/year is a hell of a lot to spend on something that seems to have no particular use or value.
(Not to mention the question of content moderation, which surely sinks this idea all by itself.)