“Developments on Twitter are changing almost daily,” a government spokesman told the newspapers of the Funke media group (Saturday editions). “When it becomes clear how Twitter will act in the future, we will analyze this and draw our conclusions.” The federal government is “observing developments on Twitter very closely”.
According to the report, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have also been following the development of the short message service closely since it was taken over by Elon Musk. “Reliable and credible sources in the social networks are of great importance in view of the high incidence of disinformation,” said a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
A spokesman explained that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is primarily focusing on adjustments to user authentication and data protection issues. “In addition to our accounts on Twitter, the Federal Foreign Office has also had an account on Mastodon since last week.”
Mastodon is a company that offers similar functions to Twitter, but works in a decentralized and non-profit-oriented manner. It was last traded as a potential Twitter alternative.
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The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI), Ulrich Kelber, and his agency are also active on Mastodon. The authority recently deleted the BfDI Twitter account. Kelber justified this step in the Funke newspapers with the fact that “to this day it is not possible to prove the compliance of the company with data protection law”.
The “non-transparent developments surrounding the takeover of Twitter” by Musk and the associated increase in usage figures at Mastodon would have “then been the final decisive factor in leaving Twitter”.
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Musk took over Twitter about two weeks ago after an endless argument about the purchase and not only fired the management, but later also around half of his 7,500 employees. A few days ago he caused confusion with a new verification symbol, which he first introduced and then “buried” again – but in the end it was said that it would be introduced.
Recently, several senior Twitter employees had left the company. This further increased the chaos.
