[zuminator]

There are two reasons here why "just pay the shakedown" isn't a compelling argument.

The first one is obvious. Why should public institutions (or anybody) preferentially line Musk's pockets, especially when every other social media site is free?

The second is more subtle. The goal of this type of social media outreach by government is to make sure the messaging reaches as many people as possible. But Twitter, by instituting these restrictions, also limits the amount of people who can read these essential messages. So even if the government pays, its tweets reach fewer people than before. And thereby the government indirectly discriminates against people too poor to pay the fee.

[thepasswordis]

Because nobody uses those other social media sites.

Why should our governments line the pockets of verizon, cogent, L3, AT&T, when they could just broadcast the messages on a hacked together lorawan chat handheld that my friends and I use to talk to each other at burning man?

[zuminator]

> Because nobody uses those other social media sites.

You realize Twitter isn't even in the top 10 social media platforms worldwide. Facebook has almost 6x as many users.

[thepasswordis]

I think this is their facebook account. It's login-gated: https://www.facebook.com/TranBC/