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Montreal’s open-data team has discontinued its presence on X, citing a misalignment between the platform’s current evolution and the core principles of transparency and access that define their mission. The decision prioritizes direct engagement through the municipal website, aiming to foster a more controlled and effective environment for public interaction. This shift reflects a broader concern about how third-party social media algorithms and access restrictions may hinder the clear dissemination of information, potentially undermining the open nature of the data initiatives. Consequently, the city emphasizes that community feedback and inquiries should now occur directly through official channels rather than via public social media feeds. By consolidating communication on their own domain, the administration seeks to ensure that all exchanges are recorded and accessible, addressing issues where previous platform changes reduced traffic and visibility. This move suggests that maintaining a robust open-data ecosystem requires platforms that support, rather than complicate, the unrestricted flow of civic information to citizens. This development is highly relevant to open data because it highlights the tension between using centralized social networks for transparency and the necessity of maintaining independent, accessible infrastructure. It underscores the risk of relying on private platforms whose policies can suddenly change, potentially obscuring public data. For the open data community, this serves as a critical reminder that true transparency demands ownership of communication channels, ensuring that information remains permanently available and unfiltered by commercial algorithms or account access barriers.

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Published on 2024-10-05

Open Data

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