Email Templates

This small step can lead to a few early adopters who encourage other politicians until not having a Mastodon account becomes a distinction. These early adopters can be thought of as leaders within their level of government or political party.

Below we have provided a list of talking points that you can use to craft a message to your local elected representative. Further below we have some tips on how to make your messages more effective and some sample templates that you can use as is, or edit to your preference.

Unsure who to send a note to? Check out our Politicians section to see if your local elected official is on Mastodon. If you have suggestions or templates that have been effective for you please share them via our Mastodon account - @ElbowsUpForDigitalSovereignty.

Mastodon Talking Points

The talking points listed below outline the key features of Mastodon that distinguish it from corporate foreign owned social media. These are provided in plain language without getting technical, in appreciation of your audience - politicians versus IT experts.

• Mastodon is a non-profit social media platform. It is run by individuals for their social media communities. There is no profit driven motivation that drives abhorrent behavior.
  
• Servers are widely distributed and locally owned and operated. That means control and security remains in Canada.
  
• There is no algorithm used to drive engagement. This is a problem with other social media platforms that highlight and multiply harmful and hateful messages.
  
• There is no advertising revenue or programs on Mastodon. The platform is for communication and social engagement.
  
• End user data is not collected, stored, shared, or sold.
  
• Controls for communications and responses are far more extensive than other applications. The user is in control of how their messages are seen and used, not some algorithm designed to drive data traffic.

Effective Email Strategies

Below are some tips and ideas on how to make your emails more effective:

• If you accomplish the goal of getting your contact to open a Mastodon account after a single email - congratulations. But it might take several so change up your message with each subsequent email, perhaps targeting a different talking point each time.
  
• Use current events as a triggering event, like political attacks by bots or Grok (the AI for the X platform) producing nonconsensual images of women and children.
  

Use personal or publicly available information if possible:

• “I met you recently at a campaign event”
• “I noticed that you spoke out about Canadian sovereignty last week”
• “I see that you have taken a stance on personal data security”