The BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decentralised social media

BlackRose@slrpnk.net to Fediverse@lemmy.ml – 380 points – The BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decentralised social media
bbc.co.uk

Edit: they published some transphobic shit: https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/02/15/ilga-europe-transphobia-uk-bbc/

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Seems like the right approach to start their own server, instead of making accounts on some of the flagship instances, which only perpetuates the centralisation dogma.

It also does away with some of the really awkward practices news organizations engage in wrt social media. The number of @JournalistNameCBC handles out there is kind of super cringy, and seems to point to journos having company-specific/company-mandated social media accounts, but without any actual company support for them.

Something like this makes having a company-mandated social media account something they're assigned, just like an email address, rather than something they're personally responsible for.

What I'd love to see is news companies spinning up their own instances, for example, a CBC-owned Mastodon instance, with accounts such as journalistname@cbcnews. It'd work exactly like a company-assigned e-mail address, and would function as such. That each and every post on such an account would be seen as the journalist working under the company, and not their own personal views.

And if a journalist wants his own personal account, well, they can either spin up their own instance, or perhaps a union of journalists would spin up an instance, with journalists setting up their accounts that are not tied to any news agency or company.

Am I being too naive and optimistic here? Maybe. But do I want this to happen regardless, yes!

Upon reading the article more closely, this is what the BBC is doing. My bad!

Yep. It's one pattern that I think really sells the federated social media idea.

Hopefully this becomes more normalised. The idea that a company runs their own site, but not social now seems a bit backward.

Wait, so if I just make an account on twitter named @PeterRothenburgCBC, then everyone thinks I am a legit reporter?

When I joined Mastodon in the November migration, I wondered why media organisations weren’t spinning up their own servers. Give all the journos an account on that server and there’s your verification right away.

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I woke to discover this, and immediately defederated it. I don't need that transphobia factory in our timelines

Clarify?

The BBC is actively transphobic, and regularly publishes transphobic content that stirs up hate. Given that I admin two trans heavy instances, I won't be federating with them

I've always considered them very left leaning historically. Do you have any links that have this content? I can't find any doing a search.

Are there articles you can share?

It's pretty widely known and has been an issue for a long time. It's not terribly hard to google for.

I tried to google it before asking

edit: the only result i found was this: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/04/bbc-changes-online-article-at-centre-of-transphobia-row

edit2: does this sum it up? https://www.them.us/story/bbc-latest-transphobic-screed-is-a-mockery-of-journalism

I've also been looking. I see other websites complaining, but I want to see actual BBC content that's inflamatory etc, as I can't find anything. It must exist, but so far, can't find it.

"Many people have blocked the BBC for posting transphobic content that is harmful to trans folk"

"Hey, can you please share some of that harmful content?"

Well honestly, if it can't be sourced, is it even true? I'm all for burning a media outlet at the stake. But, I'd want to see evidence first. If it can't be found, it's not true for all intent and purpose.

There are links to various articles about it in this discussion tree. You're either not looking hard for sources, or you're being disingenuous. I hope it's the former, but experience tells me it's the latter.

For the sake of reporting facts and journalism, I believe it's correct to put the incriminated proof on the internet archive and link them here.

I see. Sorry about your experience.

Ok but not everything revolves around trans people's issues. Can we be glad for a positive development for once, or will we remove everything that does not 100% agree with our view of the world from the fediverse?

Defederating isn't irrational, it's not a matter of personal beliefs it's a matter of actual people's lives and being allowed to express themselves. Going against that is inhumane and anyone that does it should be held accountable for their actions. Despite that, mainstream attention direcred towards the fediverse is a positive advancement.

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Logical decision on the part of a journalistic medium, given that the fediverse has many more sources of information than a monolithic Big Brother traditional social network with mainstream users.

Unsurprisingly given its extremely high profile as a purveyor of transphobic coverage, many mastodon instances have greeted them with a firm block. (If this confuses folks who don't pay attention to this sort of thing, just picture in your head if it was fox news.)

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Man I wish other news organizations would join. Press.coop had a bunch of accounts that were mirroring their twitter feeds but the API change killed them.