The BBC has launched their own Mastodon Server

[darwin006]

Summary

The BBC has launched their own Mastodon Server to try it out for 6 months to decide whether and how to continue.

Quotes

Quote

"first major news outlets to establish an instance"

"You can access the server at social.bbc, which encompasses posts from a handful of BBC accounts, including BBC Radio 4, BBC Taster, BBC Research & Development, and a few more."

"you can’t actually create accounts or posts on the server, you can still leave replies from the instance that you’re using, as well as follow its accounts."

"the BBC still has some concerns about content moderation, as Mastodon doesn’t have a dedicated moderation team and leaves it up to individual servers instead. This means the BBC won’t have any control over what people say in their replies to its posts, but it says that’s an “acceptable risk.”

“The principles of the Fediverse, with an emphasis on local control, quality content, and social value, are far more aligned with our public purposes than those of avowedly commercial networks like Threads or Twitter,” the BBC writes. “We aim to learn how much value it has provided and how much work and cost is involved.”

"the Financial Times has also tried to move away from Twitter...Mastodon has proved more hassle than it’s worth.” In addition to sparking legal and reputational concerns, the Financial Times says the growth of its server resulted in an “exponential effect” on its cost to maintain it. The BBC might have a much different experience, though, since it’s not allowing users to create accounts on the instance.

 
My thoughts
Looks like major news outlets are looking for ways to interact with the public, start a community, attract more viewers and they want to have some control of the platform they do it on.

I imagine other major news outlets and media companies will be watching what happens with the BBCs "experiment" or going ahead giving their own Mastodon servers a try.

A lot of people go to social media for news, more news outlets using Mastodon/ the Fediverse could be a factor in driving more people away from Twitter and making Mastodon more mainstream.

Sources
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/31/23814556/bbc-experimental-mastodon-server-twitter

[SorryBella]

3 hours ago, darwin006 said:

Looks like major news outlets are looking for ways to interact with the public, start a community, attract more viewers and they want to have some control of the platform they do it on.

Or outreach on every platform as usual. BBC have always been on the edge of communication advances, for better or worse.

[williamcll]

This sounds like Telegram is going to get into trouble soon.

[Taf the Ghost]

This is going to go well. Considering almost every major publication gave up on comments sections because they'd constantly get roasted by their own customers, this should make for some hilarity.

[4uffin]

I just wish the clickbaity mfer’s called news channels would just leave the modern day internet alone.

[Monkey Dust]

I guess since Twitter, sorry X, is a death spiral, and Threads is seemingly not ready for prime time yet, I see the logic. I can't see this going anywhere though, Mastodon had it moment, and it didn't take off.

[HenrySalayne]

13 hours ago, darwin006 said:

Summary

The BBC has launched their own Mastodon Server to try it out for 6 months to decide whether and how to continue.

Why is this interesting? Because they are late to the party and the last public service broadcaster to launch their own Mastodon server?

 

[jagdtigger]

9 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

This is going to go well. Considering almost every major publication gave up on comments sections because they'd constantly get roasted by their own customers, this should make for some hilarity.

Especially if other instances start blacklisting it..... 

[jagdtigger]

That article is a paid for smear job more than likely.  Any self hosted solution could be used for that.....

[VanayadGaming]

My prediction, they will see it is not worth their money and continue do their main business on X.

[suicidalfranco]

13 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

That article is a paid for smear job more than likely.  Any self hosted solution could be used for that.....

And nobody does nothing to stop it just like with Twitter before the musk take over.

 

Guess this is where they all moved out. Well this and instgrama, and tiktok, and Snapchat

[HenrySalayne]

11 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

And nobody does nothing to stop it just like with Twitter before the musk take over.

 

Guess this is where they all moved out. Well this and instgrama, and tiktok, and Snapchat

Seems like Lovejoy's law is heavily in use here.

 

You do understand the intrinsic properties of decentralised systems like Mastodon?

[ExperiencersInternational]

21 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Especially if other instances start blacklisting it..... 

I think that's already happened with one of the biggest servers, mastodon.art due to the BBC's transphobia.

[wanderingfool2]

9 hours ago, VanayadGaming said:

My prediction, they will see it is not worth their money and continue do their main business on X.

Honestly with Twitter subscriptions, the news orgs might actually benefit more from doing Twitter Blue and having subscribers than if they didn't.

 

7 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Seems like Lovejoy's law is heavily in use here.

 

You do understand the intrinsic properties of decentralised systems like Mastodon?

It's a valid point of contention though.  You can't just pretend that it doesn't exist; or do nothing to mitigate it.

 

While the servers themselves might be mostly decentralized...the fact remains that they still essentially offer the initial vessel to connect to the decentralized servers.  Decentralized also doesn't actually have the intrinsic property of not being able to police things either.  They could easily have built into the protocol their ability to.  As a note, Skype protocol was decentralized and they still managed to police things back in the day.

[HarryNyquist]

44 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's a valid point of contention though.  You can't just pretend that it doesn't exist; or do nothing to mitigate it.

 

While the servers themselves might be mostly decentralized...the fact remains that they still essentially offer the initial vessel to connect to the decentralized servers.  Decentralized also doesn't actually have the intrinsic property of not being able to police things either.  They could easily have built into the protocol their ability to.  As a note, Skype protocol was decentralized and they still managed to police things back in the day.

"Offering the initial vessel to connect to the decentralized servers" is just that. It's up to you and the larger network to police those items. And there is plenty of ability to police that kind of content on the fediverse. Reports federate too, if you see something you can report it and it's up to the admins of that instance to take action against the user posting it, and/or bring it up to YOUR admins and have them defederate from that instance as a whole. The people in those articles where they say "mastodon is FULL of CSAM" admit that almost 90% would not have shown up if they'd consulted a defederation blocklist in their investigations.

 

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say. Using a service should not be equated with the user giving approval to & supporting all the activities occurring on that service.

 

[jagdtigger]

6 hours ago, ExperiencersInternational said:

transphobia

Just as an fyi im against the whole lmb whatever too.....

[WolframaticAlpha]

3 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

musk actually enforced rules against them

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/27/twitter-csam-dom-lucre-elon-musk/

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/durbin_presses_the_justice_department_to_investigate_and_curb_child_sexual_exploitation_on_twitter.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/technology/twitter-child-sex-abuse.html

 

wow, it is almost as if every platform can have a csam problem and that having Musk doesn't mean that CSAM goes away. In fact slashing and firing employees from compliance departments probably doesn't mean that you will have better compliance.

 

Also inb4 some musk fan calls all the things I posted biased drivel or some variation of that.

[suicidalfranco]

43 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

slashing and firing employees from compliance departments probably doesn't mean that you will have better compliance.

Deserved! they didn't do they're job before musk, or only did it when it benefited them i.e. : posting pedo content: no problem, reporting pedos: ban! .... The people doing the reporting, not the actual pedos

That's what the trust and safety board amounted too before musk.

 

[HenrySalayne]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Decentralized also doesn't actually have the intrinsic property of not being able to police things either.  They could easily have built into the protocol their ability to.  As a note, Skype protocol was decentralized and they still managed to police things back in the day.

Yes, "unable to police" is exactly what the decentralised approach means. I have no clue why you think Skype was decentralised since it was controlled by a single (centralised) entity.

Complaining about Mastodon not being policed is like complaining about the blockchain not being policed. It's a system designed to be intrinsically unpoliceable.

 

However, the entire discussion is futile because this has nothing to do with the BBC's Mastodon server.

[SansVarnic]

-= Cleaned =-

Lets stay on topic, im not in the mood to hand out warnings today.

[Uttamattamakin]

Interesting.  I've seen other media outlets try to start their own ... social media like/ message board like community.  What often kills them is that the community is very focused.  On a social media people want to able to widely share all manner of things and need wide latitude to do so.   They often won't stick with it. 

Interesting thought.  I wonder if at some point LTT might consider shuttering the forum and moving to a product like Mastodon.  Taking advantage of that open source product ... maybe people can pay a nominal fee/year to cover some of the cost?  Just a thought. 

[SansVarnic]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

I wonder if at some point LTT might consider shuttering the forum and moving to a product like Mastodon.  Taking advantage of that open source product ... maybe people can pay a nominal fee/year to cover some of the cost?

Likely not. The forum does offer the option of a forum subscription to which some do pay for. The forum is currently in no financial shortfall.

[Uttamattamakin]

44 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

Likely not. The forum does offer the option of a forum subscription to which some do pay for. The forum is currently in no financial shortfall.

Really?  I had no idea. 
LTT does stand as an example of how to do social media right, including, in a small way, their own platform(s).  I hope things go well for the BBC. 

[SansVarnic]

48 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Really?  I had no idea. 
LTT does stand as an example of how to do social media right, including, in a small way, their own platform(s).  I hope things go well for the BBC. 

[WolframaticAlpha]

10 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

they didn't do they're job before musk, or only did it when it benefited them i.e. : posting pedo content: no problem, reporting pedos: ban! .... The people doing the reporting, not the actual pedos

That's what the trust and safety board amounted too before musk

Got any hard data for that or is that hearsay/anecdotal evidence? I showed you that CSAM exists, it might have gone up or down we can't say. And it is also logical to follow that more people working in compliance=compliance improvements. However saying that they were allowing for posting of CSAM without regards seems a bit fishy.