Chris Waigl 📡🌲🔥🏳️‍🌈Nov 20, 2022
Josh Braun
As a growing number of instances block journa.host, I'd encourage people to steer clear of the narrative that Mastodon's culture is somehow anti-journalism. If you're looking for a natural experiment, take newsie.social — I could be wrong, but as far as I know there's been no widespread blocking of that instance, which also predominantly hosts reporters. This is about the moderation decisions made by a particular instance, not some broader antipathy for journalism.
Nov 20, 2022 at 12:51amWeb
Show threadChandersNov 20, 2022

@josh not sure I *entirely* agree with this. I wrote about it a little earlier, and while I don't think the Fedeverse is necessarily "anti-journalism," I do think there is an element of journo-skepticism that might surprise some. I think the bigger issue is that Twitter enabled a very "us v them" narrative amongst journalists, who could largely blame distrust in them on MAGA Republicans.

So it is not anti, by any means, but I don't think there's a huge reservoir of goodwill.

Show threadJosh BraunNov 20, 2022
@Chanders Granted. I think the post by @joepie91 elsewhere in this thread nails it. The fediverse is home to many marginalized communities who a) have a history of mistreatment by journalists, and b) were doing well and good before the reporters showed up on the platform. That said, I still think it’s instructive that other news instances aren’t experiencing the same issues with the broader community.
Show threadChandersNov 20, 2022
@josh @joepie91 totally agree.
Show threadKim ScheinbergNov 20, 2022

@josh
Yesterday, a journa.host user with thousands of followers asked,

"Hey I'm trying to follow [user] on [different server] and I had to jump through all these hoops. Is this correct? Seems like bad UI."

As with many popular journalists from birdsite, their ratio of follows to followers is ~ 1:100.

It did make me wonder how insular that community is if it's taken this very popular person more than a week to try and follow someone not on their own instance.

Show threadRyan SchultzNov 20, 2022
@josh @vantablue it’s just been distressing to observe, though.
Show threadHope 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 SNPNov 20, 2022
@josh given the toxic nature of the MSM here in the UK why is anyone surprised there is bad feeling towards journalists. When they misrepresent facts, bend the truth and write to suit the agenda of the newspaper owner/editor/government it ceases to be reporting, it becomes propaganda. Most importantly they are too often aiding and abetting the culture wars that lead to the kind of outrage seen in the US today. That’s what was happening at this instance and it’s not acceptable.
Show threadShelenn AyresNov 20, 2022
@josh Seems to me the issue was caused by one person's actions who has been temporarily suspended. To get federated again with servers that defederated them, they need to address that with those server admins to know what they need to do to address concerns permanently. Meanwhile, it is common for users to have accounts on more than one server in case they can't login or there are issues like this.
Show threadTrismegistusMxNov 20, 2022
@josh I'm looking for instances that don't engage in server level moderation. I would rather block individuals based upon my own judgement.
Show threadP. Y. Mund's GenealogyNov 20, 2022
@josh I'm pretty sure the admin's feed at scholar.social (in which I was trying to find the reason for c.im's block) had journa.host blocked first for “having sketchy journalist types” (as close to verbatim as memory allows), then followed by a “see I was right, they have RW authors there”...
Show threadLori S Nov 20, 2022
@josh I must have missed something. Why is that happening?
Show threadKuma Chan 🧸Nov 20, 2022
@josh banned here for “journalism”
Show threadMinaNov 20, 2022

@josh Is there a way to follow such Instances as a whole rather than trying to find individuals at that Instance?

Not many news orgs have set up shop here yet and I would like to find sources until/if they do.

Show threadJosh BraunNov 21, 2022
@izzydew Not natively, but there are some apps — like Toot! for iOS — that will let you add other instances’ local timelines and interact with them from your own instance/account. You can also browse most instances’ public timelines by visiting them on the web, though there’s no simple way to interact with them from your own account.
Show threadMinaNov 21, 2022

@josh

Sorry for the delayed response. One of the reasons why I asked the question was bc I came across info about how you could block a whole domain, which made me wonder, if I can block a whole domain, why can't I add one?

Seems counterintuitive.

Show threadJosh BraunNov 21, 2022
@izzydew I agree it’d be cool to follow the public timeline of another instance in the native interface. I think being able to block an instance is a safety feature to allow you to cut off unsolicited DMs and incoming messages from a toxic instance — to protect oneself from harassment, heinous imagery, etc.