Mastodawn

Andrew Couts Nov 5, 2022

Early worries I have as a journalist using Mastodon for #journalism:

1) Subpoenas & source protection: You're at the mercy of whoever operates your instance. I'm guessing most smaller instance admins aren't also lawyering up to protect newsgathering.

2) The owner of your instance can read your DMs. Be careful.

3) Publishers could effectively verify journalists by running instances from their official domains. They could surveil their journalists there too. Not every publisher is ethical.

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Tradecraft Writing

@couts I think I’d be reluctant to trust an unencrypted medium, especially a social media account, for convos with sources I need to protect. Perhaps I would use some tool like Confide or Signal or GNU or PGP-encrypted emails, but a lot of times it comes down to low tech tradecraft, for lack of a better word. Meeting someone in the ordinary course of their life, such as at a grocery store, for example.