Mastodawn

rafikiphoto 🇪🇸 🇪🇺 🇬🇧 Dec 30, 2022

A plea to journalists covering the Fediverse:

If you want to pitch a story and the only people you can think of to talk to are Gargron and the Journa Host admin, please don't.

Instead, use the time you saved to learn more about how this network functions, who the people behind ActivityPub are (and what that even is), who the people keeping instances running are, who the people moderating instances are; you can even get your hands dirty by digging through the Mastodon GitHub issue queue and learning why exactly some design decisions ended up the way they did, it's all right there!

Mastodon is not off-brand Twitter. You do this entire community a massive disservice by painting it as such, and you do our profession a disservice by expressing a complete lack of curiosity about this community before you report on it.

Thank you.

Shrig 🐌Dec 29, 2022

@aendra hateee this stuff! Tech journalism's reporting of the shit freeze peach Librem instance was a real relentless horror story of regurgitating press releases too. So lazy and dangerous

Satan Dec 29, 2022

@aendra that'd mean doing some work. I don't think journalists do that these days

deltatux Dec 29, 2022

@aendra

and if the journalists want to dig in even deeper, they would also see the #fediverse to be much bigger than just #Mastodon.

We've got other microblogging software like #GoToSocial, #Pleroma, #MissKey & their respective forks. There's also other types of social media on the fediverse like #PeerTube, #WriteFreely, #Plume, #PixelFed, #Friendica and more!

Mastodon just so happens to be the biggest/most popular #ActivityPub implementation but they're far from the only one.

Akkoma

Defiance!Dec 29, 2022

@deltatux @aendra This is a nice summary, easy to consume. Great starting point. I found it very helpful anyway

https://fediverse.party/

- Fediverse.Party - explore federated networks

Let's make social media free, federated and fun! Fediverse.Party is your guide into the world of decentralized, autonomous networks running on free open software on a myriad of servers across the world. No ads and no algorithms. Join Fediverse and become part of the new interconnected Web!

Alcea Dec 29, 2022

@deltatux @aendra

Most don't get that.

Once you do, you never go back

Pelle Wessman Dec 29, 2022

@aendra @blaine And how Mastodon and ActivityPub can interoperate with other technologies invented and developed by other groups and thus isn’t fully dependent on any single piece of the technology but rather stays resilient beyond that, unlike eg Twitter which is a monoculture technically.

JJ Peterson Dec 29, 2022

@aendra Twitter is destroying journalism and the journalists like it.

King Kaufman Dec 29, 2022

@aendra
#missedquoteboost

I would have said how this shouldn't be, but is, asking for the moon.

There was a brief part of my career when I would routinely be the one BEING INTERVIEWED BY a journalist, rather than the other way around.

In all but one or two cases, the reporter didn't record our conversation or take notes.

King Kaufman Dec 29, 2022

@aendra
Oh and I should mention it was the same kind of reporting @aendra is talking about here. They were reporting, mostly for tech and biz media, about a new thing in the digital world.

michelle.cat Dec 29, 2022

@aendra It’s an interesting experiment and will be even more interesting to see where it goes with exponential growth I think for the average user not familiar with the architecture it looks a lot like Twitter , instances align with interest categories so maybe hide the instances and let enrollees select categories of interest , more advanced users can I hide the instances

Steve Williams Dec 29, 2022

@aendra It’s how they do, sadly. Like so much news churn, the closer it is to home, the more you realise how poor the quality of reporting can be. Obviously there are good exceptions, but most is just file and forget.

sparseMatrix ✅✅✅ 📻Dec 29, 2022

I kinda think they should talk to users, too.

FediThing has moved!Dec 29, 2022

It feels like a lot of journalists are in awe of big numbers, whether it's ratings, users, followers, earnings, sales, likes etc.

The significance of smaller things requires more insight about how things may work out in the future (and is perhaps harder to sell to editors?).

As the pandemic has shown, many people only react to large numbers, when it would be much better to proactively seek out significant things when they are still small.

Martin Dec 29, 2022

@aendra Also someone must have written a mastodon social media guide that states that the first post for a journalist has to be:
"I'm writing an explainer. As the decentralised nature is such a hurdle for the user what would be a good analogy"
What follows are the obvious replies by Mastodon well "e-mail" and quite often detailed hints and best practices for newbies. But the result is often no or very limited engagement by the OP.

Martin Dec 29, 2022

@aendra Just to leave this here: IMO a good starting point for explaining the multitudes that are contained in the Fediverse is this interactive mapping attempt by user @comeetie

https://www.comeetie.fr/galerie/mapstodon/

Mapstodon

@aendra When's the last time any media outlet did research before knee jerking a reaction to anything? It's easier to post a small retraction than front page news.

Elfbiter Dec 29, 2022

@aendra To some journalists that would take too much time, not to mention work, and "eyeball kicks" and clickbaits are everything that matters to them anyway.

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦Dec 29, 2022

@aendra hear hear!

You made a great point that I think could maybe be made even more forcefully:

A journalist writing about Mastodon and the Fediverse, doesn't even *need* to ask people how a thing happened. As you said, pretty much everything is out there in the open.

We are used to and other closed platforms guarding this kind of behind-the-scenes stuff vigorously. No such information gatekeeping really happens here.

Mark Atwood Dec 29, 2022

@aendra The ones that will hear you already know this. The ones who are doing it badly will never hear you.

Dr. Fyzziks Dec 29, 2022

@aendra hear hear! Oh and one more thing: stop calling Mastodon "a site", while you're at it.

Voron Dec 29, 2022

@aendra yeah I’m tech stupid, and I have read a lot of posts about GitHub & activitypub and still have no damn idea what they really are nor how they are.
Also I’m not stupid I’m a former military communication intelligence analyst, former business owner, used to be a board member of an indivisible group and helped run their social media.
That crap ain’t easy to figure out

Chris Trottier Dec 29, 2022

@aendra I appreciate you saying this.

Arindam Basu Dec 29, 2022

This is a much needed post. Needs to be boosted!

AndyCarr Dec 29, 2022

@aendra great advice, hold the line for balanced respectful conversations.

gallaugher Dec 29, 2022

@aendra I want to get my newbie undergrads (not necessarily tech students) using the Fediverse next semester. Do you have a really good primer that an undergrad is likely to read (noting they don’t read much and certainly not anything dense)? Alternatively any good video primers? Thx for the advice!

Unbreakable? Hold my espresso.Dec 29, 2022

@aendra Gah, you could use this to retort to virtually every article in the general press I have read about Mastodon.

"To give you a look at how Mastodon works to someone wanting to use it I will not ask a single question of anyone knowledgable but just plow in and follow one or two wankers then decide to change my server a few times and then decide the whole thing is bollocks."

Thor A. Hopland Dec 29, 2022

@aendra wow, journalists misrepresenting technological development and digital decentralisation? Say it ain't so... /s

That being said, the Fediverse could do with a bit of modern marketing. People I've talked to who are aware of Mastodon don't even know it's decentralised. I've had to explain it several times now and it's shocking how badly represented the technology really is.

A little razzle dazzle and modern web development UX could go a long way to inform and enlighten prospective users.

@hopland Mastodon could do a better job of creating more decentralization awareness by making exploring specific instances easier. For example, I want profile catalogues from abroad instances to be more accessible as well as public posts.

Thor A. Hopland Dec 30, 2022

@vegafjord discovery functions are that encourages and garners engagement. The only problem here are the ethical implications - word to Facebook.

There probably should be another landing page, or discovery page, that shows the activity on the current server at a glance.

How about one of those "this year" functions that show the user and the servers historical engagement, even some form of achievement system.

However: Is driving engagement an ethical minefield? What are the best practices?

@hopland If we dont want our posts to be visible or easily accessible, then I dont see the point of posting them as public. Then I think we should steer in the hometown fork direction rather than making posts less accessible through obstacles.

ニルス・スキニール Dec 29, 2022

@aendra
Twitter and related media made journos lazy, I think.
Rather than report they provided dispatches and called it journalism.
Heck I was field Intel in combat. We provided field dispatches, but if we got back we had a debrief and wrote a f@cking report
Most of today's journos usu skip the debrief and never write a report.

Svetlana Dec 29, 2022

I can't find many. When I do all I see is a link to their Twitter. We're living in a culture of narcissism put on steroids by Trump. Journalists sadly are no exception.

@aendra PLEASE don't even talk to the Journa Host admin for any reason due to transphobia

Lynn_from_OK Dec 30, 2022

@aendra That's pretty typical for journalists these days: just get a story out there as quickly as possible. Never mind if it's accurate or not.

anlomedad Dec 30, 2022

@aendra
Yeah, thanks, but... why write such a long post about what journalists SHOULD write about "The Fediverse" – and then frame your advice as if the fediverse would consist solely of instances running the Mastodon software?

It's wrong. It's a harmful framing, even.

So please edit your post again and delete the wrong framing. Thanks.

Everton Zanella Alvarenga Dec 30, 2022

@aendra I was thinking yesterday exactly about this, and how nice it would be to have a story, for instance, about #ActivityPub. I'd recommend to talk to @evan.

I knew him because I was working in a social networking platform at University of São Paulo (15 years ago). One of our goals was to have some protocol like we have today, and he was working on identi.ca, a federated microblogging tool.

A good summary here https://kind.social/@f00fc7c8/109407989829565640

#Mastodon #decentralization #federation #fediverse

f00f/eris/continuum/etc (@[email protected])

Since Mastodon saw its initial popularity circa 2017, I've noticed that most users and those reporting on it either don't think about the Fediverse as anything more than Mastodon, or treat its history as beginning with Eugen Rochko and the beginning of Mastodon. In fact, Mastodon is the latest in a long line of federated social networks going at least back to Identi.ca, and though I wasn't around for all of it, I find this history pretty interesting. (Thread; boosts welcome!)

Be More Kind

Stéphane Deschamps Dec 30, 2022

@aendra Like “Hey, look, ActivityPub is one of the most seminal last big projects from @w3c to emerge!” you mean?

That would indeed be a good way to have journalists engage with W3C, I haven't seen them do it in a long time. 🙂

rafikiphoto 🇪🇸 🇪🇺 🇬🇧 Dec 30, 2022

Well said.

Nemes Content Dec 30, 2022

@aendra Makes me miss the podcast "Nothing but the toot" that would interview different instance admins to get a vibe of the different communities.

It was short lived, and kinda shitposty, but it really showed the different philosophies of what an instance on the fediverse could be and the creativity of the community. I feel like that or even an article based series could be useful in those aspects.

Jake Is Writing (Allegedly)Dec 30, 2022

@aendra And then when they talk to Gargron they ask him about Twitter and Elon Musk for the first 20 minutes of the interview. Some "reporters" are just a bunch of hacks.

AllyBallyBee19 Dec 30, 2022

@aendra well said.

Frank Garufi Jr.Dec 31, 2022

This reminds me of the days of Google+. Journalist couldn't understand that either. Unfortunately, it feels like if they can't get it, because it isn't exactly like what they are use to, they write negative stories about it.

sj_zero Jan 18, 2023

"maybe mastodons end game is to get bought out by one of the big players!"

Any journalists who even think about thinking about writing a sentence like the above needs to stop writing and start reading because it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the platform.

midway Jan 18, 2023

Most journalists aren’t interested in doing that much work on a story. A story on “Mastodon” is one of probably 3 they are trying to crank out this week each with a deadline. Their story is also quite word limited, especially if it will actually appear in print but that’s not necessarily a requirement for brevity. So they aren’t going to spend more than 3 sentences talking about federation and the greater Fediverse because the average person doesn’t care and has at most heard the term “mastodon”.

This is the nature of most journalism. Sure there are long form folks out there but they are a niche because it’s too expensive for the readership it will get. Most people don’t have the time or, frankly, the attention span to read a multi page article on the Fediverse. If they have interest in the subject they want a few talking points they can tell people if the topic comes up socially and that’s it. They sound informed to their friends and that’s all that matters. Anyone with a real interest after that will spend time doing internet searches for more detail.

In short, you can’t rely on popular mainstream journalism to properly promote the Fediverse. It doesn’t fit the business model.

Bill Seitz Dec 9, 2023

@aendra http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/GellMannAmnesia

Gell-Mann Amnesia

Gell-Mann Amnesia

WebSeitz