👋 Hello #fediverse! I'm going into a meeting at 4ET to talk about our newsroom's social media options.
If you think our station and other #NPR stations should have a Mastodon server or a broader presence in the #fediverse, pls boost this post. If you have thoughts, please reply, I want to hear them!
NOTE: as I mentioned to @FediFollows and @[email protected] earlier today, it's important to understand the barriers that face stations or networks that want to set up a server. I summarize those here: https://mastodon.social/@gbhnews/110186548799130656
No one should expect anything to happen instantly.
I think it's worth understanding what the barriers are to stations or networks establishing their own servers.
As the social editor, if I see a new platform and think, "oh, that's interesting," I have the power to open an account there.
Setting up a server for a station or a network would involve the cooperation of IT, marketing, and legal folks. Big stations and big networks have to do a fair amount of prep and due diligence before they make a move like that. 1/x
So it's not just the cost of setting up/running a server (which people tell me here could be quite minimal). It's the man-hours of prep, setup, and ongoing maintenance for things like moderation, tech support, etc. that come into the equation.
And the other half of that equation is the assessment the people involved make of the opportunity. Math is a big part of that. How many users are on that network, and how many of those people are likely to see or engage? 2/2
@gbhnews Yeah, we understand this. But still: you have full control--not at the whims of a psycho with more money than sense, or a government, or whatever.
Also: you get the added cred of verifying your own team. It's hard to know here who is legit, imposters are easy to create in this system--an institution server is a good solution to this.
The Swedish University Network, Sunet, which connects the Swedish universities, has set up a server at @sunet where any Swedish university student can create an account using their student login.
I would be interested to hear about the background, concerns, methods and experiences, but unfortunately the admin account hasn't posted anything. I may look around for a bit to see if there is any material about this elsewhere.
There's a bit of strategy involved.
"NPR" is short for "National Public Radio", where "National" means the USA. But the Fediverse is inherently international. How to deal with that?
I notice Fediverse accounts from the USA that rather ignore the ~96% rest of the world's population. Which is a possible, maybe even reasonable choice.
If you choose differently, interacting with us needs thought. Do you want to require your target group to understand phrases like "meeting at 4 ET"?
Fediverse posts can reach an international audience.
I have reason to speculate that many Fediverse users don't give the matter any thought, in particular, in my, the #hamradio community. (SW radio is inherently international.) So I'm trying to raise awareness.
I secretly hope more people would decide to target an international audience.
But I also understand that's not reasonable to ask. So all I'm saying out loud is: Think about the matter.
@JorgeStolfi: Exactly as you say.
@gbhnews
@kjuh I agree.
The problem of the thoughtlessness of using national slang when sending to an international audience is neither new nor Fediverse-specific.
My simple explanation is this is just email...for social media. It's federated just like email.
People didn't jump straight into email way back when (Iz is old) but it's become a simple requirement for business today. Social media with the silos has become the same.
Mastodon/ActivityPub is the first chance to fix that silo thing and get back to internet roots of how it's supposed to work
This must be emphasized.
Moderation also includes deciding whether to block users from the rest of the Fediverse (e.g. if their posts cross the line into harassment), and deciding whether to defederate from other instances (with new ones springing up all the time). I'd expect those two parts to be a bigger proportion of the job than the part which relates to behaviour _from_ the users on your instance.
@unchartedworlds @AlisonW @gbhnews
There are also combinations in which, say, each station runs its own instance and manages its own reporters/staff (the only ones who'd have accounts there)
while NPR proper could manage the shared blacklist of obvious-Nazi-bar sites (since (1) that should really only need to be done once and (2) anyone wanting to sue for being defederated would have to hit the national org (that already has the big-ass legal staff)
Yeah there'd have to a review/appeal process with some borderline sites being looked at multiple times, and maybe the national folks should leave all of the non-obvious cases up to the locals (or give them an intermediate rating and call it a day).
But that's still a win over every last affiliate having to review every last racist dipshit individually
And yes it would be nice to outsource this functionality, since I'm guessing more folks than just NPR would make use of it.
But that would mean coming up with support/funding and a robust governance structure for the outsourced entity so that the nazis can't just buy it out.
@AlisonW @unchartedworlds @gbhnews
To be sure, it *should* be a pretty easy suit to defend against (and ideally you'd only have to defend it *once*), but there are always idiots out there with $$ to file them.
(and there's always the possibility of a whackjob judge or jury getting it wrong)
@gbhnews Be the trend setters! Leave the billionaires' abusive sites.
Model good behavior.
@Homebrewandhacking
> The first news network to commit 1/1000th of its ad spend to Mastodon will achieve a primacy that other networks spend more to get worse results
I'm confused. Do you mean spending...
> 1/1000th of its ad spend
... on running their own server?
There is nothing in the Mastodon software (nor on the fediverse as a network) that you can spend money to advertise on.
@strypey @Homebrewandhacking @varmazis @gbhnews
There is nothing in the Mastodon software (nor on the fediverse as a network) that you can spend money to advertise on.Not exactly. It all depends on the instance. I've encountered Mastodon instances with ads. It's up to the instance admin and their users. If their instance is popular, and has the target market of some company, there's nothing stopping them offering to buy ad spots… which in turn will help that instance.@youronlyone @gbhnews @strypey @varmazis
Also true. I suspect that's a freemium model that will be adopted by the large tech companies as part of "embrace, extend, extinguish" as applied to the Fediverse.
@youronlyone
> I've encountered Mastodon instances with ads
OK, but that's on those instances, not in the Mastodon software nor on the fediverse *as a network*. Also, can't see how news media companies advertising on those instances would gain them more mindshare in the 'verse than publishing directly into it with their own servers.
@Homebrewandhacking @varmazis
Budget for ads is called spend. It's a technical term, look it up. 😀
If you took that money and used it to pay for a server then they would exist here and be able to show their services.
Many people here, (not me!), would like that and want to see those.
They would leave the Fediverse and see the website (with ads) that would pay for the journalism.
Being the main source of news for people would be profitable.
@Homebrewandhacking
> They would leave the Fediverse and see the website (with ads) that would pay for the journalism
I agree with SubStack that ads are no longer a viable revenue source. But if they ran a server that only posted headlines and links (and maybe a couple of sentences of lede), then yes, people wanting to read that story would need to click through to the site. The ability to boost articles without cutting and pasting URLs might increase their traffic too.
@gbhnews really enjoying gbh fediverse presence, enjoy daily polling (which trigger follow-on notification when poll close), & gbh fediverse presence increase tech ghoul goodwill --> gbh.
less sure regarding hosting instance - would necessitate content moderation policy & require thought regarding remaining federated, but could further increase listener allegiance
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