@dangillmor @briankrebs

The second the fediverse can drive traffic to their work.

The journalists and editors are not on Twitter because they enjoy it.
They are there to reach an audience, and to follow the political and journalistic pulse.

@dangillmor As a fellow journalist, you can talk to your peers. Who unfortunately have chosen engagement and peer group status over integrity and journalistic values. And maybe they'll listen to you.

What I can do is move on: deny them the engagement and attention they've prioritized over "knowingly supporting a business controlled by someone at least as malign as Rupert Murdoch".

@dangillmor

Gotta break it to you Dan, but you could say the same of every piece of proprietary software you use to carry out your jobs. A journalist cannot they are out from under the thumbs of oligarchs until they shun the likes of Windows, MS Office, all Adobe products, and their shiny Macs.

Tools controlled by greedy billionaires and their cruel corporations will end up biting journalists on the arse sooner or later.

@dangillmor
As long as "popularity" and "engagement" are measured by follower counts, and those affect your employment, there's not much you can do. There's nothing to grasp; it's survival. How do you argue with existential/Maslovian threats?

The journalists aren't necessarily bad, but the industry has rotted.

@dangillmor

It’s all about the money and where the biggest crowd of suckers is. Same as ever.

@dangillmor I really don't like the reality of it, but even when you explicitly lay out the dangers of it, and that they're more or less conspirators for continuing to use it, the gravitas of it all seems to fall on deaf ears.

You can only keep advocating it and hope someone realizes it enough to stop.

@dangillmor

> How can they be helped to grasp this?

After they made good buiseness boosting Trump for years and are still doing?

nothing.

@dangillmor Institutions need to take a lead in this. Many of the journalists who are still there will be waving their engagement numbers at editors. Editors need to turn around and say, "Don't care." That requires the support of proprietors.

Publications have been treating journalists as unpaid social media marketers. That's created a perverse incentive to stay on an abusive platform. It's dysfunctional.

The only action we can take is to feed good stories to the journalists who are here.

@dangillmor

Only when they are the ones being censored… and maybe not even then.

@dangillmor

They aren't journalists. They're on twitter because writing an "article" by just printing a few tweets is easy.

Half news articles are two lines for actual news followed by a bunch of twitter posts.

@dangillmor

same with government agencies and academic institutions. It's incredibly disturbing that they're all ok with making money for a fascist because it's easier that moving to a different service.

@dangillmor

I don't believe that you accurately describe the motivation of journalists in posting content to Twitter.

They are "driving traffic" to their own media websites, where people encounter advertising and other things that make money for THEIR media outlet.

Because they want to drive as many people as possible to their websites, they go where a lot of people are.

It's likely not a personal decision but rather part of their job description.

#Media #Twitter #Support #Journalism

@dangillmor I noticed how Twitter's "Top" search worked today - or didn't work - in manipulating opinions regarding the Turkish election, where journalists are noting that Erdogan's people are interfering with the vote count in major cities.... but these facts are buried, and I can't get over the feeling that journalists staying there risk the slow boil.

Elon is using Twitter to platform anonymous lies and distortions, that target and undermine democracy itself.
https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@KraftTea/110369553932766725

@dangillmor Journalists should perhaps be asked "Who is Spriter99880, and why was this anonymous pro-Kremlin bot account given ALMOST ALL of Twitter's "Top" posts on "Turkey" on the day of the election, spreading disinformation, while verifiable, credible journalists had their posts buried, DESPITE having more likes, views, etc."

It's a disgrace to journalists to even be associated with Twitter at this point.
https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@KraftTea/110369553932766725

@dangillmor Twitter has become the go-to place to publicly announce stuff. I don't think journalists want to leave because they don't want to back away from the argument - ie. anti-racists leaving and giving free reign to racists.

Also many independent journalists have relied on popular platforms for patrons.

The thing is, people have talked about shadow banning for years yet few popular journalists/commentators have bothered to nurture accounts elsewhere.

@dangillmor If a third of my income - and the difference between making rent and not - was determined by traffic across my articles, I'd be active on sites proven to drive traffic too.

You're a media critic at a research institute which provides evidence-based answers to hard problems, so I assume you've got the data. What do we need to do here to make a boycott pay better?

@dangillmor

I stayed for a while post-Musk to try to persuade people (not just journalists!) to come here--but stopped posting for good right after Tucker Carlson's announcement

I think journalists felt #Twitter was "our" platform, i.e. the place where we could reach *each other*, so. It's hard to let go! But it's time...

I reckon the shift will happen fast when we get real opt-in search here, and quote posts

(bc #Bluesky ain't it)