Dan GillmorJul 6, 2023

It gets more absurd every day for Big Journalism to keep pouring its work into Saudi-government-funded Twitter, which is controlled by a right-winger who hates real journalism and boosts extremists.

It gets even more absurd for journalism orgs to keep embedding tweets in their stories, given Musk's unfathomable destruction of the platform's usefulness.

I keep wondering when journalists will discover that big tech is not their daddy.

Show threadPeter PrincipleJul 6, 2023

@dangillmor The vast majority won't quit it until and unless they decide it's no longer useful for promoting their work and their individual or corporate brands.

Fortunately, thanks to Musk's staggering incompetence (not his evilness) that day may come soon.

Show threadChris Hanson
@jobsboils @dangillmor I also think that there could be more evangelism to news organizations of the advantages of setting up their own instances.
Jul 6, 2023 at 2:42amIceCubesApp
Show threadChris HansonJul 6, 2023

@jobsboils @dangillmor My (Pulitzer-nominated) buddy Joshua Ellis is fairly far along putting together a system he named Kowloon which is essentially “an Open Source, Mastodon-compatible social networking system in a box.”

An individual can set it up for a blog similar to WordPress, except it has a bunch of features for what Josh calls “circles” in terms of who sees what posts.

And its Node.js components are useful for things like the CMS-to-social workflows that news orgs need.

Show threadPeter PrincipleJul 6, 2023

@eschaton Those advantages will need to have $ attached to them -- either directly (revenue streams) or indirectly (brand awareness, career advancement, etc,)

Appeals to the public good are not going to cut it.

Show threadChris HansonJul 6, 2023
@jobsboils Sure, the main reason to do anything with the #Fediverse is that there are millions of people here now, more than there were on Twitter when news and other organizations started an official presence there, and reaching them should be worth something in terms of clicks. (Of course, it also needs to not cost more than those clicks are worth, which is one reason I’m excited for Kowloon as I mentioned in a followup.)
Show threadPeter PrincipleJul 6, 2023

@eschaton THAT'S the kind of argument that may click with them (so to speak). 😉

Also, the fact that journos have their own instance (and media orgs can create their own) and so won't have to put up with some lunatic billionaire's bullshit.

Show threadChris HansonJul 7, 2023
@jobsboils Exactly! Being able to publish under identities like @[email protected] has some advantages. :)
Show threadvox popsicle vox deiJul 6, 2023
@eschaton @jobsboils There must already be some journalism-centric instances, no? What's the advantage of running your own instance over joining an instance like that?
Show threadChris HansonJul 7, 2023

@voxpopsicle @jobsboils There are indeed some journalism-centric instances; these are great for independent journalists.

The reason for a journalism org to have their own server is editorial/byline control. Say Some Paper is on the web at somepaper.com, you can trust that pretty much anything published via ActivityPub from the somepaper.com domain is legitimately from that organization without third party “verification.”