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 HansonJul 6, 2023
@jobsboils @dangillmor I also think that there could be more evangelism to news organizations of the advantages of setting up their own instances.
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 threadvox popsicle vox dei
@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?
Jul 6, 2023 at 8:51amWeb
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.”