Dan GillmorDear journalists: Twitter is now the platform of choice for right-wing extremists -- a platform where they are welcomed, promoted, and even in some cases paid by Musk's site.
Why, when there are real alternatives, is it still your site?
Jay 🆘@dangillmor I think, sadly, when it comes to reach, there is no real alternative to Twitter.
There are some cases of Mastodon posts getting more engagement per follower than on Twitter, but I don’t know whether that’s the rule or the exception.
Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸@jsit @dangillmor I have never had as much engagement on Twitter as I do here. It's just a matter of finding your people.
@chris @dangillmor It depends what the goal is. Many journalists don’t want to have a conversation; they just want clicks. This is their livelihood. I don’t know of any numbers on that for Mastodon vs. Twitter.
In fact a lot of people on Mastodon are constantly echoing: “If you’re here to ‘do numbers,’ GET LOST!”
Why would someone whose career *depends* on doing numbers want to be in a place with that message?
@jsit @dangillmor There is a lot of anti-social messaging like that on here but it is lessening, or at least getting drowned out, and that’s a good thing. Frankly, those type of people don’t want to be in a place with lots of other people around anyway. And that’s ok because the Fediverse gives tools to be able to create those small spaces while also creating the large spaces that journalists need to get people looking at their creative works.
SueI'm not sure how true even that is - I hear a lot of feedback that when people post links here, they get overwhelmed - I tried to click on a link to emptywheel's blog this morning and found it overwhelmed. I think what is said later on this thread, access to sources and other reporters doing real time reporting is the draw. I wish we could get that here.