jocanibJul 31, 2023

The BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decentralised social media

https://lemmy.world/post/2425479

The BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decentralised social media - Lemmy.world

“As the social media landscape ebbs and flows, the team at BBC Research & Development are researching social technologies and exploring possibilities for the BBC. One part of our work is to establish a BBC presence in the distributed collection of social networks known as the Fediverse, a collection of social media applications all linked together by common protocols. The most common software used in this area is Mastodon, a Twitter-like social networking service with around 2 million active monthly users. We are now running an experimental BBC Mastodon server at https://social.bbc [https://social.bbc] where you can follow some of the BBC’s social media accounts, including BBC R&D, Radio 4 and 5 Live. We hope to be able to add more accounts from other areas of the BBC at some point.”

Show threadPeleSpiritJul 31, 2023

That’s amazing, I hope all journalists and government alerts have their own instance. It’s way better than a blog because it can be updated so easily, they’re used to twitter and their alerts and it’s open to see while they control everything about it. Happy to see it.

Edit: Cool graphic too: www.bbc.co.uk/rd/…/fediverse-overview-16x9.png

Show threadZeth0sJul 31, 2023
Why an instance instead of joining an existing one? They can join the effort and do few ones where several publishers can use to create official accounts
Show threadDave

I think the USA’s National Weather Service Twitter presence is a good example.

If you look deep enough you’ll see caveats like “supplemental service provided by NWS” and “Twitter feeds and tweets do not always reflect the most current information”, but the truth is that a lot of people (and news organizations) depend on Twitter as their main interface to the NWS, and rarely if ever go to their website.

That obviously creates a tension, which bubbles up in scares like this:

Before last weekend’s storm, the National Weather Service’s Baltimore-Washington office sent this tweet saying that because of a new Twitter policy, automated tweets that show advisories, watches, and warnings might not load.

Contrast that to a world where NOAA (the federal administration which runs NWS) has their own instance: they get the benefit of being able to disseminate updates in a consumer friendly ‘social media’ style and they retain full control of platform and can be sure the service won’t be held hostage, or go down in the middle of a storm.

Finally: if you’re reading this from the USA, consider contact NOAA/NWS to let them know you’d like a fediverse presence, I did!

National Weather Service on Twitter

Jul 31, 2023 at 8:01pmWeb
Show threadZeth0sJul 31, 2023
Thanks for the details
Show threadgrueAug 1, 2023

Finally: if you’re reading this from the USA, consider contact NOAA/NWS to let them know you’d like a fediverse presence, I did!

Good idea! I just emailed [email protected] to ask them not only for a Mastodon instance to replace this stuff, but also for a PeerTube instance to replace www.youtube.com/@noaanationalweatherservice .

National Weather Service on Twitter