Mastodawn

Dan Gillmor Sep 29, 2023

Dear journalists: By remaining on the deadbird site you are actively supporting a business whose owner in in league with people who want to end our democracy. He's further eviscerated what was left of the team that was trying to keep election information honest (for typically inane Muskish reasons).

Please admit, at least to yourselves, that you're not merely using a handy platform. You are effectively collaborating with him. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/28/elon-fires-half-of-extwitters-election-integrity-team-because-a-manager-liked-a-tweet-calling-him-a-fucking-dipshit/

Elon Fires Half Of ExTwitter’s Election Integrity Team, Because A Manager Liked A Tweet Calling Him A Fucking Dipshit

There is no doubt that it’s not always easy to figure out what social media websites should do about election disinformation. There are those who believe that websites need to very actively remove …

Techdirt

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Brennan Stehling

@dangillmor Please consider that writers and editors need an audience to replace the one they would be leaving behind. They are still dependent on the revenue that their current audience makes possible. It is not such an easy decision for many of them to walk off the cliff.

The best way to encourage them to slow down and stop their activity on that platform is to increase engagement with their content on other platforms. Right now the best effort I have seen supporting this goal is linked below. By simply posting content from RSS feeds from several existing news orgs it is demonstrating that there is an audience here which is worth the effort to expand beyond legacy platforms.

You could use your reach on this platform to organize an effort to educate reporters, staff writers and editors about Mastodon and all of the features it offers and how to bring their audience with them. I suggest running a monthly event to message news orgs to invite them to get started.

https://press.coop/about

press.coop

A mirror of Twitter press accounts.

Mastodon hosted on press.coop

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Dan Gillmor Sep 29, 2023

@brennansv I posted this early this year, and have made standing offer to journalists to help them do it: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/04/journalists-and-others-should-leave-twitter-heres-how-they-can-get-started/

Journalists (And Others) Should Leave Twitter. Here’s How They Can Get Started

Summary: Elon Musk has demonstrated contempt for free speech in general, and journalism in particular, with his behavior at Twitter. He is also demonstrating why it is foolhardy for anyone to rely …

Techdirt

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Brennan Stehling Sep 29, 2023

@dangillmor I appreciate that. I believe this is the best path forward. It does appear that Mastodon has been growing steadily with the help of the former platform falling apart. It just takes time to make this change and we have to be patient.

I lean more toward carrot than stick in this situation. Beyond simply being another place to post, I believe this place has to be worthwhile in many ways. There is still more investment we need to make in terms of fostering that experience here.

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Brennan Stehling Oct 2, 2023

@dangillmor This number, 1.8 million, is just not high enough to incentivize many to switch platforms. I expect both BlueSky and Threads don't have numbers which exceed the former Birdsite highs or current lows even.

https://mastodon.social/@Sarahp/111167049930441701

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Brennan Stehling Sep 29, 2023

@dangillmor I’d list every local and national news org with their status on which platforms they currently use. Then prepare an onboarding tutorial to help reporters and staff writers to create their own personal accounts and then a more advanced option to either run their own server or find a host and admins who will handle it for their org and all of their writers.

I envision there would be an inflection point when there a good number of orgs being active on Mastodon which convinces the rest that it is essential to operate on this platform with their own server which is able to verify their own accounts and directly control the content they choose to publish.

Every month a subset of this whole list could be the focus for outreach from the people who have been readers for years to invite their favorite writers to make the first step.