Since leaving Twitter, I've been trying to figure out what my journalism-y socials look like. (Threads: A sad Potemkin village where I just share articles. Bluesky: A fun, bitchy hotel cafeteria that still seems ill-suited to news.) I've been trying to use Mastodon for more hard news stuff, but I'm having a hard time getting my feed to be both active and relevant.
So I'm trying a few experiments to see if I can rejig my good. If you've got good journalism follow suggestions, send em my way.
Ok, that was many more replies than I was expecting!
The one consistent recommendation was: Use hashtags. As much as I despise hashtagging (I hated it on Twitter, too) I'll give it more of a go.
I'm still going through some other follow suggestions. One helpful tool I found: Mastodon Link, which makes it easier to follow accounts on other instances. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-link/nlfdgcdfjnobjocicnddjghdbmgglame
@justinling there's been an improvement discussed (unsure of the progress on it) whereby hashtags at the end of posts would be de-emphasized, to make this a bit less annoying.
Also! Mastodon 4.2 introduced a much-improved search function (opt-in, which I'm sure journalists would and should opt into - the more private folks would probably refrain from opting in) for full text search. Not all servers are upgraded yet, but that's something to look forward to.
@richlv @justinling Any chance I could trouble you for a screenshot of that? My instance is still on 4.1.x for the time being (upgrade has been a bit troublesome & admins have a few higher priority things on their plate for the next little bit)
@justinling Hashtags here are different than on Twitter. Think of it as indexing. Also, now that there is search here it is somewhat less imperative, but still useful. Be sure to enable search of your content as this is opt-in here: Click Preferences (on right near bottom [gear icon]) >>> Click Public Profile (on left near top [person icon]) >>> Click Privacy and reach box (near top [lock icon]) >>> Under Search (scroll down middle of page)
The following search modifiers are supported:
has:image
has:video
has:audio
has:media
has:poll
has:link
has:embed
is:sensitive
is:reply
language:en
before:2023-08-08
after:2023-08-08
during:2023-08-08
from:<username> or from:me
Example (Try it out!): mars rover before:2023-08-08
I've found following hashtags has completely changed and vastly improved my Mastodon experience, after about ten months of struggling and floundering. Cannot recommend them enough: click on a hashtag and there should be a "Follow" button like for a user in there somewhere
There are also third-party "group" servers that interact with Mastodon (a.gup.pe and another one I don't recall) but I've found them a lot less useful
Would love to see you and more journalists in the fediverse!
@justinling I hate the appearance of hashtags jumbled at the end, but I don't have a rational reason and they are functionally useful. It just always looked ugly and needy.
I do have an argument against inline hashtags. Bad for readability. I wish there were an option to collapse/hide tags.
@justinling IMHO, hashtags as metadata at the end of a post are a lot more palatable than #hashtags in the #middle of otherwise #readable sentences ...
@justinling Part of moving instances involves automatically sending a ping out to followers so they re-follow at the new instance, but an imported older list might not have received that ping. (On the other hand, the action of importing the list might detect "new" instances for followed accounts? I don't know for sure.)
So it's possible, but might be better for someone with actual knowledge of the inner workings to comment.
@justinling Have to say it might be good to have people who offer these big lists of users to offer a version that already removes the dormant accounts.
Been thinking of ways to make them more useful, at the very least the large open lists like the one of journalists that @tchambers has facilitated could be a good starting point for more detailed/curated ones or things similar to the #icymibot mentioned here.
@ai6yr Yeah, thus far I've been following a small list — and it's just not been working. But the one thing I truly hate about Mastodon is its lack of discoverability. (It's part of the protocol, nothing to be done about it.)
There's also *so many* dormant accounts. I just imported a list of 1.5k journalists, only to remove about 1.2k of them because they haven't posted in months.
@justinling @ai6yr I’d suggest to add them at least when you publish new articles. Mastodon is almost useless for discovery without hashtags.
As for journalists I suggest @timkmak
@jerome @justinling @ai6yr @timkmak
Hashtags are the best way, but regular interaction and conversation between articles will help too. The feedback loop of conversation and engagement is ESSENTIAL in a non algorithm environment as you have to with those dopamine receptors directly.
@ai6yr @JustinDerrick @justinling I don't see what's wrong with fully opt-in search though, if there are no loopholes. And virality helps out those very journalists and activists--it's one of the reasons they went to Twitter in the first place. It doesn't necessarily depend on an intrusive algorithm trying to enrage everyone constantly though.
I saw it put as a conflict between Small Communities Mastodon and Twitter 2.0 Mastodon. But it could be that ultimately they can co-exist.
@justinling @ai6yr I feel ya on the hashtags, but they absolutely do work for getting your toots out beyond your immediate follows on Mastodon.
Re discoverability, yeah.
To fill my timeline I followed a ton of people and hashtags. It’s different from the Twitter heavy one to many model, but I have discovered a ton of delightful low intensity accounts that way. It’s definitely more setup work though.
Good luck, am psyched to add you to my follows.
@dr2chase a good start without getting any AI involved would be a tool that looks at your post and suggests hashtags for words that are in it and being actively used as hashtags.
cc: @justinling @ai6yr
Thanks for reminding me to turn on full text search and discoverability!
I completely understand why they're off by default but I kept forgetting to do something about it (which I now have).
@ai6yr @justinling How do you turn "search" on ? What does that do?
Sorry, but I'm still quite new here :)
@justinling @ai6yr For discoverability, follow some hashtags, then when you see something interesting, click through to the profile and see if their profile (or toots) seem interesting….
It’s a little more effort than you’re probably accustomed to, but it works - slow and steady wins the race.
Yes. More annoying than accounts that are here but inactive are the 3rd-party bots. Accounts that mirror twitter posts and such. Most of them are also inactive but they make it a pain to be sure you have a real person or news outlet.
We usually post a list of real outlets on #FollowFriday but have been too busy to put one together this week. I'll post here some of our recent lists.
It definitely takes some time to get set up here but we think it is worth it.
Highlighting some local outlets that are active here.
Old list but they should mostly be good (we hope).
WHAV @whav
Minnesota Reformer @mnreformer Salt Lake Tribune @sltrib Missouri Independent @MissouriIndependent
Mississippi Free Press @msfreepress
TexasObserver @TexasObserver Chron @Chron
SF Public Press
@SFPublicPress
@justinling @ai6yr @msfreepress
This list is from the @TexasObserver
@MAD_democracy
@FAIR
@Chron
@TheConversationUS
@damemagazine
@restofworld
@ProPublica
@NewsDesk
@gbhnews
@thetyee
@TucsonSentinel
@longreads
@insideclimatenews
@mnreformer
@UnicornRiot
@dw_innovation
@Windspeaker
@thexylom
@RollingStone
⬆️ No bots on this list
#journalism #followfriday #newstodon
Thanks! @justinling is amazing. What a great crowd to be among. Looking forward to checking out some of these links.
@MAD_democracy @justinling @ai6yr @msfreepress @TexasObserver @insideclimatenews @thexylom @FAIR @Chron @TheConversationUS @damemagazine @restofworld @NewsDesk @gbhnews @thetyee @TucsonSentinel @longreads @mnreformer @UnicornRiot @dw_innovation @RollingStone
Justin Ling🆒️
Krystyna
Dodo & the Brawn
Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦
Rihards Olups
Mastodon Migration
TJ Radcliffe
Derek
Peter Beens 
Nihl L'Amas
Lee Fife - old account
Jeri Dansky
Kneworldodor
Lisa Fast
Pam Baker
73 million seconds
Sean Boots
AI6YR Ben
Jérôme
Mr. Mustache
Justin Derrick
John Harris
cremevax👩🏻💻🏳️🌈🇨🇦🇺🇦
dr2chase
Shirley Eugest
Scott M. 
_noelamac_
Alison Meeks
Michael Bishop ☕
Voron
The Media & Democracy Project
Windspeaker.com