It’s been a weird couple days; I keep running into this talking point that “journalists won’t use Mastodon unless we incentivize engagement farming”.
Meanwhile I’m having a *great* experience here, because I use it to— I dunno— actually talk to people and form relationships?
I reject the premise that mastodon isn’t useful for reporters. I think it’s more accurate that modern news orgs use social media in purely extractive ways.
You might get more reporters that way, but you won’t like them.
I think if we’re honest with ourselves, the “service” most reporters provide on social media is entirely self-serving. A one-way firehose of signal boosting and self promotion.
“Look at me! I wrote this story. Click on it!”
And then you ask them a question, or have a correction, and nobody reads it, because Wired doesn’t care about building a community, just reaching a consumer. It’s fire and forget.
We already have a tool for that, it’s RSS. What value does reposting a link here provide?
@Haste I've run into a small handful of reporters and journalists who've done that, along with a few other content creators who... don't really engage with folks but are here to just drop self-promo and that's that.
I don't really mind certain kinds of self-promo (e.g., "I wrote a thing!" or "I made a thing!"), especially when it's nested within genuine interaction or other interesting posts (even if it's shitposting with another person). I love seeing people drop their art (whatever it is) or writing, and it's given me a lot of cool and new perspectives I haven't otherwise found.
But I think if more journalists and reporters actually engaged with people, it might alleviate (not solve) the issue of how a bunch of 'em forgot who they claim they write for and inform. It might even get a few to stop doing disinformation or strong one-sided perspectives of news stories (e.g., when all of their info for a story comes primarily from cops or corporate mouthpieces without further looking into it).
EVHaste
nerd teacher 🦇