Data journalist from India. Work at Moneycontrol.
Past bylines: The Hindu, The Print, The Citizen and LiveWire
Views are my own and do not reflect the stand of my employer.
Alright, let us post something here to start off. A bit of tech policy perhaps
India has something called the Draft Telecom Bill, which is a proposed law for which public comments are invited. ONLY 4 DAYS are left
You need to look at this bill. It proposes issuing licenses for all telecom services. It redefines telecom service to ANY MACHINE TO MACHINE communication
So your email, whatsapp, telegram, signal, your twitter/mastodon/reddit, any messaging app on any random website, zoom/skype
@couts These are extremely valid points. But as for the first point you raised, even Twitter DMs were susceptible to subpoenas but they do also have good lawyers.
I did not think of third point until now, and what you said is exactly what's going to happen once media houses start setting up their own instances and urge their journalists to make accounts in those..
Early worries I have as a journalist using Mastodon for #journalism:
1) Subpoenas & source protection: You're at the mercy of whoever operates your instance. I'm guessing most smaller instance admins aren't also lawyering up to protect newsgathering.
2) The owner of your instance can read your DMs. Be careful.
3) Publishers could effectively verify journalists by running instances from their official domains. They could surveil their journalists there too. Not every publisher is ethical.
Greta Thunberg
Eugen Rochko
redcat
Anupam Guha
Chris Trottier
Andrew Couts