“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 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.”
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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
Edit. Why you guys are downvoting a discussion? Is this place becoming reddit? We are just chatting, relax
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exactly this, they can control what is on it, give their journalists, shows, etc accounts and it being a self contained hub for everything bbc, while interacting with rest of the fediverse.
Im guessing they will also get more statistics and information from hosting it themselves as well. its a no brainer.
Good point
Because then someone else would be able to control and censor their content. Really every business should make their own server to ensure that they’re the ones fully in control of their content - this is the entire point of federation.
Good point. You guys are right. It is a good choice
Just for records sake, we can see recently with Musk and Twitter and how he manipulated NPR’s image by denoting them as “state media”.
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!
Thanks for the details
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 NWS.PA@noaa.gov to ask them not only for a Mastodon instance to replace this stuff, but also for a PeerTube instance to replace https://www.youtube.com/@noaanationalweatherservice .
Having their own instance as a public organization adds more legitimacy to their publications. Think of government officials using the organizations domains for email instead of gmail.
Even though I take issue with the BBC, I hope they choose to stay on mastadon in the long term. A large organisation like the BBC on a federated platform is sure to spread word and hopefully convince more people to join the fediverse and see it a a feasible alternative to the current big tech landscape.
This is how twitter and Youtube picked up pace. News organizations stsrted slowly creeping towards it and they have a lot of incentive to do so with how twitter is becoming a cesspool of Nazis and CSAM.
I think this is exactly what I want to see, news orgs (not just “mainstream” news, but let’s say, professional orgs in an industry) hosting their own instances with closed signups for accounts with JUST relevant topics. I tried to find some journalists on journa.host to fill in tech and local news, and while I found the people, it was way too much personal/personality content and not as much news.
Relying on a third party for your social media presence is a bad idea. Imagine if Elon got a bug up his ass and banned all BBC accounts; they’d be left in a lurch. Or if, as we saw, someone else got a blue checkmark and pretended to be the BBC.
But by running their own site they have control over who posts what, while still able to interact with users on other instances.
I think governmental organizations should do the same. It’s absurd that FEMA or whoever essentially has to rely of Elon’s goodwill.
The Dutch government already made an official mastodon instance: social.overheid.nl
The Netherlands just can’t stop being based
It’s interesting that they decided to make their own server and not just join a popular instances like Mastodon Social. I know part of it is then experimenting but if the goal is to just have a presence in the Fediverse, it sounds like a lot of effort for little reason.
It’s interesting you have this opinion; I figured this would be the biggest draw for corporations-- they’re no longer beholden to some third party for their media presence-- it’s all hosted and controlled by themselves;.
In email terms, it’s the difference between
tide@gmail.comandtide@tide.com.Edit: I don’t have any idea why I went with
tide, so if you find yourself wondering why I did that, get in line. hahaIt also solves the verification problem. It’s without a doubt the best way to go for an organization - especially news orgs.
That’s true, but to be honest there’s already a pretty good verification system on Mastodon, even if you don’t host your own instance.
Yes and no. And verifying by domain is better, especially for people who are likely to be impersonated (ex. Journalists).
Rel=“me” doesn’t actually verify a user’s identity, it verifies that a user has a relationship with a website. The problem is that you need to leave Mastodon to make sure that the website actually verifies their identity. I’ve verified a connection between a Mastodon and Pixelfed account, for example, but it doesn’t tell you anything about who I am. It’s also much easier to spoof a website than it is to get the BBC to give you an account on their private instance.
It really works great the other way though! If you have a known identity here, you can be sure that the linked sites are legit.
It’s instant verification for all their accounts and an instance that won’t disappear on them.
You may as well say the same thing about having their own website vs using Facebook.
This kind of thing is exactly the point of the Fediverse. They control and own their content, they control who gets to post from their URL.
Treat it like email. Thats how Mastodon will grow
No, this is what they should be doing. It’s the difference between owning your house and renting. They get to make the rules on their instance, they’re not at the mercy of a tech bro company or a trash billionaire that might have a political agenda against actual journalism…
After what happened to the BBC and NPR on Twitter, who can blame them for saying “Fine, we’ll do it ourselves!”
I guess with twitter they learned the lesson of being beholden to a rogue CEO/admin who can take away verified status or change the rules on a whim. It is better that they maintain their own official presence that they control.
Could be that BBC employees can have their own accounts on mastodon going forward
It’s risk mitigation on their part to not have their platform controlled by somebody else, especially someone with an agenda like Elon Musk.
Would like to see them set up a Lemmy instance as well.
And of course, it’s always good to get in these things early, but not too early in case things don’t work out.
Federation is the future of social media for exactly this reason, especially in the twitter-like realm where who is saying it is as (or more) important than what is being said. These people and organizations need to control their brand outside the scope of commercial pressure from the platform.
especially in the twitter-like realm where who is saying it is as (or more) important than what is being said.
I know right? So great to be in a place where nobody cares who you are. Gets tiring.
It’s nice to just not stand out and be accepted as a normal member of a community.
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No but you need a loicense
As a Canadian I’ve sent a formal letter to the CBC asking them to do the same. I’d suggest other Canadians join me and send formal letters to CBC on their site if you want something like this here in Canada. Personally, I really like how BBC did this and would love others to follow.
Awesome news! Hopefully more media follows suit!
Nice, now a BBC in the fediverse is not just that thing.
We should support them as this is a pretty significant entity moving into the space. Leave nice comments, encouraging comments.
This is great. I don’t really care about the BBC since I’m not from or live in the UK, but more decentralization is always good.
I mean, while that’s fair, they cover worldwide as well, I’d say most of the news they cover is worldwide.
Thats true. I’m not in an english speaking country so their news generally don’t reach me.
Yeah, it’s not global coverage but they do have channels in select countries.
In fact their world coverage is some what objetive because their coverage of UK is a disgusting exercise in bootlicking.
Pretty damn cool tbh
Is Mastodon compatible with Lemmy?
Only somewhat. Lemmy Communities show up as users when viewed from mastodon, that boost every single post and comment in the community (so browsing it is near impossible, and there is no sorting). Mastodon users can interact with posts (but can’t downvote), and they can post by @-ing the community.
You can’t follow mastodon users or view mastodon posts from Lemmy. I heard kbin had some functionality to do with this tho
Gonna be honest, Fediverse is alpha as shit.
In terms of being unfinished, not chad-like.
This is gonna take a whiiiiiile to get real good, if reworking these things is even on the table.
It’s sad that I thought you meant the chad version first. My brain is corrupted
Refuse to work properly with other applications but still allow some functionality in a slightly different interfacing out of good will for each other
Refuse to elaborate
Leave
What?
I agree in a lot of ways. Lemmy does feel very beta at times. Mastodon does feel much more finished, except for the fact that favorites and boosts don’t federate properly a lot of the time.
But this specifically feels perfectly fine to me. The fact that they’re interoperable at all is more than I’d expect. Lemmy and Mastodon are so different in how they show content that I can’t think of a much better way to do it (other than maybe having communities boost only posts and not comments when seen from mastodon).
How do you think they should be reworked to work better with each other?
Is Mastodon compatible with Lemmy?
https://vijayprema.com/using-lemmy-from-my-existing-mastodon/
I’ve been doing this a lot over on https://lemmy.world/c/coys. I mostly post directly from my Mastodon account.
Sometimes I have to jump over and use my Lemmy account because, for example, you can’t post links (that I know of) in the same way you can directly on Lemmy.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !coys@lemmy.world
Wow this is greats news, hoping more people join federated social network!
For those on a Kbin instance you can follow the whole instance to see everything they post:
https://kbin.social/d/social.bbc
If this is a success many more should follow
is there a way to subscribe to that from lemmy?
I don’t think so since lemmy doesn’t integrate with mastodon like kbin
The more exposure the better (for better or worse). As the fediverse grows we gotta watch for the growing pains of becoming a large social media platform.
