BBC starts experimenting with the Fediverse, running its own Mastodon instance
3 years ago by Reclipse to c/technology
Probably because the need of moderation.
If you host an instance and let people in (even if it’s a limited circle, i.E. your students) you are responsible for moderation. I think that’s something institutions back off currently.
For an mail server that’s much easier.
Many Universities already have their own dedicated subreddits that are usually moderated by a mix of faculty, staff, and students. I know of at least one sub moderated in part by the chair oftheh math department, who is as funny as they are savage.
An above-average level of shitposting goes on, sure, but it's also a great venue for the school's online community to engage across organizational boundaries.
Universities used to have students involved in publishing magazines as journalists, editors etc. This is the evolution. I'm sure a decent sized uni could find or create a student group who can be responsible for moderation under an official administrator.
Then don't let people post on the server people can repost if they want to comment
Because of the network effect and content aggregation. With emails you just want to reach a specific person, with public posts you want to reach as many people as possible. But I also think the whole ownership and control problem of centralized social networks wasn't as apparent as it is now.
Back in my uni days (1997-01) my uni ran its own Usenet server. Don't think it carried the alt.binaries, but did have groups specifically for the uni. Sadly only a small handful of people used it.
Same here, and I doubt their IT departments knows deeply about Fediverse. Also some times the department making communication is non technical and not close to IT so people making decisions just choose what they know (Instagram, Twitter, etc). At least that was the case in the University I studied
It's mostly the latter from what I've seen.
At least in my country IT departments have very little wiggle room as organizations have gotten more rigid with increased control from the top echelons. Some universities in my country used to host a lot of cool services for students to use. Nowdays it seems that the legacy stuff is kept online as long as the people maintaining them are around.
I know I’m not the only one who has been saying that this type of move makes perfect sense for governments and news organizations, but I’m going to go ahead and take credit for this.
You’re welcome, guys!
Thanks Garret.
Even Sam and Dave appreciate you, Garret.
All my homies love garret
This makes so much sense.
BBC wouldn't make their news site under Google Blogger... so why depend on other corporations for your microblogging?
Spin up your own server, have your own verification, then use it on your site and share outs.
I'm a fan of the BBC, they make a lot of terrific programmes and the breadth of the audience their radio stations cater to is pretty phenomenal.
They also have a history of experimenting with technology so it's not a total surprise they've taken this step. Since most people on Mastodon are either sharing British news sources from the BBC or The Guardian anyway it will be interesting to see how they fare...
Yeah me too. I'm Australian, but I really enjoy BBC tv shows, documentaries, and especially podcasts.
Our own ABC was pretty great in the past, but conservative governments have hollowed them out. They do still produce some good reporting and podcasts but they have fallen from their former glory.
Seriously, publicly funded broadcasting, which isn't beholden to vested interests and advertisers, is an infinitely better model.
Apple? More like Crapple, am I right, fellas?
'The site formerly known as twitter'
The unpleasantly long name just makes it funnier imo
“TSFKAT”.
Fewer letters than “Twitter”, expresses more than “X”.
I have seen worse names (“X Æ A-12”) get more eyeballs.
I liked someone's suggestion to pronounce it as "ten"
Does that mean DMX is now running the show over there?
They don't know who we be
That's why censoring with 🤮 is better:
Br🤮tish, Fr🤮nch
I literally saw it everywhere on Mastodon, like, I honestly never saw anyone say it directly, just "birdsite" or a censored version. So I adapted to be polite. And sometimes forget which form of fediverse I'm posting on.
It's an instance with all the EU governmental bodies. It's social.network.europa.eu
...and already blocked by at least one instance, mastodon.art.
While I don't think it's necessarily sufficient to justify defederating their whole instance, it's worth noting that the reason they gave is definitely accurate. The BBC is incredibly transphobic. Here's a Wikipedia article about one of their worst, most prominent instances. It's no more so than is pretty standard in Britain these days, sadly, but that's not a good bar to measure yourself against.
There was a big campaign of utilising the BBC's complaints process to complain about the many flaws in that article. Here's a YouTube video by one person involved in that campaign. That's part 1 of 4 as the different stages of the process played out. The TL;DW is that the BBC ended up ignoring the complaints and ended up picking up on small flaws in the way the complaint was phrased (or just making up flaws where they didn't really exist) to use as an excuse to "respond" saying there was no problem with their journalistic standards.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/b4buJMMiwcg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Obviously I would not want to defend that article. But it is worth pointing out that the BBC lets all sorts publish. So it's not that the institution is necessarily transphobic, it's just that individual who wrote the article is.
So it’s not that the institution is necessarily transphobic, it’s just that individual who wrote the article is.
This would be a reasonable response, were it not for the way that they repeatedly defended the article and did some crazy mental gymnastics to avoid responding to the critiques levied at it. Because the people responding to complaints going through the formal complaints process have to be ones who truly represent what the BBC as an institution is about. If they don't, what's the point of that process existing?
When I see this shit I lose all hope in the Fediverse's success
It’s honestly great to have the people who like to complain about things separated from the things they complain about. It sets for a more positive vibe in general, and probably does wonders for their blood pressure as well.
I think anyone who disagrees with this decision would have left that instance a long time ago anyway :)
I like this take, despite (or perhaps because) reactionary engagement is more than half the reason social media has proliferated for this long.
Even if it kills Mastodon, having less angry people shouting at each other is undeniably a good thing
Probably the word "gimp" and not understanding that since it's all in capital letter that means it's an abbreviation, and that abbreviation is "GNU image manipulation program. "
Wait I'm out of the loop. When was BBC transphobic?
EDIT: Is this it? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...
This is the way.
...to make the fediverse useless, yes
Quite the contrary. This way those who think the BBC is super transphobic and would complain about it in their posts don’t have to be exposed to their content; the rest of us don’t have to be exposed to their complaints about it. Everybody wins.
I get it, but picture this: a person wants to join mastodon.art because they like art. They see the rules that go "no transphobia" or whatever and they go: "OK, seems reasonable". So they join, they invest their time and energy into the instance, and one day the admin decides that the whole national broadcasting network is someway evil and transphobic and must be blocked. I'd honestly be sooo pissed.
And not because the BBC's account is absolutely necessary to a good Mastodon experience, but because blocking a whole instance for shit like this does not make sense. It's not like the BBC goes around the Fediverse harassing trans people. The idea that you must block something so huge and valuable because it is - admittedly - partly dysfunctional is fucking mental. It's the BBC, for God's sake, not the KKK.
The Fediverse only works if we stop digging trenches and we start communicating more. It's called the Fediverse, not the De-fediverse. It's autonomous communities that talk to each other, not little fiefdoms at war with one another
The Dutch Government also launched an instance not that long ago. It's a pity it took so long, but Musk's antics are finally forcing people to move.
Also the EU: social.network.europa.eu
At least X allows free speech.
This is great! The Dutch government made their own official instance (social.overheid.nl) too!
@BBCRadio4@social.bbc has also popped up today. Seems like the least “experimental” of them so far (in name at least).
Seems like if the “experiment” goes well this account will just be ready to roll.
I ignore all the politics from the BBC, though general news and entertainment, documentaries are all broadly fine. But they're *politically *compromised by state-funding and imo are blatantly corrupt.
Technically the BBC are not "state-funded" but funded by UK viewers paying for a voluntary licence to watch.
I would certainly agree though that the UK government's influence in appointing staff in the upper echelons of the organisation (and also general government interference in its day to day running) leaves it open to criticism.
Not sure why you felt the need to piggy back your general critique of BBC journalistic independence on my post. Feels like a major swerve in topic.
I was explaining to those that may not know BBC Radio 4 what kind of channel it is and how it might be a good sign of them taking Mastodon seriously. I wasn't suggesting people listen to it.
It's a smart thing for news sources and ngos to do - run an instance and use it to issue posts and provide a platform for journalists. Twitter and other platforms can still receive posts but the "source of truth" is the Mastodon server
That is fucking awesome.
I love the BBC, I hate seeing what it's been forced to turn into by threats from a succession of Conservative governments. I still pay my TV license despite pirating all my TV and movie content for years.
I'm glad there's nuance to the discussion, I was worried by the 95+% glazing going on.
How can one add social.bbc to my Lemmy subscribed list?
Lemmy doesn't do microblogging.
How do you do that? I've tried and couldn't get it to work.
You cannot follow the entire instance as such, rather the individual accounts on the instance - such as @BBCRD, @BBC_News_Labs, @Connected_Studio etc.
Kbin users can subscribe to whatever content is shared from social.bbc on federated instances by subscribing to /d/social.bbc, but I'm not sure how much sense that makes. :)
Edit: In Lemmy you'd find the users by entering for example /u/BBCRD@social.bbc, but as @roguetrick pointed out Lemmy is not really made for microblogging.
Unsure if you can follow entire instances but you can definitely follow users from that instance such as https://kbin.social/u/@BBCRD@social.bbc
No expert, but I have a Mastodon account + app and a Lemmy account + app.
Is it better for companies in the Fediverse to create their own instances, like is that how we’re likely to see the proliferation of corporations here? We’ll see a Pepsi instance, a FoxNews instance, a McDonald’s instance? I imagine that gives them the most control over what happens in their neck of the woods vs just having a single corporate account on like lemmy.world or beehaw or whatever (though I don’t entirely understand what having an instance entails).
Yeah, for any sizable organization running your own instance is the way to go, similarly to how you'd want your own DNS domain, email and web site. And just like with these other services your fedi presence could be hosted somewhere too but you want to be in control of it.
Makes more sense for The NY Times than for McDonalds. A commercial ad account would want to be found on a local feed of the biggest instance. The BBC experiment won’t work unless they commit to supporting it. Ideally, their reporters would have their own accounts, not just at the radio show level.
Mastodon is perfect for any form of media, or education establishment and so on. People who want to read their content will subscribe and they don’t have to allow general public signups, only those working for that establishment.
This is good to see like to see more companies using the fediverse
There's really good BBC bot operating Mastodon too. I've followed it since I joined in October last year. It's even programmed to use CW's and add image descriptions.
there may be reason for this, an unknown variable, an x if you will
I'm all for it.
No matter how you feel about BBC ( I would at least posit that they are significantly better than some of the corporate, for-profit news networks out of America), journalism and professional-quality media is important to informing people and providing the very first thread of accountability in democratic society. On top of that, I think that self-hosting fediverse software on an official domain (like "social.bbc") is the ultimate form of content verification, and it much more effective and egalitarian than awarding "influencers" with blue checkmarks or whatever.
Overall I see almost no downside to the BBC hosting content on the Fediverse, and I hope that other media organizations follow their lead on this one.
I don't see any real risk of corporations monetizing the fediverse.
Just look at something like Linux, which is a massive project that is both monetized by corporations while still remaining free, open, community-driven and accessible to just about anyone. I can't say the risk is 0, but it's certainly not large.
As far as big corps go I think the BBC is probably one of the safest in terms of worries about monetisation. I'm not saying they're perfect but it's very different to if it was Sky or another commercial channel.
But I thought we went here to get away from the public web services where they monetized everything and put ads and tracking everywhere?
Why would we want this place to become the same? We can just open a web browser and we are in that ad infested place again.
Nah. I'm here because I don't want to support reddit and don't want to use their shitty platform when there are viable alternatives out there
To me, the fediverse is like the internet, especially in the early days.
Once there is undoubtedly money to be made from the fediverse, it will be impossible to stop companies from moving in.
But as long as there is always a backbone of free and open source software that is accessible to all people, everywhere, then we can still maintain healthy and strong communities, with or without companies.
I hope this means I'll get to find out about dramas and panel games more easily because I never know what is on until it's almost too late and I have like 2 days left to hear it.
they should just be out here with links to their own website. once there, look at their ads. if any of these mega corps try to show ads on fedi, they'd be defedied(defederated) quick. it's got them hesitant about getting shut out
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The BBC is supposed to be independent, although to what extent it actually is is debatable. That aside, Mastodon is open-source so anyone can set up their own server.
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Now this is the kind of growth factor the Fediverse needs, not Threads.
save