Can public media build its own social network? Chicago Public Media teams up with New_ Public to try: chicago.com
4 days ago by eicker to c/technology
At minimum run an instance for posting stuff you make. It doesn't have to be open to randos to be useful. Pool together the tech staff, make pbs.social and all the stations and get accounts, you can follow them, boost, repost, comment under it from another instance
This is what local media should have been building years ago: not another news site begging Google and Meta for traffic, but a digital town square it actually controls. Reverse chronological feeds, human stewards, no follower contest, no engagement addiction. If chicago.com works, the interesting question is why every public broadcaster isn’t trying this?
I mean it's called a lemmy instance? Or any of the other free federated ways to share things there are. It would be their own domain, so their posts would clearly come from them, federated and re-shared.
This is specifically for neighbourhood-level news. Think those Facebook groups people report lost dogs and cats and plan events.
Chicago has a relatively rich nonprofit news scene that includes robust neighborhood-level news coverage.
They hope to build a participatory community resource that informs everything from where to volunteer, to plans for the weekend, to how neighbors can meet one another.
I'm not sure Lemmy has all the features they want out of their platform. They could host it, but it sounds like they want to verify membership, charge fees, have calendar integration, etc. Lemmy is decentralised, it sounds like they want to build something centralised.
It has many of the hallmarks you picture when you think of a social platform: a feed, posts, reaction buttons. The feed is ordered reverse chronologically, not algorithmically, and can be filtered by topics like arts & culture or pets. There’s a separate, second feed that features posts the community steward has flagged to bring to members’ attention. Posts might be introductions, or events, or requests or offers of help, or steward-posted discussion prompts or guides. There’s also a calendar feature, where users can submit or look for events.
No idea how they plan to monetise this. Also of course they have an A.I. clanker moderating all the posts, but at least they have an escape hatch.
Posts are automatically moderated by an AI-powered tool that checks them against community guidelines, though posters can also flag posts for review by the human steward.
If the system thinks a user’s message may not meet community standards, like it’s inflammatory or obscene, they can’t post it right away. However, users always have the ability to go around the automation and have a local human steward review their message. This is important because the AI might not be correct, and it gives appropriate agency to users and stewards.
I think the Fediverse needs to prove it to alot of people before they're ready to get involved.
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The only way to know is to try. The only way to truly lose is never to try. 100% PBS and public media stations should absolutely try to do something like this everywhere. Whether it's something like Mastodon servers for local users in the state or viewing area. It's a great way to build modern communities. We have someone that runs a local instance for our city area. I don't generally post there. But I absolutely log in to check the local feed.
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