Kinda surprised the BBC hasn’t done this already, they’re normally quite advanced with this kind of thing.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like they’ve really stuck with it
Didn’t realise they had their own gTLD either!
Why would a news agency require a social media server?
They are supposed to do news, right? We have open standards for that already. RSS feeds, namely.
because news agencies employ journalists who use social media to report
For the same reason that they have a website: to control their media presence and their means of content distribution.
It’s by far been one of if not the best way to reach their audience for well over a decade. RSS feeds might be well used by lemmy users, but you don’t really think most people get their news that way? Or even know how to use RSS, or what it is. I’ve got friends and family members who have never owned a personal computer, but they have accounts on all the biggest social media platforms.
Ah, I might have worded that badly: I meant why they need a social media server? As in, own their own slice of service.
It’s one thing to have your owned channels and then also disseminate via other channels that people already use. But if you want to provide your own service, you also need to run the actual service now, including moderation, administration, everything. It’s not exactly the kind of company I’d connect to having their own federated-social-media-server, basically. I mean there’s no downside to them running one of course, but I see that separate of their day-to-day business of doing news if they got a handful of people who are into the tech and want to keep it on running on top of their main work, basically.
I think the suggestion is to follow in the BBC’s footsteps.
The article is from 2022. I’m guessing if it was written today, it would be about bluesky.
Can’t (presently) host a bluesky server
Well you can, but you have to write quite a bit of code for the server and tinker
Will it federate to other bluesky instances?
Actually, my information is a bit outdated. Personal data servers for Bluesky are fully self-hostable and have official container images, but firehoses (which control your feed) require a bit of tinkering. I’m not sure if Bluesky has published their own algorithm for doing the feed, even though everyone seems to be able to write their own feed algorithm and execute it.
Yes. But even though Bluesky is kinda open source, they’re not making it much easy to self-host. Last I heard, one’s best option for self-hosting was some unofficial and experimental docker image.
They have RSS feeds that’s all I need from any news place.
That would be interesting. But CBC absolutely hates public engagement. Plus I cringe at the thought of 75% of the CBC budget being spent on content moderation.
Why doesn’t the Tyee start their own Mastodon server?
Plus I cringe at the thought of 75% of the CBC budget being spent on content moderation.
Theoretically, could they outwardly federate only? For example, they make a post which gets pushed out to other instances, but they would set their instance to not allow any external posts or comments to be federated into their instance, and they could close registrations. That way, the rest of the Fediverse could follow and interact with their content, and they wouldn’t have to deal with moderation. I’m not sure if that’s really how federation works, so please correct any inaccuracies.
Plus I cringe at the thought of 75% of the CBC budget being spent on content moderation.
I have long felt that CBC should be spending a minimum on content production and instead be empowering citizens to produce and distribute content.
I disagree. They should spend less on flashy nonsense (expensive sets) and scripted drama/comedy, but they should set and maintain journalistic standards among professionals. The internet provides enough citizen journalism. We need professionals with dedicated beats, anchors and analysts who really know their domains, long-form journalism and documentaries. Professionalism more than ever. It’s seriously lacking.
Professional journalism is essential and it’s one of the things CBC does best. But it’s not the only thing we need from a broadcaster. We also need a voice. We need a “YouTube” that is publicly funded and where the algorithm isn’t trying to exploit us. We need a “Twitter” that is a genuine public forum with all that entails. We need an “Internet Archive” supported with actual government funds so that we are not all amnesiacs whenever capital benefits from that.
So you want something like a PBS of the internet (or public access), rather than a CBC. Maybe somebody should make a Canadian Media Fediverse Syndicate or something like that. Maybe you could do it! I don’t want to moderate that kind of thing though. I want CBC to focus on news. It’s important that we get information.
They only have to moderate content from users on their server, and the idea would be that only CBC employees (or programs) would be given accounts which also verifies they are legitimate. Readers subscribe to those accounts from their own instances.
So it’s their own private instance that people view from the outside. This might be a reasonable way to publish.
Plus I cringe at the thought of 75% of the CBC budget being spent on content moderation.
Arguably they already do that on their website’s content moderation.
Publicly funded and controlled social media should be the norm for every country.
