this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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As it says in the title, the BBC is starting its own Mastodon instance. I think the CBC (and other news networks) should do similar. Particularly with the recent passing of Bill C-18 it seems like a world where the links we share are crossposts to news organization's own content is the perfect resolution to that whole issue.

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I think that this is an important part of the future of the fediverse. News sites and the like have shitty poorly moderated comment sections that serve almost no purpose. They have the resources to sustain a large instance and like you said it lets them more easily monetize their work. It seems like wins all around if enough news outlets adopt it.

I think it would be pretty cool if I could subscribe to different CBC sections, and have it show up in my normal feeds, I think this would mitigate the biases that relying on news going viral creates without having to go to the cbc itself and scrape through it myself.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Plus, free RSS!

(For the five of us that still care about that, anyway.)

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

RSS forever!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

This is so much better than relying on tweeter assuming it can be medium for some sort of commons!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (5 children)

For sure. Reading through the entire cbc.ca site feels so unfeasible and exhausting. Having it actually categorized and browsable without all the attention-grabbing mega headlines would make it much more readable.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the start of the use cases I wanted to see take off with Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin. Much like the previous era of distributed content with user-hosted voice servers and forums, having larger communities/organizations run their own instances and avoid trying to treat the space as one big pool of content is the real use case here. The fact that you can cross-instance subscribe and post makes it viable long-term.

It also gives "free" verification of information's sources based on the domain, the same way that (modern) email gives you an extra layer of confidence when you see a verified domain. I would love the see the Government of Canada, CBC, Universities, all starting their own instances and utilizing them in unique and interesting ways. With enough adoption, official provincial/municipality instances could pop up to make organized communities easier.

It feels to me like a starting move away from the autocracy that the platform economy has created. It's not universal, but I absolutely push back against too many instances trying to be "general purpose Reddit replacements" because that seems like a fleeting use case for what it can eventually become, and it just confuses the whole abstraction of what these decentralized socials afford.

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 year ago (6 children)

This is very intriguing.... I actually work in CBC (nowhere near content or with the social media people who'd make these kinds of decisions), but as a developer I get 20% time to dabble with anything I think might be useful. I haven't used it in a while, but a CBC ActivityPub instance may be just the right project, especially if it can auto-publish our content from the same feeds that power our site.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, you might want to take a look at https://zdf.social/@ZDF and https://ard.social/

ZDF and ARD are the two biggest broadcasters in Germany, and they both have their own ActivityPub (Mastodon) server.

In case you needed some extra convincing that other large mainstream news organisations also have realised that this is actually a good idea that makes sense ;)

A big news org from France is also on Mastodon with like 50k followers, but I cannot remember the name right now

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

The actual Dutch government now also run their own instance.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Evan Prodromou (@[email protected]) , one of the co-authors of ActivityPub is super interest in getting Canadian news organisations on board the fediverse. He gave a talk about that last night actually: https://cosocial.ca/@evan/110809723914430376

If you're serious about this, you could totally reach out to him, I'm sure he would love to hear from people in CBC

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@wisdomchicken @Hazzard absolutely! Hazzard, I'd love to discuss!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

gods tagging someone's masto directly from lemmy, and them being able to directly respond via masto is just so fucking nice

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

@wisdomchicken it's funny that it seems like magic, since we're all on the same Internet. We've been conditioned to have such low expectations!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This has just opened my eyes. I get it now.

This whole thing makes sense.

Thank you.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

@Hazzard @grte

Yes, this can actually be done. There's a tool called #MastoFeed that allows you to post RSS content to the fediverse. Some publications like #DarkReading are exploring using MastoFeed to publish their articles.

Their account can be found here: https://infosec.town/@darkreading

That being said, not sure if a bot account is what people are hoping for if #CBC decides to join the fediverse...

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The involvement of the BBC encouraged me to finally figure it out. And now I REALLY want a CBC one. They could have a feed per show, all hosted internally. It's a no-brainer.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I'd get back to listening "The Secret Life of Canada" podcast if there was an active lemmy community for it :-P

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (5 children)

idk if I want an entire instance made up of CBC commenters.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Seriously, who are these people commenting on CBC articles? I don't usually even look at the comments anymore, simply because any time I did, they were full of the shittiest, dumbest assholes I've ever seen. I'm embarrassed to even share a country with people who comment on CBC articles.

By comparison, comments on Reddit and Lemmy are usually okay. Not good by any means (especially in the right leaning mess that was r/Canada), but miles better than CBC's comments (which I can only assume are completely unmoderated).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Maybe most of them won't figure out how to login here. Especially if they force 2fa.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

There always seem to be 2. The real answer is in the comments (Reddit/Lemmy), and the comments are worth ignoring (Cbc/CTV/Facebook)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

@Tired8281 @grte

The difference here being that a CBC instance wouldn't have to follow dumb rules ... they'd make up their own so the racists, multi-phobics, etc wouldn't have much of a platform.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

When the CBC was label as propaganda on the platform formerly know as Twitter, didn't the CBC say they were going to be involved in decentralized social media?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The possessive pronoun is "its". "It's" is a contraction of "it is".

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the correction.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Yeah, this is such a great thing. Really hope CBC takes note and follows.

Also, hope this is a success.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's kind of ironic, because a massive reason for the enshittification of Twitter is Musk's rampant transphobia, and the BBC is famous among the trans community for platforming transphobes. I'd have thought they'd be perfectly happy to stay on Twitter.

I mean, there's a lot more wrong with Twitter than just transphobia, but you can trace it back there. It was a big part of the "free speech" argument that transphobes were getting silenced, which is what drove Musk to want to own the site, and also drove him down the right-wing-identity-politics rabbit hole that turned him into the wingnut he is today. That and anti-COVID measures hurting his bottom line.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Musk was not "turned into" a wingnut. He "always was" a wingnut. It doesn't take a lot of digging to find him being a contentious, antisocial prick from his youth onward. It's just that the richer he got the more people looked.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This seems very awesome! I'd love to see them go as far as having their own Lemmy instance too!

I feel this move helps legitimize Mastodon in a way that other companies follow suit to get away from the mess that twitter is now.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The Dutch government and the city of Amsterdam have their own instance too.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I agree. Hosting a "Twitter" alternative yourself that you can control. And bringing news to people on other platforms. You need big players on the alternative platforms to make them viable for more people.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

I sent a couple emails to them around the time Musk labelled them as state propaganda. They sent one reply back saying they'd forward it to whoever is in charge of social. No way to know whether or not is was just basically flushed down the toilet though. I don't know if there's a particular way to reach them to recommend that they set up a presence here.

I don't really see the downside for them. A private server would be relatively low cost and it could be hosted on servers they control in Canada. Beyond an official place for their work, it also means their employees and journalists wouldn't have to worry about where to sign up, plus give them instant account verification.

As much as I love the CBC, they always seem a bit too reluctant to lead.

Edit: Just wanted to add that it's important to reach out to CBC any way you can. I'm not sure about other Fediverse projects but Mastodon at least uses Rel=noreferer in the header. Traffic from Mastodon users will show up in analytics as direct traffic so they can't see how many people are originating from there.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I emailed them today. It is clear that the "free" platforms they rely on are now openly hostile to them and their users. We need to put public services back onto public infrastructure

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I sent them a note via their feedback form too. If we all do that they might start paying attention.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Great move on the part of the BBC. Given all the issues on Twitter, hopefully the CBC will also make a move to Mastodon. I recall when Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada, closed comments on Twitter due to abusive garbage, that I wrote her office and suggested Mastodon. Alas, they did not follow through. But hopefully this move from the BBC will inspire some of our Canadian institutions (particularly the CBC) to reconsider and to make the move to the fediverse.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is good in some ways and I welcome the BBC to the fediverse as an important step to universal acceptance. It's far better than using flaky bridges from other social networks.

What is disappointing is the very small range of content provided so far, Radio 4 & 5 plus some curiosities. I'd hoped for the excellent 6 Music channel. Let's see if they keep up with the sports in particular on 5. I'm glad that it's divided by station / topic so I can follow only what interests me.

I too would like more national broadcasters to get onboard. CBC I'm sure have some interesting content to share with the world, as do ABC, RTE, NZBC, others? I'd love to have culture from across the globe, which is the real value for Mastodon for me rather than as a news feed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Some instances (at least mastodon.art) are already blocking them.

https://mastodon.art/@Curator/110809888584495290

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Honestly with this model of social networking now past its infancy and the most painful growing pains (I think), every entity of any meaningful size should be creating their own Mastodon (and Lemmy) instance. Governments, corporations, non profits, etc.

Validation, message control, etc are crucial to success, and leaving that in the hands of some for profit entity that doesn't have your interests at heart is a recipe for disaster. So many companies had to decide if they wanted to keep their access to customers on the Bird Site while dealing with people saying the N word and cheering literal Nazis. That wouldn't be a problem in federated space: just defederate.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I didn't know about the BBC thing, that's a pretty big deal for the fediverse. A question though, in the linked BBC article, it seems like they're heavily relying on moderation to come from the home instance of anyone who posts a reply to a BBC post. If a self hosted troll server decides to start aggressively spamming these media accounts, or posts illegal material as replies to their posts, what could a media organization do to stop it? Is there any protection against say a wide network of troll servers working together?

Traditional social media at least theoretically has a better ability to shut this sort of activity down because they can see the whole picture of user activity and use algorithms to discover and ban bots. I worry that decentralization itself will become an attack vector for malicious activity.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Isn't this what defederation is for? If it became enough of an issue media companies could even work together to maintain a shared blacklist to reduce the individual burden.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

This is great to see. They cite moderation as a concern. Turning off replies to all posts could help reduce that burden.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Very cool! I'm hoping that other news organizations follow suit.

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