BBC starts experimenting with the Fediverse, running its own Mastodon instance
https://social.bbc/aboutOpen linkView original on lemdro.id1851
Comments147https://social.bbc/aboutOpen linkView original on lemdro.idhttps://social.bbc/aboutOpen linkView original on lemdro.id
Now this is the kind of growth factor the Fediverse needs, not Threads.
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.
But people can still reply to posts so you'd need moderation still.
And twitter had moderation when these organizations decided to use it.
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
Universities have experimented with more private social networks. I remember YikYak back in my uni days. They either don't have the resource to spin one up or they don't know about it.
Might not qualify as a social network, but university hosted IRC servers were a thing once.
https://social.edu.nl/@MishaVelthuis/110673361080930801
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.
OH MY GOD GARRET I AM YOUR BIGGEST FAN
💀
call us handsfree, safe, and legal
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.
Absolutely. And it's easy to take a lack of adverts for granted when you watch public TV it has to be said.
I may be misremembering but seem to recall them being early to Tw*tter too. Good sign
my guy you don't have to censor the word twitter
The childish censorship of names of people and things has been one of my biggest internet bug bears over the last few years.
Well you gotta keep your posts ad friendly, you know?
Aye. Like nerds using M$ for Microsoft.
Apple? More like Crapple, am I right, fellas?
All that does is give them cred in the rap community.
to be fair, the word Mastodon was being censored on Twitter at one point, but doesn't mean the other way happens in the Fediverse.
Maybe they were talking about twatter
Are we supposed to call it X now? What a dumb name, in my opinion.
'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"
I still call it Twitter and will continue to do so. :)
Does that mean DMX is now running the show over there?
They don't know who we be
It's a funny thing people do. Look it up. Some more examples: Br*tish, Fra*ce
You accidentally did a markdown there!
That's why censoring with 🤮 is better:
Br🤮tish, Fr🤮nch
brish
Oops haha. Fixed it. Thanks.
Musk himself is censoring Twitter
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 spelled twatter
It would be funny to censor X just with a single *
Cool.
Very!
This could set a precedent!
This is already the case in the Netherlands and Germany, actually! They each have a mastodon instance
And the EU commission or something
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.
https://mastodon.art/@Curator/110809888584495290
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.
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
I think it's just the one server run by a mentalcase tbh. Not the first time I've seen them mentioned. The other thing was them freaking out because of GIMP.
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
The art software GIMP? What happened?
Merriam Webster - "Gimp"
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. "
This is so dumb. Jesus.
Wait I'm out of the loop. When was BBC transphobic?
EDIT: Is this it? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22We%27re_being_pressured_into_sex_by_some_trans_women%22
Why am I not surprised lol
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 amount of irony in this comment is hilarious to a point. In all honesty, where was these points when a vast majority of Lemmy and Mastodon admins (and a majority of users) defederated or wanted to be defederated from Threads as soon as even a mention that they were federating with the fediverse came out. Furthermore, some instances just did it instantly without even asking their user base for these exact same reasons.
Besides, the BBC is a largely conservative network. Not as much as America (which says alot about our politics but that's not the point). They had shown that they were not willing to even apologize for the blatant transphobia when they released that terrible article even out of numerous protests and complaints. There is a really good video by Shaun that really puts into perspective how transphobic and shit the BBC really is: https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=b4buJMMiwcg (invidious instance). It upsets me that alot of users here didn't really give a damn about this exact issue when Threads was being defederated.
Besides my point, mastodon.art is quite known for being very quick to block and having very strict rules. No matter what, that's something that users have to (or already have) come to respect. It is both the user and admins decsion to whatever they want with an instance. If a user doesn't like it, leave. Move to another instance. Almost every other instance is allowing BBC to have access. Don't support this behavior by continuing to use that platform.
OK just a couple of points here. I'm not gonna be brief because I care about all this. Sorry.
De-federating from Threads is not the same thing as de-federating from the BBC, it's another issue entirely. Those who did it explained their choice with the fear that Meta could somehow "embrace, extend, and extinguish" Mastodon, plus with the fear of data collection etc etc. Now I'm not saying they are right (I don't even know where I stand on this), but if those are their fears, we're talking about the destruction of Mastodon itself. Which is not even comparable to what the BBC's instance could do.
About the trasphobia itself: what the BBC did or did not do is besides the point: the BBC is too relevant to just block it willy-nilly, and also very reductive. If you block it, you throw away the baby with the bath water.
I would also dispute the idea that the BBC is "largely conservative", but even that's beside the point. Let's pretend that it is: so what? Being conservative is not a crime and not all conservatives are Trump. I'm not conservative by any means, but I still want to see and hear what conservatives think. As a left-leaning dude, I WANT to know what they are up to.
My fear is that we're weaponizing the Fediverse to create communities which are completely sheltered by the actual world. For all its flaws, Twitter was great in that it showed you a bit of everything. I don't want to see the Fediverse become a series of spaces where people only agree with each other and don't even want to engage in a discussion with someone they don't agree with. What we're both doing right now (disagreeing and debating) is so much more valuable that people think.
Lastly: being on it since 2017, I know full well how the fediverse works. And no, migrating from one Mastodon instance to another is not easy by any means. This article gained some traction recently and it explains why. But even this is besides the point. First, because ideally, you should not have to migrate to another instance. It's possible, but is sucks. Second, because I'm talking about some cultural aspects of the Fediverse, and bringing the discussion to a technical level is a moot point.
My question and my whole point is this: is there a risk that the Fediverse is becoming an instrument to isolate ourselves from everything we don't agree with? I.e. an instrrument of isolation instead of an instrument of federation?
I always argue that defederation will just result in echo chambers for both sides. And that can ultimately be worse.
In the case of defedding conservative instances, you're also making their instances more of an echo chamber and increasing the likelihood of radicalising themselves further due to them no longer getting challenged on their beliefs, either by conversation/debate, or just by seeing positive posts from the opposite side.
If you have something bad to say about the bbc, defedding is not the answer to get your voice heard and potentially change them. They'll hear about you defedding once (if at all), and then forget and move on. How would people be able to protest if the protest can't even be seen.
(When I say "you" I'm not actually implying you feel these things, I'm just using generalist language to create a point - I agree with you and just extending from your point)
I absolutely see this point honestly. Defederating should be taken absolutely seriously and not just abused all the time. The more I sit on it, the more it just kinda sounds egotistical in a way. Though I am worried how it may feel like we are ignoring the trans community but I also feel you're absolutely right when it comes to this point.
I complained about defederating with threads all the time whenever it was brought up.
It's free speech my friend, with it we should have the fediverse.
does not make sense to you, for people at mastodon.art it makes perfect sense I guess
I've tried to explain why I think it does not make sense, but thanks for your comment I guess, I had not thought about it /s
I don't get why you're so triggered by that. This doesn't affect you at all unless you have an account at that instance.
This could really get the ball rolling
I think this may be the year if the Linux desktop as well
Lmao , as far as the joke is concerned , I think linux desktop is as good as it is !!
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.
German Public broadcast also has its own instance, as does the government.
Also the EU: social.network.europa.eu
At least X allows free speech.
/s?
Nope.
Fair enough. I feel like I disagree with you based on what I’ve seen, but us disagreeing is free speech.
Totally agree, even if I disagree with your opinion it's fine 🤝
Good job there isn't a story just today about twitter using threats of legal action to harass researchers for their free speech eh?
The anti hate group research? 🤣
Right on. 😄
Edit to add. I think it swings both ways. I’ve seen the Beeb and ‘X’ curtail speech. It would be hilarious if the BBC got cancelled for being transphobic.
This is great! The Dutch government made their own official instance (social.overheid.nl) too!
@[email protected] 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.
Radio 4 is the most serious channel they do as well. Mostly news and politics, with documentaries and a small amount of comedy.
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.
They don't treat it like a voluntary license, they constantly harass people that don't pay. Assuming you're always guilty if you don't have one.
Yeah definitely. I remember the fake "Detector Vans" designed to frighten people but I suspect going forward with more and more younger people only using Netflix/Amazon Prime etc their attitude will have to change.
They tell you to notify them if you don't need a license, but it changes fuck all, you still get letters every couple of months that get increasingly more threatening. It's so dumb.
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.
Because your comment was related to what I had to say, and I also agreed with you. I did see a comment that echoed my criticism of the BBC lower down, but I hadn't seen it before I posted my comment.
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
Didn’t know they have their own TLD
I can imagine all the domain names that people would come up with if .bbc TLD was public lol
Heresmy.bbc
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.
And this is why I use Kbin.
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/[email protected], 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/@[email protected]
No expert, but I have a Mastodon account + app and a Lemmy account + app.
I love this. No more “blue checkmarks” or paid verification processes. Just check the domain of the post(s) to confirm they are legit.
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.
Been following that as well
there may be reason for this, an unknown variable, an x if you will
Hope this catches on. Love it.
Idk what to feel about this tbh !
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.
As much as I distrust these big corps, we need them to join the fediverse if we want this place to grow proper. I do worry over the possibility of them trying to monetize the platforms though.
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
ban
unban
help
Well, I think it's positive although it's eerie to have government run instances.
BBC is not the UK government. I'm not sure if there's a difference or not. (Also please accept my apologies for using this post for a quick federation test)
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.
What's wrong with government-run instances, when they're used specifically for communication from that government?