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The BBC on Mastodon

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#41

Post by Zhyl »

atchoo wrote: post #4

Hmm. My faith in the BBC's commitment to decentralisation and open standards has been damaged by the artificial month delay they added to their podcast feeds to try and drive traffic to their centralised Sounds app. I've been listening to the In Our Time podcast for 20 years and then they go and vandalise it as a growth hack. There is no way I am using multiple proprietary podcast apps so I end up listening to topica…

I have get_iplayer [0] set up to download the topical comedy as it comes out and put it into a Podcast addict virtual podcast folder. Suits my needs.

I would use Sounds, but the UI is actually really fiddly to get to where I need to go, you can "subscribe" but you can't have playlists or queues. It's just a bit rubbish all round.

[0] https://get-iplayer.github.io/get_iplayer/

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#42

Post by darreninthenet »

Interesting fact - the BBC has always been around experimenting with new media etc - in the early days of ISPs in the UK, the BBC was one of the first and in fact had the best (ie carried the most newsgroups) UseNet server from a UK based ISP at the time.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#43

Post by roywiggins »

Zhyl wrote: post #41
atchoo wrote: post #4

Hmm. My faith in the BBC's commitment to decentralisation and open standards has been damaged by the artificial month delay they added to their podcast feeds to try and drive traffic to their centralised Sounds app. I've been listening to the In Our Time podcast for 20 years and then they go and vandalise it as a growth hack. There is no way I am using multiple proprietary podcast apps so I end up listening to topica…

I have get_iplayer [0] set up to download the topical comedy as it comes out and put it into a Podcast addict virtual podcast folder. Suits my needs. I would use Sounds, but the UI is actually really fiddly to get to where I need to go, you can "subscribe" but you can't have playlists or queues. It's just a bit rubbish all round. [0] https://get-iplayer.github.io/get_iplayer/

I ended up rube-goldberging get_iplayer outputs into a proper podcast feed and thence into Pocket Casts with the rest of my podcasts. It sort of mostly works.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#44

Post by polytely »

uhtred wrote: post #6

does social media serve any purpose whatsoever besides marketing and PR, virtue signalling and self promotion? honestly, what genuine use does something like twitter, mastodon, instagram etc have? No one even reads the shit other people post, they just use it to hook into their own material. fucking weird world we live in now, where 90% of the population appears to be a narcissist.

You are literally posting this complaint to a social media site.

For me I'm on mastodon to shitpost, discuss media with friends, my account is locked and I only allow followers who give off good vibes. There is nothing narcistic about it, it isn't even tied to my IRL identity.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#45

Post by noneeeed »

atchoo wrote: post #4

Hmm. My faith in the BBC's commitment to decentralisation and open standards has been damaged by the artificial month delay they added to their podcast feeds to try and drive traffic to their centralised Sounds app. I've been listening to the In Our Time podcast for 20 years and then they go and vandalise it as a growth hack. There is no way I am using multiple proprietary podcast apps so I end up listening to topica…

I feel like BBC Sounds is some senior manager's vanity project that they have staked their career on.

Their obsession with trying to get me to use it instead of normal RSS feeds or third party radio services like TuneIn is incredibly frustrating. They have intentionally broken the experience for smart speaker users and podcast listeners because they are incapable of enticing them over with a better experience. The obsession with control has soured my feelings towards BBC radio.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#46

Post by uhtred »

polytely wrote: post #44
uhtred wrote: post #6

does social media serve any purpose whatsoever besides marketing and PR, virtue signalling and self promotion? honestly, what genuine use does something like twitter, mastodon, instagram etc have? No one even reads the shit other people post, they just use it to hook into their own material. fucking weird world we live in now, where 90% of the population appears to be a narcissist.

You are literally posting this complaint to a social media site. For me I'm on mastodon to shitpost, discuss media with friends, my account is locked and I only allow followers who give off good vibes. There is nothing narcistic about it, it isn't even tied to my IRL identity.

Not really, HN is a forum.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#47

Post by ta1243 »

darreninthenet wrote: post #42

Interesting fact - the BBC has always been around experimenting with new media etc - in the early days of ISPs in the UK, the BBC was one of the first and in fact had the best (ie carried the most newsgroups) UseNet server from a UK based ISP at the time.

BBC ran public multicast trials for live streaming back in 2006 -- https://www.bbc.co.uk/multicast/

Alas didn't go anywhere. Now nearly 20 years later many companies (amazon, netflix, bbc) still struggle with live streaming at scale

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#48

Post by uhtred »

peterlk wrote: post #17
uhtred wrote: post #6

does social media serve any purpose whatsoever besides marketing and PR, virtue signalling and self promotion? honestly, what genuine use does something like twitter, mastodon, instagram etc have? No one even reads the shit other people post, they just use it to hook into their own material. fucking weird world we live in now, where 90% of the population appears to be a narcissist.

Well, here I am replying to you on a social media platform (HN) to contribute to a discussion. So yes, social media does serve a purpose. It connects people and allows us to have discussions. The problem you mention is a huge one with modern social media, and I think that it is exacerbated by the perverse incentives of engagement (ad) driven monetization. But there are healthier ways to use social media, and shifting…

Not really. HN is a forum.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#49

Post by sdfghswe »

I like the diagram on their page. Anyone here tried GnuSocial? What about bookwyrm? I searched "intelligent investor" (found) and "empower your investing" (not found).

One problem I have with decentralization (and this is almost a nitpick) is how complex the mental model of those things are. Who decides which books exist on Bookwyrm? Who stores the reviews? etc etc. It's quite exhausting actually.

I'm sure once one "wins" and you get used to it it's not an issue, but I think this friction is an issue for adoption.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#50

Post by chefandy »

Anybody considering ActivityPub for a general-audience social media project should give the challenges section a close read with an open mind and not reflexively minimize the negative parts of their experience. Before the big spike at the end of 2022, critiquing Mastodon's usability was tantamount to heresy in the FOSS crowd. Oddly, that didn't change much after many (most?) of those new users dropped Mastodon in the subsequent months. There is clearly a disconnect between what Mastodon offers, and what general, non-technical audiences want it to offer.

ActivityPub and Mastodon are both fucking awesome, and I'm confident the Fediverse can support a social media tool painless enough for grandpa to confidently migrate his fly-fishing discussion group to from his Facebook group. I'm also sure all of the good work folks are doing on the existing tool set will still be valuable in that world; but it's probably not going to be the thing that makes decentralized social media the standard rather than a distant fringe alternative to most non-technical folks. I've got my eye on Bluesky but I'd really love to see someone figure out a way to tighten things up non-commercially. I've tried digging into the problem a few times, but the conceptual simplicity of centralized social media is a huge selling point for regular folks.

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