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The BBC on Mastodon

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#71

Post by tempaccount420 »

jrmg wrote: post #64

As I follow these new accounts, I’m reminded of just how _hard_ it is to follow people on other servers on Mastodon. Click follow -> dialog full of text, which gives the most common instructions (to copy and paste into the search field on your server) in smaller text at the end -> go to my server -> there’s no search field, or anything that says ‘search’ -> [I know that this is because my window is too narrow] -> exp…

Federations are the worst way to implement decentralization. All because people are afraid of blockchains.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#72

Post by KerrAvon »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #27

I hope it doesn't get killed by CSAM spam or stuff like that from trolls. Automated federated filtering is not impossible. In fact, an distributed setup (where volunteers host image/text classifiers) like AI Horde already does seems pretty doable.

TFA says:

> Unlike most Mastodon servers where you can sign up for a personal account, we're only using this instance to host BBC accounts; it’s a place for us to publish in the Fediverse. If you have a Mastodon (or other ActivityPub) account from another server, then you can easily follow our accounts.

So if there's CSAM, it's coming from the BBC itself, which is hopefully unlikely.

And the fediverse / Mastodon already takes care of filtering. Niche instances failing to police CSAM are defederated by mainstream instances, which means they're unreachable to anyone on the mainstream instances. This could be improved and automation tools for use by moderators are certainly welcome, but generally speaking as a user you're not going to see objectionable content unless you go looking for it or your admin is negligent.

edit: typo

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#73

Post by zerkten »

noneeeed wrote: post #45
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 ob…

I don't follow the BBC's approaches to revenue generation that closely, but is part of this due to larger overseas audiences? I'm now living outside the UK, so I expect that I'm viewed differently as a user by the Beeb, as well as by TV licence payers. If access to content isn't controlled then it's harder to maximise the revenue.

BBC Sounds feels like it's part of that efforts, but I'd be interested to know more given how much family members complain about the costs of licencing and services relative to the quality.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#74

Post by zerkten »

hadrien01 wrote: post #51
noneeeed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ob…

I feel the same about Radio France (the radio public broadcaster here in France, equivalent to BBC Radio + BBC Sounds). They've been pushing their app more and more, and now RSS feeds correctly list the episodes, but if you try to download one from a few months ago you just get an ad to download the app. No thanks.

Does Radio France generate revenues in other French-speaking countries with the same content? It feels like the BBC is trying to maximise revenue but expectations for consumers locally and overseas are going to be very different. Blocking loopholes hurts the local users more.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#75

Post by JdeBP »

This is the first major "name" to have set itself up in the FediVerse, after smaller outfits like (for examples) the Texas Observer and Bylines have been established there for some time. It does indicate which way the wind is now blowing; and they've done it the right way with a dedicated site under the BBC's own control.

I think that this is going to be a problem in the medium term, though, unless actual people at the BBC start getting accounts. It will end up as a slightly depressing node full of robots, which perception will then have to be overcome.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#76

Post by rsynnott »

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…

There are multiple BBCs; the commercial arm ruins everything.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#77

Post by rinze »

JdeBP wrote: post #75

This is the first major "name" to have set itself up in the FediVerse, after smaller outfits like (for examples) the Texas Observer and Bylines have been established there for some time. It does indicate which way the wind is now blowing; and they've done it the right way with a dedicated site under the BBC's own control. I think that this is going to be a problem in the medium term, though, unless actual people at t…

The Financial Times (well, Alphaville, a kind of blog inside the main journal) ran a very short-lived experiment for a few months: https://www.ft.com/content/8d995a24-d77c-4208-a3a6-603d8788e...

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#78

Post by rsynnott »

Knee_Pain wrote: post #14
riffic wrote: post #3

The BBC (or other orgs) can also implement ActivityPub directly into their existing content management systems. Mastodon is great but you don't need to use it to participate in the federated ecosystem edit: it's also news to me that the BBC has their own TLD. This opens up a lot of potential that others don't have the privilege of.

Yeah, this is a gripe I'm having recently with governments and news publications creating a whole website and Mastodon instance just to have a few publish-only profiles and comment-only options. Just implement a smaller Activity Pub server, no need for this Twitter clone stuff

If you want an off-the-shelf ActivityPub thing, a Mastodon instance is arguably one of the paths of less resistance.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#79

Post by brucethemoose2 »

JdeBP wrote: post #63
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #27

I hope it doesn't get killed by CSAM spam or stuff like that from trolls. Automated federated filtering is not impossible. In fact, an distributed setup (where volunteers host image/text classifiers) like AI Horde already does seems pretty doable.

Unlikely. The BBC would be very daft to run an open-signup server. And a closed-signup server would only have the problems that BBC employees themselves bring.

But won't replies from other servers show up on the BBC's page if they post something?

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#80

Post by anderspitman »

jrmg wrote: post #64

As I follow these new accounts, I’m reminded of just how _hard_ it is to follow people on other servers on Mastodon. Click follow -> dialog full of text, which gives the most common instructions (to copy and paste into the search field on your server) in smaller text at the end -> go to my server -> there’s no search field, or anything that says ‘search’ -> [I know that this is because my window is too narrow] -> exp…

Hopefully we'll see browser integration eventually
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