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The BBC on Mastodon

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#91

Post by brucethemoose2 »

JdeBP wrote: post #86
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not necessarily, no. There's a whole long standing organization of sysops dedicated to silencing and blocking the (few, I've never even heard of one myself) places on the WWW that the sort of stuff that you are talking about would come from. If the BBC sysops are on the ball, they'll already be looking at what block lists to subscribe to. In fact, they've had the system up since June, and I wouldn't be surprised that…

> There's a whole long standing organization of sysops dedicated to silencing and blocking the (few, I've never even heard of one myself) places on the WWW that the sort of stuff that you are talking about would come from.

I was thinking more along the lines of subreddit trolls, who will come in and spam shock/csam images trying to bait the mods, not actual CSAM distributors with known IPs or whatever.

The BBC will certainly attract that kind of internet denizen. They would have to have employees (or automated system) staring at their post replies constantly, watching for this kind of stuff.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#92

Post by treyd »

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…

On Mastodon's interface if you see a foreign post locally on your timeline can see the poster's profile from there and follow it there. But all this is really a limitation of the web interfaces. There's extensions to assist with this process and desktop and mobile clients don't have this issue at all.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#93

Post by danschuller »

I'm cheered to see any wider adoption of mastodon. For my very niche game engine developer follows Mastodon is now almost as good as twitter was but for mainstream or other niche interests it's got a ways to go.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#94

Post by JdeBP »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #91
JdeBP wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, no. There's a whole long standing organization of sysops dedicated to silencing and blocking the (few, I've never even heard of one myself) places on the WWW that the sort of stuff that you are talking about would come from. If the BBC sysops are on the ball, they'll already be looking at what block lists to subscribe to. In fact, they've had the system up since June, and I wouldn't be surprised that…

> There's a whole long standing organization of sysops dedicated to silencing and blocking the (few, I've never even heard of one myself) places on the WWW that the sort of stuff that you are talking about would come from. I was thinking more along the lines of subreddit trolls, who will come in and spam shock/csam images trying to bait the mods, not actual CSAM distributors with known IPs or whatever. The BBC will c…

The FediVerse doesn't work that way. There is no "the" mods.

The people posting this stuff won't be posting to the BBC. They will be posting to far away places each with their own moderators. They'll either get suppressed at the source, by those moderators, as complaints come in (which they will probably do quite rapidly); or it will get around that those far away places don't moderate, and the far away places will get silenced and blocked and make it onto the aforementioned lists, meaning that the (civilized) world won't pull any posts from them.

The reporting system, bear in mind, reports to the origin server, which won't be the BBC. If I, for example, see an unacceptable post in reply to something posted by the BBC, my report doesn't get seen by anyone at the BBC. It gets seen by my local sysop and the sysop of the origin node.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#95

Post by uhtred »

rsynnott wrote: post #82
uhtred wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not, forums were around on the internet long before the term "social media" existed. Same with comments on a newspaper article, they are not social media.

"That's a cat." "No it's not, those were around long before the word 'cat' existed".

[flagged]

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#96

Post by uhtred »

DRW_ wrote: post #56
uhtred wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not, forums were around on the internet long before the term "social media" existed. Same with comments on a newspaper article, they are not social media.

Just because the term "social media" came later and was popularised by certain kinds of social media networks, it doesn't mean it doesn't encompass regular old fashioned forums too. What is this right now other than a social interaction about a piece of media (the article)? This is a very arbitrary distinction for you to draw.

see comment below. you are wrong no matter how nerdy your logic.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#97

Post by input_sh »

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…

I agree with BBC being the first major English media, but German broadcasters have been doing it for a while now: https://zdf.social/about and https://ard.social/about

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#98

Post by input_sh »

sdfghswe wrote: post #49

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 "…

Same as any other book tracker (Goodreads or whatever): if the book isn't already there, you can add it yourself. You can also import it from other BookWyrm instances or from OpenLibrary.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#99

Post by brucethemoose2 »

JdeBP wrote: post #94
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a whole long standing organization of sysops dedicated to silencing and blocking the (few, I've never even heard of one myself) places on the WWW that the sort of stuff that you are talking about would come from. I was thinking more along the lines of subreddit trolls, who will come in and spam shock/csam images trying to bait the mods, not actual CSAM distributors with known IPs or whatever. The BBC will c…

The FediVerse doesn't work that way. There is no "the" mods. The people posting this stuff won't be posting to the BBC. They will be posting to far away places each with their own moderators. They'll either get suppressed at the source, by those moderators, as complaints come in (which they will probably do quite rapidly); or it will get around that those far away places don't moderate, and the far away places will g…

Hm. Interesting, thanks for elaborating.

If spamming smurf accounts on the reputable instances is hard enough, I guess this isn't an issue.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#100

Post by chefandy »

versteck wrote: post #83
chefandy wrote: post #50

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…

The answer to that is https://elk.zone atm, a fun and chef's kiss interface (built with nuxt). You can insert elk.zone/ before any Mastodon url. https://phanpy.social is also great, with multi columns even for lists. A browser plugin like https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/mastodon-simplif... to follow, favorite, etc. directly on any server has also improved my experience a lot.

Elk.zone looks cool and is definitely a nice face for Mastodon-- glad to know about it!

However, the disconnect between non-technical users and what Mastodon offers is far deeper than the timeline layout and interactions. If users must practically understand how to negotiate federation to satisfy their most basic requirement-- nearly effortlessly finding and interacting with their friends, family and other sources within the interface-- then it's a non-starter for that crowd.

Most developers seem not to realize a) how much more resistance dealing with the practical complexity of federation adds for non-technical users trying to do what they want to do, and b) how little resistance those users will tolerate to achieve their goals when they have free options. As it stands, the cost/benefit ratio to switching to Mastodon is not even in the ballpark of what it needs to be for nearly any social media user. Mastodon's huge active user base fluctuation 5-10 mos ago comprises about half a percent of Twitter's active monthly user base, which entirely leaves out Facebook, Instagram, Etc... and most of Mastodon's new ex-twitter users left.

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