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The BBC on Mastodon

bbc.co.uk

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121–130 of 188 posts

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#121

Post by zokier »

dahwolf wrote: post #116

It's good to experiment, but in this case even without experimentation you can draw some important conclusions about the benefits of centralized social media: - You own your account, but not the infra. I'm sure that BBC can manage to run Mastodon by throwing resources at it, but still...not needing to do that at all is appealing. - You don't have any liability regarding the moderation of replies, in fact, there's bar…

> You own your account, but not the infra. I'm sure that BBC can manage to run Mastodon by throwing resources at it, but still...not needing to do that at all is appealing.

Mastodon imho desperately needs proper multi-tenancy, i.e. bring your own domain, separate handles, some settings customization, without needing to run whole another instance of the server. We already found out in the 90s that vhosting is useful for stuff like web and email. This would open the door for people to better offer Mastodon-as-a-service.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#122

Post by buildfocus »

mlindner wrote: post #117
dahwolf wrote: post #116

It's good to experiment, but in this case even without experimentation you can draw some important conclusions about the benefits of centralized social media: - You own your account, but not the infra. I'm sure that BBC can manage to run Mastodon by throwing resources at it, but still...not needing to do that at all is appealing. - You don't have any liability regarding the moderation of replies, in fact, there's bar…

> on Mastodon an account having 100K+ followers is exceptionally rare. I figured there was less than 100K people even on Mastodon. Are there actually accounts with more than 100K followers? If so who?

Creator of Mastodon has 330k. Not sure if he's #1 but he's a strong contender: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron

EDIT: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1cpUKkoT1MUn8_xM4... has a list of the big ones, looks like https://mastodon.social/mastodon is top at 800k.

> I figured there was less than 100K people even on Mastodon

https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/stats says currently 2 million active monthly users, 9 million registered. That's just for Mastodon, so add another couple of million for the rest of the Fediverse.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#123

Post by egypturnash »

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.

Do you have... friends?

You can follow friends and see what they are saying throughout the day, and maybe converse with them, in a lower-commitment manner than having a private chat with just them. Their other friends might be part of this conversation too. Maybe some of their other friends will become your friend too.

You have to have some friends first though. If you don't have any then I could easily see how it looks useless.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#124

Post by [deleted] »

mlindner wrote: post #117
dahwolf wrote: post #116

It's good to experiment, but in this case even without experimentation you can draw some important conclusions about the benefits of centralized social media: - You own your account, but not the infra. I'm sure that BBC can manage to run Mastodon by throwing resources at it, but still...not needing to do that at all is appealing. - You don't have any liability regarding the moderation of replies, in fact, there's bar…

> on Mastodon an account having 100K+ followers is exceptionally rare. I figured there was less than 100K people even on Mastodon. Are there actually accounts with more than 100K followers? If so who?

[deleted]

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#125

Post by yung_steezy »

pessimizer wrote: post #103
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.

Sadly, years ago they tossed their massive, intricate website that was filled with goodies (you could even download study guides for documentaries they broadcast years ago, or go through their citations ), replaced it with a modern nothing, and hid their streams behind crappy apps.

Product owners eventually do this to every tech platform to justify their existence

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#126

Post by Affric »

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…

Me too.

From Brexit to ruining IoT was when I decided I would no longer consider myself British. My citizenship is just be a piece of trivia now.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#127

Post by wiml »

dahwolf wrote: post #116

It's good to experiment, but in this case even without experimentation you can draw some important conclusions about the benefits of centralized social media: - You own your account, but not the infra. I'm sure that BBC can manage to run Mastodon by throwing resources at it, but still...not needing to do that at all is appealing. - You don't have any liability regarding the moderation of replies, in fact, there's bar…

The BBC isn't hosting anyone else on their instance (nor can I think of a reason they would want to). As I understand it it's just a way for their activity to be visible on the fediverse. That should make their infra costs minimal; they don't have moderation of comments/replies; and federation/defederation wars will only affect the specific other instances which choose to defederate from the BBC. Your third point is valid but that's why this is an experiment.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#128

Post by wiml »

egypturnash wrote: post #123
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.

Do you have... friends? You can follow friends and see what they are saying throughout the day, and maybe converse with them, in a lower-commitment manner than having a private chat with just them. Their other friends might be part of this conversation too. Maybe some of their other friends will become your friend too. You have to have some friends first though. If you don't have any then I could easily see how it lo…

That used to be what I used social media for, but Twitter lost its utility for that sometime in the early 2010s.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#129

Post by wiml »

uhtred wrote: post #96
DRW_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm just here for the spectacle of someone using the "you are nerdy, therefore wrong" argument on hacker news, of all places.

Re: The BBC on Mastodon

#130

Post by dahwolf »

wiml wrote: post #127
dahwolf wrote: post #116

It's good to experiment, but in this case even without experimentation you can draw some important conclusions about the benefits of centralized social media: - You own your account, but not the infra. I'm sure that BBC can manage to run Mastodon by throwing resources at it, but still...not needing to do that at all is appealing. - You don't have any liability regarding the moderation of replies, in fact, there's bar…

The BBC isn't hosting anyone else on their instance (nor can I think of a reason they would want to). As I understand it it's just a way for their activity to be visible on the fediverse. That should make their infra costs minimal; they don't have moderation of comments/replies; and federation/defederation wars will only affect the specific other instances which choose to defederate from the BBC. Your third point is…

You may want to read the actual article which explains how replies very much end up on their instance and therefore require moderation. They will 100% host all replies + all media attached to it. That's how federation works.

Yes, defederation is per instance but cuts of all users of that instance from BBC. Here's a fresh example:

https://social.anoxinon.de/@Curator@mastodon.art/11080988949...

Pretty large instance that defederated before BBC even started.

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