Hello #fediverse! I'm going into a meeting at 4ET to talk about our newsroom's social media options.
If you think our station and other #NPR stations should have a Mastodon server or a broader presence in the #fediverse, pls boost this post. If you have thoughts, please reply, I want to hear them!
NOTE: as I mentioned to @FediFollows and @hermitary earlier today, it's important to understand the barriers that face stations or networks that want to set up a server. I summarize those here: https://mastodon.social/@gbhnews/110186548799130656
No one should expect anything to happen instantly.
Not totally sure why my link is not working but here's the commentary I shared before:
I think it's worth understanding what the barriers are to stations or networks establishing their own servers.
As the social editor, if I see a new platform and think, "oh, that's interesting," I have the power to open an account there.
Setting up a server for a station or a network would involve the cooperation of IT, marketing, and legal folks. Big stations and big networks have to do a fair amount of prep and due diligence before they make a move like that. 1/x
So it's not just the cost of setting up/running a server (which people tell me here could be quite minimal). It's the man-hours of prep, setup, and ongoing maintenance for things like moderation, tech support, etc. that come into the equation.
And the other half of that equation is the assessment the people involved make of the opportunity. Math is a big part of that. How many users are on that network, and how many of those people are likely to see or engage? 2/2
@gbhnews Yeah, we understand this. But still: you have full control--not at the whims of a psycho with more money than sense, or a government, or whatever.
Also: you get the added cred of verifying your own team. It's hard to know here who is legit, imposters are easy to create in this system--an institution server is a good solution to this.
My simple explanation is this is just email...for social media. It's federated just like email.
People didn't jump straight into email way back when (Iz is old) but it's become a simple requirement for business today. Social media with the silos has become the same.
Mastodon/ActivityPub is the first chance to fix that silo thing and get back to internet roots of how it's supposed to work