Why publishers are preparing to federate their sites
digiday.com
The Verge and 404 Media are exploring the fediverse as a way to take more control over their referral traffic and onsite audience engagement.

The Verge and 404 Media are building out new functions that would allow them to distribute posts on their sites and on federated platforms – like Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky – at the same time. Replies to those posts on those platforms become comments on their sites.

  • @solrizeEnglish
    76•1 month ago

    Wait their articles are paywalled. Are they only going to federate the clickbait teaser intros?

    • aasatru
      27•1 month ago

      I could read the full article, not sure what’s going on.

      Anyway, the journalist is writing about the Verge and 404 Media, and the more general potential benefits for the industry. There’s nothing about Digiday.com following the same path.

      It’s a nice write-up. The main things I learned is that the Verge is transitioning to WordPress, and 404 is using Ghost. Both hope to activate the ActivityPub capabilities of these platforms when they’re ready - the Verge when it finishes transitioning, 404 when Ghost implants AP support.

    • @MetzEnglish
      3•1 month ago

      Wait their articles are paywalled.

      Journalists have to pay for food and rent too. What is the alternative? ads?

      The money has to come from somewhere.

      • @solrizeEnglish
        13•1 month ago

        Paywalls just don’t mix that well with federation. The teasers are basically ads, and why would fediverse volunteers want to propagate some company’s ads? The non-federated model they are using now seems fine.

      • @mulcaheyEnglish
        5•1 month ago

        I didn’t read Solrize’s comment as saying “There shouldn’t be paywalls,” just asking the very legitimate question as to how they will interact with federation.

        Interestingly, 404 just solved something kinda related: they developed a way for subscribers to get a custom RSS feed address, so they can access paywalled articles directly in their RSS reader. TMK, they are the first publication to do this. I imagine they would do something similar for federation. (I believe that if any of the custom RSS feeds show huge traffic numbers, 404 shuts it down, but I’m not sure)

        • @[email protected]English
          3•1 month ago

          I don’t think that’s new, you just need to throw in a personal subscription key in the URL

      • @[email protected]English
        2•1 month ago

        The money comes from the companies that are hiring them to do the journalist work. Of course.

        Let’s be intellectually honest here. If a company has enough money that the boss can brand themself as “CEO” then it can pay at least living wages.