Trialling ActivityPub and the federated model for social media and it's possibilities for the BBC.

“As the social media landscape ebbs and flows, the team at BBC Research & Development are researching social technologies and exploring possibilities for the BBC. One part of our work is to establish a BBC presence in the distributed collection of social networks known as the Fediverse, a collection of social media applications all linked together by common protocols. The most common software used in this area is Mastodon, a Twitter-like social networking service with around 2 million active monthly users. We are now running an experimental BBC Mastodon server at https://social.bbc where you can follow some of the BBC’s social media accounts, including BBC R&D, Radio 4 and 5 Live. We hope to be able to add more accounts from other areas of the BBC at some point.”

  • @joe
    110•1 year ago

    It’s interesting you have this opinion; I figured this would be the biggest draw for corporations-- they’re no longer beholden to some third party for their media presence-- it’s all hosted and controlled by themselves;.

    In email terms, it’s the difference between tide@gmail.com and tide@tide.com.

    Edit: I don’t have any idea why I went with tide, so if you find yourself wondering why I did that, get in line. haha

    • Adam
      16•1 year ago

      It also solves the verification problem. It’s without a doubt the best way to go for an organization - especially news orgs.

        • AdamEnglish
          3•1 year ago

          Yes and no. And verifying by domain is better, especially for people who are likely to be impersonated (ex. Journalists).

          Rel=“me” doesn’t actually verify a user’s identity, it verifies that a user has a relationship with a website. The problem is that you need to leave Mastodon to make sure that the website actually verifies their identity. I’ve verified a connection between a Mastodon and Pixelfed account, for example, but it doesn’t tell you anything about who I am. It’s also much easier to spoof a website than it is to get the BBC to give you an account on their private instance.

          It really works great the other way though! If you have a known identity here, you can be sure that the linked sites are legit.