As it says in the title, the BBC is starting its own Mastodon instance. I think the CBC (and other news networks) should do similar. Particularly with the recent passing of Bill C-18 it seems like a world where the links we share are crossposts to news organization’s own content is the perfect resolution to that whole issue.
I think that this is an important part of the future of the fediverse. News sites and the like have shitty poorly moderated comment sections that serve almost no purpose. They have the resources to sustain a large instance and like you said it lets them more easily monetize their work. It seems like wins all around if enough news outlets adopt it.
I think it would be pretty cool if I could subscribe to different CBC sections, and have it show up in my normal feeds, I think this would mitigate the biases that relying on news going viral creates without having to go to the cbc itself and scrape through it myself.
Plus, free RSS!
(For the five of us that still care about that, anyway.)
RSS forever!
There are dozens of us!
Dozens!
Almost 50!
This is so much better than relying on tweeter assuming it can be medium for some sort of commons!
For sure. Reading through the entire cbc.ca site feels so unfeasible and exhausting. Having it actually categorized and browsable without all the attention-grabbing mega headlines would make it much more readable.
@SlikPikker Would using an RSS reader help with navigation? Allows you to follow CBC News without having to dig through their website.
You can find the RSS list here: https://www.cbc.ca/rss/
Thanks, I’ll check it out. It might help yeah.
Don’t click on a CBC app video link either, you will have to watch 30 seconds of ads before the article…EVERY TIME.
Do you not have uBlock Origin?
Does not work on the app. I use it otherwise.
Yes, I think this is really the future. I remember there was a country that was also planning to make their own instance in the fediverse as well.
This is the start of the use cases I wanted to see take off with Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin. Much like the previous era of distributed content with user-hosted voice servers and forums, having larger communities/organizations run their own instances and avoid trying to treat the space as one big pool of content is the real use case here. The fact that you can cross-instance subscribe and post makes it viable long-term.
It also gives “free” verification of information’s sources based on the domain, the same way that (modern) email gives you an extra layer of confidence when you see a verified domain. I would love the see the Government of Canada, CBC, Universities, all starting their own instances and utilizing them in unique and interesting ways. With enough adoption, official provincial/municipality instances could pop up to make organized communities easier.
It feels to me like a starting move away from the autocracy that the platform economy has created. It’s not universal, but I absolutely push back against too many instances trying to be “general purpose Reddit replacements” because that seems like a fleeting use case for what it can eventually become, and it just confuses the whole abstraction of what these decentralized socials afford.
This is very intriguing… I actually work in CBC (nowhere near content or with the social media people who’d make these kinds of decisions), but as a developer I get 20% time to dabble with anything I think might be useful. I haven’t used it in a while, but a CBC ActivityPub instance may be just the right project, especially if it can auto-publish our content from the same feeds that power our site.
Also, you might want to take a look at https://zdf.social/@ZDF and https://ard.social/
ZDF and ARD are the two biggest broadcasters in Germany, and they both have their own ActivityPub (Mastodon) server.
In case you needed some extra convincing that other large mainstream news organisations also have realised that this is actually a good idea that makes sense ;)
A big news org from France is also on Mastodon with like 50k followers, but I cannot remember the name right now
The actual Dutch government now also run their own instance.
Evan Prodromou (@[email protected]) , one of the co-authors of ActivityPub is super interest in getting Canadian news organisations on board the fediverse. He gave a talk about that last night actually: https://cosocial.ca/@evan/110809723914430376
If you’re serious about this, you could totally reach out to him, I’m sure he would love to hear from people in CBC
@wisdomchicken @Hazzard absolutely! Hazzard, I’d love to discuss!
gods tagging someone’s masto directly from lemmy, and them being able to directly respond via masto is just so fucking nice
@wisdomchicken it’s funny that it seems like magic, since we’re all on the same Internet. We’ve been conditioned to have such low expectations!
This has just opened my eyes. I get it now.
This whole thing makes sense.
Thank you.
Welcome to the club! I did an audible ‘oooooh’ the first time ActivityPub really clicked with me lol.
Yes, this can actually be done. There’s a tool called #MastoFeed that allows you to post RSS content to the fediverse. Some publications like #DarkReading are exploring using MastoFeed to publish their articles.
Their account can be found here: https://infosec.town/@darkreading
That being said, not sure if a bot account is what people are hoping for if #CBC decides to join the fediverse…
Hope you’re able to get it in front of the right eyes! Running an instance that is verifiably yours is basically the blue check mark of the fediverse (for something like a news org, at least)
News publishers like BBC and CBC could also repurpose their RSS feeds, by creating individual accounts on their own Mastodon for each of the topics and make the same rss content available through there. This would make it easy for users to sub to news they are interested in: https://www.cbc.ca/rss/
Yes, this can actually be done. There’s a tool called MastoFeed that allows you to post RSS content to the fediverse. Some publications like #DarkReading are exploring using MastoFeed to publish their articles.
Their account can be found here: https://infosec.town/@darkreading
That being said, not sure if a bot account is what people are hoping for if #CBC decides to join the fediverse…
The involvement of the BBC encouraged me to finally figure it out. And now I REALLY want a CBC one. They could have a feed per show, all hosted internally. It’s a no-brainer.
I’d get back to listening “The Secret Life of Canada” podcast if there was an active lemmy community for it :-P
idk if I want an entire instance made up of CBC commenters.
Seriously, who are these people commenting on CBC articles? I don’t usually even look at the comments anymore, simply because any time I did, they were full of the shittiest, dumbest assholes I’ve ever seen. I’m embarrassed to even share a country with people who comment on CBC articles.
By comparison, comments on Reddit and Lemmy are usually okay. Not good by any means (especially in the right leaning mess that was r/Canada), but miles better than CBC’s comments (which I can only assume are completely unmoderated).
Maybe most of them won’t figure out how to login here. Especially if they force 2fa.
The difference here being that a CBC instance wouldn’t have to follow dumb rules … they’d make up their own so the racists, multi-phobics, etc wouldn’t have much of a platform.
There always seem to be 2. The real answer is in the comments (Reddit/Lemmy), and the comments are worth ignoring (Cbc/CTV/Facebook)
Yeah, tell me about it. The dumbest thing the CBC ever did was open up to comments.
The possessive pronoun is “its”. “It’s” is a contraction of “it is”.
Thank you for the correction.
I agree. Hosting a “Twitter” alternative yourself that you can control. And bringing news to people on other platforms. You need big players on the alternative platforms to make them viable for more people.
I sent a couple emails to them around the time Musk labelled them as state propaganda. They sent one reply back saying they’d forward it to whoever is in charge of social. No way to know whether or not is was just basically flushed down the toilet though. I don’t know if there’s a particular way to reach them to recommend that they set up a presence here.
I don’t really see the downside for them. A private server would be relatively low cost and it could be hosted on servers they control in Canada. Beyond an official place for their work, it also means their employees and journalists wouldn’t have to worry about where to sign up, plus give them instant account verification.
As much as I love the CBC, they always seem a bit too reluctant to lead.
Edit: Just wanted to add that it’s important to reach out to CBC any way you can. I’m not sure about other Fediverse projects but Mastodon at least uses Rel=noreferer in the header. Traffic from Mastodon users will show up in analytics as direct traffic so they can’t see how many people are originating from there.
I emailed them today. It is clear that the “free” platforms they rely on are now openly hostile to them and their users. We need to put public services back onto public infrastructure
I sent them a note via their feedback form too. If we all do that they might start paying attention.
they always seem a bit too reluctant to lead.
It is unlikely they have the know-how. The OECD doesn’t call Canada the “most educated nation” because we believe in learning how to learn. We believe that one needs to be trained before they are able to do anything. At this time, it is all but certain that nobody has gone through a Fediverse/Mastadon/Lemmy college course.
I kind of agree with your premise about education vs training. But, I know someone who just finished a PhD thesis on an aspect of social media. These people are out there & could probably establish rapport without much friction. And at the end of the day, I’d say it’s better if these projects are spearheaded by people who have some wisdom about the waters that we’re going out into. Though, yeah, I share your pessimism more generally.
they always seem a bit too reluctant to lead
I know it’s a cliche, but I wonder if that’s a ‘Canadian’ thing.
Maybe? I think it’s also because they’re constantly under attack from conservatives. Anything too progressive or new could make them stand out more as a target. “The Fediverse?! Look what the Liberal CBC is doing with taxpayer money now!” It’s maybe put them in a box where they think they can only do whatever other news or media organizations are doing.
I also think they probably underestimate the amount of support they have from Canadians too.
Yeah, could be. I’d like to see funding for the CBC maintained, and think it’s so valuable to have a national broadcaster. At the same time, can I take a moment to bellyache about CBC radio? Some of their programming makes me a bit sad. Like having a show that simply repeats podcasts produced by other people, occasionally about American news stories. There’s no reason for that to be on the airwaves in 2023. Programs like The Sunday Edition, and Writers and Company are gone, and it seems like a lot of the spoken word programs are in the weeds on fringe issues. It’s just not the first preset on my dial anymore. And it’s too bad because I used to really look forward to tuning in. Maybe radio is dying, I don’t know.
There’s no reason for that to be on the airwaves in 2023.
Why’s that? A radio show that curates the best of other radio shows is a perfectly fine use of the medium. In fact, it makes a lot of sense as if you like listening to one radio show you will probably like listening to others as well.
Programs like The Sunday Edition, and Writers and Company are gone
Huh? Writers and Company is still there, and is streamed to legacy devices on Sunday at 3PM.
Maybe radio is dying, I don’t know.
Quite the opposite. It is alive and well. That show you spoke of earlier being able to regularly find new content from other radio programs to present to the audience is telling about just how strong radio is. If radio was dying, that show would have died long ago.
Speaking specifically about the ‘Podcast Playlist’ show - while I don’t disagree that it can be an interesting nexus for new information, I don’t think it needs to be on the air at all. If the objective is curation, that could easily and more effectively be done via an online feed where the shows are actually hyperlinked, tagged, & made accessible. I’m not a radio producer so, grain of salt. But from my armchair, seems to me that the CBC should aspire to something higher than ‘content aggregation’ or rebroadcasting material from other stations. I expect that sort of thing from a donation funded campus & community radio station where maybe someone isn’t in the booth at 2am, but not from a national broadcaster that receives funding from Canadian taxpayers.
With Writers & Company, I was referring to the host stepping down. I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, she kind of was the show in a sense. AFAIK there won’t be any new episodes, and that’s a loss.
More broadly, I like that Canada has a national broadcaster, I just think it could be better.
If the objective is curation, that could easily and more effectively be done via an online feed
Well, it is, just like every other CBC Radio program. Podcasts is the business they are in.
The OTA broadcast is there merely to stream the same content out to legacy devices which are not compatible with the modern feeds. If it were a campus/community run venture, even if it were a commercially run venture, they would no doubt only offer the feed, but as they have taxpayer support they are also able to accommodate those who are unable or unwilling to adopt newer devices.
Now, maybe there is a case to be made that the program isn’t worth producing for any medium, but I don’t have listenership data to delve into that. It would not surprise me if a lot of people enjoy it, though. It seems far less niche than Writers and Company. Assuming it is well received, that is a pretty good reason to produce it.
she kind of was the show in a sense.
Fair. Hard to lament someone wanting to move on with their life, though. That show has been on the air seemingly forever. It is not like Podcast Playlist is displacing it. They have been produced in parallel. Its actual replacement is yet to come – and it might be even better!
When the CBC was label as propaganda on the platform formerly know as Twitter, didn’t the CBC say they were going to be involved in decentralized social media?
It’s kind of ironic, because a massive reason for the enshittification of Twitter is Musk’s rampant transphobia, and the BBC is famous among the trans community for platforming transphobes. I’d have thought they’d be perfectly happy to stay on Twitter.
I mean, there’s a lot more wrong with Twitter than just transphobia, but you can trace it back there. It was a big part of the “free speech” argument that transphobes were getting silenced, which is what drove Musk to want to own the site, and also drove him down the right-wing-identity-politics rabbit hole that turned him into the wingnut he is today. That and anti-COVID measures hurting his bottom line.
Musk was not “turned into” a wingnut. He “always was” a wingnut. It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find him being a contentious, antisocial prick from his youth onward. It’s just that the richer he got the more people looked.
Also being openly asshole was not a proven model pre-Trump so most assholes showed some restraint in public
Very cool! I’m hoping that other news organizations follow suit.
Some instances (at least mastodon.art) are already blocking them.
What’s the reason to block them? Doesn’t it genuinely expand the fediverse?
IIUC it’s because the BBC has had some dabbling with transphobia. A few admins are inferring that their Mastodon moderation policies will be similar to their editorial practices so it’s just a matter of blocking yet another instance that has a mismatch in moderation policy.
Business as usual on Mastodon, that’s why it’s decentralized in the first place.
mastodon.artusers who want to participate on thesocial.bbcinstance can just go do so using another instance.If you read the linked thread, it’s because of the BBC’s increased bigotry toward LGBT+ people over the past few years.
I didn’t know about the BBC thing, that’s a pretty big deal for the fediverse. A question though, in the linked BBC article, it seems like they’re heavily relying on moderation to come from the home instance of anyone who posts a reply to a BBC post. If a self hosted troll server decides to start aggressively spamming these media accounts, or posts illegal material as replies to their posts, what could a media organization do to stop it? Is there any protection against say a wide network of troll servers working together?
Traditional social media at least theoretically has a better ability to shut this sort of activity down because they can see the whole picture of user activity and use algorithms to discover and ban bots. I worry that decentralization itself will become an attack vector for malicious activity.
Isn’t this what defederation is for? If it became enough of an issue media companies could even work together to maintain a shared blacklist to reduce the individual burden.
Good point & thanks for the post.
Won’t different media companies have different red lines for what gets blacklisted and what doesn’t, and wouldn’t that be at best confusing, and worse, a political quagmire? Let’s say (after the fediverse gains some momentum) an influential politician uses a self hosted instance to exclusively communicate their policies, and as a home for their political base, but leaves the server moderated well below an acceptable level on purpose. Are media companies obligated to defederate it? Will they? Seems like there is a whole new world of trade-offs and grey areas here.
Even if we assume troll instances are easily and effectively defederated and can’t be spun up faster than they can be collectively blocked. Other than volunteer moderation, what stops an ocean of trolls from flooding better-known, federated instances?
Just want to make clear - I’m 100% an advocate for the fediverse, I’m here because I think it’s awesome right now. I just worry about the chances for it to get drowned in troll/malicious/corporate material as it grows in popularity, and I’m trying to think if there are any ways to stem that tide. Seems reasonable to expect that it will start coming.
At some point, a lot of server will start to be defederated and some big player will start to be more trust-worthy. Just like email servers.
One cannot start sending email with their own server without proving it’s reliable first.
I hope that we, as a society (the gov), make a process on how to become a trusted server instead of relying on the free market for this because right now, it’s very hard to send emails without being blacklisted by every major email provider.
In your example, people who have the “bad instances” blocked won’t see the replies under the posts in question, as the instance will not fetch replies from said source.
With how Mastodon works as well, it won’t fetch replies from instances until they’re known either, so brand new instances aren’t going to flood popular comment sections - this is a bit of a con though in a way, as it degrades the user experience when trying to read threads and causes people to constantly post the same stuff as they can’t see all the replies.
This is good in some ways and I welcome the BBC to the fediverse as an important step to universal acceptance. It’s far better than using flaky bridges from other social networks.
What is disappointing is the very small range of content provided so far, Radio 4 & 5 plus some curiosities. I’d hoped for the excellent 6 Music channel. Let’s see if they keep up with the sports in particular on 5. I’m glad that it’s divided by station / topic so I can follow only what interests me.
I too would like more national broadcasters to get onboard. CBC I’m sure have some interesting content to share with the world, as do ABC, RTE, NZBC, others? I’d love to have culture from across the globe, which is the real value for Mastodon for me rather than as a news feed.
Great move on the part of the BBC. Given all the issues on Twitter, hopefully the CBC will also make a move to Mastodon. I recall when Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada, closed comments on Twitter due to abusive garbage, that I wrote her office and suggested Mastodon. Alas, they did not follow through. But hopefully this move from the BBC will inspire some of our Canadian institutions (particularly the CBC) to reconsider and to make the move to the fediverse.
That article states she closed down **all **social media comments. This would include Facebook, etc. as well. I feel they see Mastodon as no different than other social media sites.
