Summary
The Guardian has announced it will stop posting on Elon Musk’s platform, X, citing “often disturbing content” such as far-right conspiracy theories and racism.
The news outlet, with 27 million followers across over 80 accounts, stated that the US presidential election coverage on X reinforced its view that the platform had become “toxic.”
While The Guardian’s official accounts will withdraw, reporters may still use X for newsgathering.
This move follows similar actions by NPR, PBS, and other organizations concerned about the platform’s content standards under Musk’s ownership.
Can we get them to join Mastodon?
I think it’s ideal for new services. They can spin up an instance pretty easily through their existing IT department. They have total control and total freedom because they run the platform. Then federate with other instances to have a reach of millions instantly.
The only reason every news organization isn’t doing it is just bad marketing. As far as I know, there’s no marketing budget for mastodon.
i remember bbc had an experimental mastodon instance, but they dont seem to post anything anymore. i hope they’ll give an update on the trial, anything they found out good bad unworthy whatsoever.
Classic first adopter problem.
The thing is I believe that there’s a real argument for a use case for news organizations, governments, and colleges.
If they’re just seeking engagement, then they have to wait for the platform to grow. But this isn’t about that.
Many news organizations already have comment sections on their website, and they want to push out information on breaking news as quickly as possible. They need a platform to do those things. So, a lot of them use Facebook for embedded comments on the page and Xitter to breaking news. The thing is that they could use mastodon for both, and run their own instance, which would give them total control and not be at the mercy of Musk or Zuck.
Colleges use expensive proprietary messaging apps for students, clubs, and teachers that they can monitor and adjust to fit their needs. Mastodon offers that.
Governments sometimes end up in legal hot water due to freedom of information, etc. that comes with corporate social media. Mastodon offers the freedoms and controls necessary to disseminate vital information and to allow or reject posts as required by local laws.
The point is that Mastodon is an effective public facing communication system that also allows internal controls by the host.
The only publicity and marketing budget that the fediverse has is us, so any opportunity to promote it is our job. Government, education, news. These are the vital areas to promote.
This is the way