BBC starts experimenting with the Fediverse, running its own Mastodon instance
This is an experimental Mastodon instance run by BBC Research and Development.
I know I’m not the only one who has been saying that this type of move makes perfect sense for governments and news organizations, but I’m going to go ahead and take credit for this.
You’re welcome, guys!
This makes so much sense.
BBC wouldn't make their news site under Google Blogger... so why depend on other corporations for your microblogging?
Spin up your own server, have your own verification, then use it on your site and share outs.
I'm a fan of the BBC, they make a lot of terrific programmes and the breadth of the audience their radio stations cater to is pretty phenomenal.
They also have a history of experimenting with technology so it's not a total surprise they've taken this step. Since most people on Mastodon are either sharing British news sources from the BBC or The Guardian anyway it will be interesting to see how they fare...
Yeah me too. I'm Australian, but I really enjoy BBC tv shows, documentaries, and especially podcasts.
Our own ABC was pretty great in the past, but conservative governments have hollowed them out. They do still produce some good reporting and podcasts but they have fallen from their former glory.
Seriously, publicly funded broadcasting, which isn't beholden to vested interests and advertisers, is an infinitely better model.
Absolutely. And it's easy to take a lack of adverts for granted when you watch public TV it has to be said.
I may be misremembering but seem to recall them being early to Tw*tter too. Good sign
my guy you don't have to censor the word twitter
Maybe they were talking about twatter
I literally saw it everywhere on Mastodon, like, I honestly never saw anyone say it directly, just "birdsite" or a censored version. So I adapted to be polite. And sometimes forget which form of fediverse I'm posting on.
Musk himself is censoring Twitter
It's spelled twatter
It would be funny to censor X just with a single *
...and already blocked by at least one instance, mastodon.art.
While I don't think it's necessarily sufficient to justify defederating their whole instance, it's worth noting that the reason they gave is definitely accurate. The BBC is incredibly transphobic. Here's a Wikipedia article about one of their worst, most prominent instances. It's no more so than is pretty standard in Britain these days, sadly, but that's not a good bar to measure yourself against.
There was a big campaign of utilising the BBC's complaints process to complain about the many flaws in that article. Here's a YouTube video by one person involved in that campaign. That's part 1 of 4 as the different stages of the process played out. The TL;DW is that the BBC ended up ignoring the complaints and ended up picking up on small flaws in the way the complaint was phrased (or just making up flaws where they didn't really exist) to use as an excuse to "respond" saying there was no problem with their journalistic standards.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/b4buJMMiwcg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
This is so dumb. Jesus.
Wait I'm out of the loop. When was BBC transphobic?
EDIT: Is this it? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22We%27re_being_pressured_into_sex_by_some_trans_women%22
We really need a way to block entire instances at the user level.
Why am I not surprised lol
This could really get the ball rolling
I think this may be the year if the Linux desktop as well
Lmao , as far as the joke is concerned , I think linux desktop is as good as it is !!
The Dutch Government also launched an instance not that long ago. It's a pity it took so long, but Musk's antics are finally forcing people to move.
German Public broadcast also has its own instance, as does the government.
Also the EU: social.network.europa.eu
At least X allows free speech.
At least X allows free speech.
This is great! The Dutch government made their own official instance (social.overheid.nl) too!
It's a smart thing for news sources and ngos to do - run an instance and use it to issue posts and provide a platform for journalists. Twitter and other platforms can still receive posts but the "source of truth" is the Mastodon server
Didn’t know they have their own TLD
I can imagine all the domain names that people would come up with if .bbc TLD was public lol
Heresmy.bbc
That is fucking awesome.
I love the BBC, I hate seeing what it's been forced to turn into by threats from a succession of Conservative governments. I still pay my TV license despite pirating all my TV and movie content for years.
I'm glad there's nuance to the discussion, I was worried by the 95+% glazing going on.
How can one add social.bbc to my Lemmy subscribed list?
Lemmy doesn't do microblogging.
And this is why I use Kbin.
You cannot follow the entire instance as such, rather the individual accounts on the instance - such as @BBCRD, @BBCNewsLabs, @ConnectedStudio etc.
Kbin users can subscribe to whatever content is shared from social.bbc on federated instances by subscribing to /d/social.bbc, but I'm not sure how much sense that makes. :)
Edit: In Lemmy you'd find the users by entering for example /u/BBCRD@social.bbc, but as @roguetrick pointed out Lemmy is not really made for microblogging.
Unsure if you can follow entire instances but you can definitely follow users from that instance such as https://kbin.social/u/@BBCRD@social.bbc
No expert, but I have a Mastodon account + app and a Lemmy account + app.
I love this. No more “blue checkmarks” or paid verification processes. Just check the domain of the post(s) to confirm they are legit.
Is it better for companies in the Fediverse to create their own instances, like is that how we’re likely to see the proliferation of corporations here? We’ll see a Pepsi instance, a FoxNews instance, a McDonald’s instance? I imagine that gives them the most control over what happens in their neck of the woods vs just having a single corporate account on like lemmy.world or beehaw or whatever (though I don’t entirely understand what having an instance entails).
Yeah, for any sizable organization running your own instance is the way to go, similarly to how you'd want your own DNS domain, email and web site. And just like with these other services your fedi presence could be hosted somewhere too but you want to be in control of it.
Makes more sense for The NY Times than for McDonalds. A commercial ad account would want to be found on a local feed of the biggest instance. The BBC experiment won’t work unless they commit to supporting it. Ideally, their reporters would have their own accounts, not just at the radio show level.
Mastodon is perfect for any form of media, or education establishment and so on. People who want to read their content will subscribe and they don’t have to allow general public signups, only those working for that establishment.
There's really good BBC bot operating Mastodon too. I've followed it since I joined in October last year. It's even programmed to use CW's and add image descriptions.
Been following that as well
This is good to see like to see more companies using the fediverse
there may be reason for this, an unknown variable, an x if you will
Hope this catches on. Love it.
As much as I distrust these big corps, we need them to join the fediverse if we want this place to grow proper. I do worry over the possibility of them trying to monetize the platforms though.
I don't see any real risk of corporations monetizing the fediverse.
Just look at something like Linux, which is a massive project that is both monetized by corporations while still remaining free, open, community-driven and accessible to just about anyone. I can't say the risk is 0, but it's certainly not large.
As far as big corps go I think the BBC is probably one of the safest in terms of worries about monetisation. I'm not saying they're perfect but it's very different to if it was Sky or another commercial channel.
But I thought we went here to get away from the public web services where they monetized everything and put ads and tracking everywhere?
Why would we want this place to become the same? We can just open a web browser and we are in that ad infested place again.
Nah. I'm here because I don't want to support reddit and don't want to use their shitty platform when there are viable alternatives out there
To me, the fediverse is like the internet, especially in the early days.
Once there is undoubtedly money to be made from the fediverse, it will be impossible to stop companies from moving in.
But as long as there is always a backbone of free and open source software that is accessible to all people, everywhere, then we can still maintain healthy and strong communities, with or without companies.
Idk what to feel about this tbh !
I'm all for it.
No matter how you feel about BBC ( I would at least posit that they are significantly better than some of the corporate, for-profit news networks out of America), journalism and professional-quality media is important to informing people and providing the very first thread of accountability in democratic society. On top of that, I think that self-hosting fediverse software on an official domain (like "social.bbc") is the ultimate form of content verification, and it much more effective and egalitarian than awarding "influencers" with blue checkmarks or whatever.
Overall I see almost no downside to the BBC hosting content on the Fediverse, and I hope that other media organizations follow their lead on this one.
I hope this means I'll get to find out about dramas and panel games more easily because I never know what is on until it's almost too late and I have like 2 days left to hear it.
they should just be out here with links to their own website. once there, look at their ads. if any of these mega corps try to show ads on fedi, they'd be defedied(defederated) quick. it's got them hesitant about getting shut out
Well, I think it's positive although it's eerie to have government run instances.
BBC is not the UK government. I'm not sure if there's a difference or not. (Also please accept my apologies for using this post for a quick federation test)
The BBC is supposed to be independent, although to what extent it actually is is debatable. That aside, Mastodon is open-source so anyone can set up their own server.
What's wrong with government-run instances, when they're used specifically for communication from that government?
![[HN] BBC starts trial with the Fediverse, running its own Mastodon instance](https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/e29ddee2-80fc-40be-91a5-d00d7d3cdc18.png?format=webp&thumbnail=196)