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Jen Simmons

Every news outlet should stand up a Mastondon instance for their reporters & staff.

It’ll be great to see GivennameFamilyname@mastodon.famousnewspaper.com or whatever domain they want to use.

Built in verification. Every reporter for the Washington Post on a washpo domain. Every reporter for the New York Times on an NYTimes domain. Etc, etc.

Plus the “local” feed for each instance becomes a feed of all the posts from that institution mixed together — providing extra discovery.

63 comments
Jake Jarvis :jake:

@jensimmons one thousand percent! and account migration easily solves the whole "what about if/when they get a different job?" predicament.

Streamboat Ouellette

@jake @jensimmons I like this, though I am a little worried that (1) a company wouldn't allow your redirect if they fire you (2) what if they contract to multiple places and/or want to pitch their substack from their "official" account?

heff

@jensimmons brilliant and sensible idea 🙌🏻

Renoir Boulanger

@jensimmons I was thinking the same. It's the perfect use case for an instance name (namespace) attribution. Solving who from where. Outsiders of FamousJournal can't be members, becomes members until they are no longer. Like email.

Academics too.

I can't wait to see this.

🍂🌻soragrey

@jensimmons I think that's how the internet archive did it. Very smart!

bpmarkowitz

@jensimmons was thinking the same thing. Validation by namespace. It feels so clean.

bpmarkowitz

@jensimmons are there other use cases for orgs standing up their own servers? Federal and State govt makes a lot of sense. Sports leagues could setup their own. Would allow them have their own content moderation rules also.

Chris Coleman

@jensimmons I hadn’t considered local feed angle, but that does seem like an enticing bonus for media organizations and their readers. I really like that idea.

Shaun (he / him)

@jensimmons yesssss!!!! The same would be great for local govt entities being able to create and manage their online presence/ identity more. Ex:
parksandrec@.atlantaga.gov
health@.nyc.gov

Would require experimentation to see what the public actually is comfortable with, but I’d love to see the exploration

Andrew Clement

@ShmosKnows @jensimmons it probably need to be

User@FED.tn.gov

Biden@fed.whitehouse.gov

ECT.

Love this idea tho

JyBy

@jensimmons Every university should have their mastodon instance, and an account created automatically for each of their faculty member and student.

mausmalone

@jyby @jensimmons as someone who works in a university comms department - lol nope. Employees can and should have their own social media accounts wherever they choose - but the idea of having literally any faculty member empowered to essentially represent the university online is absolutely terrifying.

Rich Felker

@jensimmons The problem is that ties journalists to their employers. They don't own their social media history, and even ability to migrate followers is at the whim of ex employer.

Rich Felker

@jensimmons Mastodon already has built-in verification with rel=me link back from author profile page at publication to Mastodon account profile.

Alex

@dalias @jensimmons that only accounts for verification though, not historical data or community, if I understand it correctly.

John Regan

@dalias@hachyderm.io @jensimmons@front-end.social one solution maybe for news outlets to run accounts that boost stories from current employees. Employee moves - just stop boosting them.

JR Raphael

@jensimmons Love this. Though I do wonder how many folks might eventually prefer to have their own stable identity, especially if they were already established here on an existing instance.

yen

@jensimmons

Love the idea. Question: How would such instances handle moderation?

Risotto

@osyen @jensimmons the same as before if they're tooting from a work account...

Matt Karolian

@jensimmons building this right now for Globe journalists.

kaffando

@jensimmons Yes! Badly needed over here. Difficult to find news in here other than what's been x-posted from the hell site.

BrentButt

@jensimmons From what little I know of this platform/system(just learning)... I LOVE this idea!!!

Maxwell White

@jensimmons i feel like social.washingtonpost.com would be a good server handle too

Wikked Storm

@jensimmons I work at a T.V. station, and am pushing our social media department daily. The chief of the department is a musk rat tho, so it's an uphill climb.

fathermucker

@jensimmons What happens when far right "news" outlets do the same? Help me play this out a little in my mind.

ninechars

@fathermucker @jensimmons you can choose to block all of @.chudnews.social and all of its chud contributors in one go.

Mark Mayo

@jensimmons the use case that a federated namespace seems built for.

John Voorhees

@jensimmons agreed. Launched ours today. mastodon.macstories.net 😊

Michael

@jensimmons What would be the best move when someone switches employer? Archive the account? Migrate? Could they migrate without redirect?

Snowman

@jensimmons of note, news agencies tend to have established legal representation in place. A specter of that legal concern was floating around earlier today about instance admins having no experience in dealing with subpoenas and other bully challenges.

Abe Fleischer 💉💉

@jensimmons and then I'd be able to find and follow them again!

DoomBotQ

@jensimmons from what i I understand, it wouldn’t cost much out of pocket for them either. Mastadon doesn’t require strong hardware to run.

Mrs Mouse :verified: :queer:

@jensimmons

1) I love this and
2) Each reporter should keep a public "personal account" and archive.org their stuff just in case they get a vengeful ex-employer.

Brian Buck

@jensimmons Love it! How great if news outlets and sources did this.

Xenofact :jrbd:

@jensimmons I love the idea. Some smaller orgs can share an instance. Validate yourself.

Rimu

@jensimmons Is there a list of service providers who can help them set up an instance?

Patty A. Gray

@jensimmons Yes, yes, yes. I’ve been waiting for the collective journalist alternative social media. Excellent suggestion!

Rochelle Hall

@jensimmons And they can pay for their own instance, relieving the rest of the site.

Emily Bell

@jensimmons this is a great idea …I was noticing today there is a high proliferation of accounts bearing famousnewsname on here that at best are ad hoc RSS feeds and at worst imposter accounts, standing up your own instance is a marvelous way to reinforce authenticity/ aid discovery etc as you say

J꩜hn

@jensimmons government officias should do this too. Built in verification of .gov

Logan Rossignol

@jensimmons that's actually a great idea, would love to see that for bigger non-news orgs too, ones that have more than one public facing acct

Emillerphx

@jensimmons this is an interesting idea, having the outlet host their own content.

ianhillmedia

@jensimmons @wood I love it here, but as a journalist I would be extremely wary about creating a social account on a server controlled by my employer, who would then set my moderation rules and control my data. From the other side, most news orgs are local and have extremely limited resources. Those resources should be dedicated to serving their local residents, most of whom aren’t on Twitter, much less the fediverse.

Hidde

@jensimmons in that spirit, it seems, the European Commission have set up their own instance social.network.europa.eu/@EU_C

Elon Musk ✅🧿

@jensimmons Yes please. then I can ban every one owned by a billionaire and/or fascist.

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