this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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I'm honestly surprised more Universities and governments aren't also hosting their own instances.
Here where I live most universities have their own mail server, dedicated (and open and free) mirrors for popular Linux distros, their own RSS feeds with podcasts and open access to their publications, open source tools replicated, and so on. But most still rely on Instagram and Twitter for public-facing announcements... Why? Imagine having to use tax money to pay for a Twitter blue license.
Probably because the need of moderation.
If you host an instance and let people in (even if it’s a limited circle, i.E. your students) you are responsible for moderation. I think that’s something institutions back off currently.
For an mail server that’s much easier.
But I'm specifically wondering about Mastodon vs Twitter, not Lemmy.
Don't let students create accounts - just let your official accounts from the staff federate from your instance, and people can follow them from other public moderated instances.
A Lemmy instance for university students would turn chaotic in about 4 seconds haha
Many Universities already have their own dedicated subreddits that are usually moderated by a mix of faculty, staff, and students. I know of at least one sub moderated in part by the chair oftheh math department, who is as funny as they are savage.
An above-average level of shitposting goes on, sure, but it's also a great venue for the school's online community to engage across organizational boundaries.
But people can still reply to posts so you'd need moderation still.
People can reply to posts on Twitter, and yet they have official Twitter accounts.
And twitter had moderation when these organizations decided to use it.
Twitter's moderation barely works. Regardless, I still don't understand what your point is.
If you post on Twitter, get public replies and report a troll... How's that different on Mastodon?
Universities used to have students involved in publishing magazines as journalists, editors etc. This is the evolution. I'm sure sure a decent sized uni could find or create a student group who can be responsible for moderation under an official administrator.
Then don't let people post on the server people can repost if they want to comment
https://social.edu.nl/@MishaVelthuis/110673361080930801
Back in my uni days (1997-01) my uni ran its own Usenet server. Don't think it carried the alt.binaries, but did have groups specifically for the uni. Sadly only a small handful of people used it.
Universities have experimented with more private social networks. I remember YikYak back in my uni days. They either don't have the resource to spin one up or they don't know about it.
Might not qualify as a social network, but university hosted IRC servers were a thing once.
Because of the network effect and content aggregation. With emails you just want to reach a specific person, with public posts you want to reach as many people as possible. But I also think the whole ownership and control problem of centralized social networks wasn't as apparent as it is now.
Same here, and I doubt their IT departments knows deeply about Fediverse. Also some times the department making communication is non technical and not close to IT so people making decisions just choose what they know (Instagram, Twitter, etc). At least that was the case in the University I studied
It's mostly the latter from what I've seen.
At least in my country IT departments have very little wiggle room as organizations have gotten more rigid with increased control from the top echelons. Some universities in my country used to host a lot of cool services for students to use. Nowdays it seems that the legacy stuff is kept online as long as the people maintaining them are around.