Now this is the kind of growth factor the Fediverse needs, not Threads.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
Thanks Garrett.
Garret, doing gods work
OH MY GOD GARRET I AM YOUR BIGGEST FAN
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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...
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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 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
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It would be funny to censor X just with a single *
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.
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...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.
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When I see this shit I lose all hope in the Fediverse's success
I think it's just the one server run by a mentalcase tbh. Not the first time I've seen them mentioned. The other thing was them freaking out because of GIMP.
It’s honestly great to have the people who like to complain about things separated from the things they complain about. It sets for a more positive vibe in general, and probably does wonders for their blood pressure as well.
I think anyone who disagrees with this decision would have left that instance a long time ago anyway :)
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This is so dumb. Jesus.
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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).
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This could really get the ball rolling
How can one add social.bbc to my Lemmy subscribed list?
You cannot follow the entire instance as such, rather the individual accounts on the instance - such as @BBCRD, @BBC_News_Labs, @Connected_Studio 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/[email protected], but as @roguetrick pointed out Lemmy is not really made for microblogging.
Lemmy doesn't do microblogging.
Lemmy is just a UI frontend for the Activity Pub protocol. It's tuned for Reddit-like link aggregation, sure, but anything on the Fediverse can be accessed by Lemmy, in one way or another.
Case in point - you can actually follow Mastodon profiles on Lemmy. The profile itself gets displayed as a community, and each publication becomes a post. The limitation is that comments and upvotes you make into the posts don't propagate back to Mastodon, they live as ghost metrics that only Lemmy users using your instance can see. Regardless, you can most definitely follow BBC on Lemmy.
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