mastodon - Link to source

It’s been a weird couple days; I keep running into this talking point that “journalists won’t use Mastodon unless we incentivize engagement farming”.

Meanwhile I’m having a *great* experience here, because I use it to— I dunno— actually talk to people and form relationships?

I reject the premise that mastodon isn’t useful for reporters. I think it’s more accurate that modern news orgs use social media in purely extractive ways.

You might get more reporters that way, but you won’t like them.

in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

EVHaste

I think if we’re honest with ourselves, the “service” most reporters provide on social media is entirely self-serving. A one-way firehose of signal boosting and self promotion.

“Look at me! I wrote this story. Click on it!”
And then you ask them a question, or have a correction, and nobody reads it, because Wired doesn’t care about building a community, just reaching a consumer. It’s fire and forget.

We already have a tool for that, it’s RSS. What value does reposting a link here provide?

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to Erwin

mastodon - Link to source

EVHaste

@odd I’m not sure. I wasn’t on Twitter in the early days. By the time I got there it already sucked. lol

I did get to experience invite-only Bluesky, but I can’t really comment on it from a reporting standpoint because I only used it to shitpost. Which was very community oriented, but totally devoid of professional value.

Mastodon really is the only place I’ve had any interest in my work and I just assume that’s cause I’m pals with folks that live in Seattle here.

@Erwin
in reply to EVHaste

hometown - Link to source

Dianora (Diane Bruce)

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.
@odd I had an invite to the Bluesky thing but I remembered how much Fecesbook and Twittler sucked so I declined. I imagined I would get inappropriate ads eventually as I did on Twittler. On commercial social media, we are not the customer, we are the product.
@Erwin
in reply to EVHaste

glitchsoc - Link to source

Luci Bitchface Angerfoot

@odd when twitter was smaller, two way conversation was indeed more common, there was
more a vibe of experimentation and play- and the rules were a bit different than how it is now:

no pictures, no replies, no retweets, no search, and history only could go back about 100 posts.

as soon as retweets, replies and search got added, the vibe got less fun because retweets let dumb throwaway remarks go “viral”, blind replies turned virality into pile ons, and search enabled kiwifarms style analysis of targets

@Erwin

Bob Thomson reshared this.

in reply to Luci Bitchface Angerfoot

mastodon - Link to source

EVHaste

@bri7 @odd I bet the internet itself is also kind of different than back then. I don’t have a base for comparison with twitter but I encountered this recently going back to play WoW.

It’s like.. the sewage we’ve all been wading in has made people more cautious and cynical. So it’s kind of just harder to talk to strangers than it used to be online?

At least, it’s hard to imagine using the internet in some of the ways that used to feel normal.

@Erwin @Luci Bitchface Angerfoot
in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

@bri7 @odd exactly. Britain's Communications Ministry (Ofcom) recently noticed that folk were using social media less. and moving to private messenger services.

A lot (especially younger women) have had way too many bad experiences to go around "talking to strangers", and I don't think they are going to be flocking to Fedi either - the damage has already been done.

@Erwin @Luci Bitchface Angerfoot
in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Ryan Quinn

It is different. It was more fun 2 decades ago. The Internet wasn’t controlled by grifters running scams.

I was talking with a friend about the dead Internet theory, and how it relates to online services, and everything really. Something starts cool, gets popular, reaches the mainstream then dies due to it being overrun by desperate crabs trying to make a dollar in this capitalist hellscape to escape the bucket.

This time, most of the Web is on the backside of the bell curve rather than a single service.

@bri7 @odd

@Erwin @Luci Bitchface Angerfoot
in reply to Ryan Quinn

mastodon - Link to source

Beth McKinley

@rmq Though, I was online a bit back in the message board days. There were trolls of various kinds even there. Remember 1 person who, if disagreed with in the least, did a deep dive to find anything on line they could blacken the other person's rep with. The biggest thing I learned, and still learn over and over again, is not to feed the trolls. A problem is a lot of folk who are trolls are now glorified, rather than starved out?
@Ryan Quinn
in reply to Erwin

mastodon - Link to source

Cassandrich

@odd Early and even late Twitter was so much better from what "journalists" do on "social media" now.

Cassandrich

2026-04-06 17:33:18

mastodon - Link to source

Back on :birdsite:, I felt like they did provide a service. They cited their own articles, but adversarially to the publications they worked for - poking through the clickbait and bullshit headlines, telling the stories of what they cared about, how they researched the story, etc. that they weren't allowed to do in the actual publication.

Now, all they do is act as mouthpieces for the companies they work for. 🤮


@Erwin
in reply to Erwin

mastodon - Link to source

Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe

@Erwin
in reply to Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe

mastodon - Link to source

EVHaste

@phwolfe @odd Thanks for doing that work, fam. I know how thankless it is.

It’s funny (not funny ha ha, but funny cry emoji) that the “nobody wants to pay for news but also they all demand it be accessible on Facebook” thing was called out in Elements of Journalism way back in 2014! Way, way before I got into the profession. The layoffs were also a problem then. And it’s only gotten worse.

I dunno how to fix this. But I’m damn sure becoming Instagram won’t do it.

@Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe @Erwin
in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Cassandrich

Back on :birdsite:, I felt like they did provide a service. They cited their own articles, but adversarially to the publications they worked for - poking through the clickbait and bullshit headlines, telling the stories of what they cared about, how they researched the story, etc. that they weren't allowed to do in the actual publication.

Now, all they do is act as mouthpieces for the companies they work for. 🤮

in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Photon Empress 🌸

Dunno, I kinda feel like it is a chicken/egg issue here. The nice thing about Twitter was that everyone was there. Once it fell people moved, but no a lot moved here.

So journalists (well everyone) need to post in more places and likely want to optimize for eyes seeing their stuff. Maybe it's just me, but I just don't see as much engagement here as I do on other platforms?

in reply to r-hold

mastodon - Link to source

EVHaste

@rhold I will say I’ve noticed an uptick in… not ads, exactly, but buttoned up branded “content” in the popular feed on .social.

I’m curious how long the “no brands” vibe will last.

Some days it’s like… Proton product announcement followed by Tuta product announcement followed by Open Office product announcement. It’s not overwhelming yet but it rhymes with social media as I’ve experienced it elsewhere. Makes me a little nervous.

@r-hold
in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

@rhold those semi commercial FOSS brands (along with some of their devs) have been present on Fedi for years (you can add Nextcloud to the mix as well).

I'm occasionally mildly annoyed by the way some of these brand accounts never seem to reply to anyone and they often go quiet if folk point out bugs/issues in their replies, but they seem to have got better in that respect and at least its software/services that folk on here tend to actually use..

@r-hold
in reply to Viktor Nagornyy

mastodon - Link to source

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

at the very least the marketers could point folk to where these places are, and/or even forward relevant info to the support teams (such as if there's an obvious pattern of issues affecting multiple users).

This of course assumes a product that is aimed at less technical folk, not something like a dev framework / or other specialised tool where everyone using it is likely to know the correct method!

I am already seeing Reddit and Discord (mis)used as support forum for part-FOSS projects (although on some the devs don't seem to read the issues being posted anyway)

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

mastodon - Link to source

EVHaste

@vfrmedia @rhold yeah so I’m actually pretty happy to see FOSS tools here, so I look the other way for things like Open Office. I want them to be successful.

I have however noticed that same tendency with adjacent brands (specifically Firefox) to not engage with the community, especially when the question is critical.

(I do agree that this is not really a convenient place to submit but reports, it would create confusion for engineers, so I’m leaving that alone)

@Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK @r-hold
in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

@rhold in some cases (particularly on Fedi) its not as much full bug reports (as folk know not to do that, or have already checked issue lists), but queries about the project which never get a response (not even a post to a link on the projects official website).

Or the same marketing post is cut and pasted to everywhere (Fedi, Bluesky, Threads etc) without any plans to engage with anyone..

Also as Fedi attracts more non-techie folk (as it is slowly doing), some might at least need some gentle encouragement to point them to where issues lists and forums are for the software they are using.

@r-hold
in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Cliff'sEsportCorner

How are you defining journalists? For me a journalist is someone like @briankrebs Not many around anymore, I gave up on NPR over a decade ago because quality and depth were gone, despite them still retaining some real journalists, they weren't allowed to work as such. I suspect Brian has much deeper understanding and insights into the issue than myself with his background and expertise.
@BrianKrebs
in reply to Cliff'sEsportCorner

mastodon - Link to source

BrianKrebs

@CliffsEsport Yeah, back when I first started in journalism in the 90s, the major publications all had real experts who were assigned to or carved out specific beats like aviation, cars, healthcare, education, the environment, the courts, etc. These were largely well educated people who knew these awfully complex subjects intimately and could explain them simply but fairly to anyone. To the extent they want any reporters to write about these specific subjects anymore, newsrooms tend to favor young (cheap, replaceable) general assignment folks who lack that institutional knowledge.
@Cliff'sEsportCorner

reshared this

in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Mike Fraser

Translation: They want an algorithmic platform that will amplify their broadcast. Despite the lip service most reporters don't actually want to engage, they want to put a story out and broadcast it. That's why Mastodon doesn't work for so many of them.
Also they usually want some sort of measurable metric so that they can justify their existence to their boss. 10k likes on a bot laden network still looks good to people who don't get it.
in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Nazo

I really don't get the journalists thing anyway. It's literally the only style of platform that makes sense for journalism. For one thing, they can own and control their own server instead of relying on the whims of a company that may or may not manipulate their messages and reach — or worse, turn their info in to the government.

I just don't really get it. Every large business that uses social media should want to own their own server... Journalists should want to more than anyone.

in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

mcc

Over the same last few days actually *Bluesky* has been having an argument about "right-wing opinions get so much negative pushback here, it's going to drive away the right-wingers and centrists". And also Twitter has been getting so concerned about "Wow this site is dead for anyone except right wingers" that even Nate Silver is kinda freaking out

…maybe this just doesn't work? Maybe social media is just never going to be the thing that it was in 2015 again, ever again?

in reply to mcc

mastodon - Link to source

EVHaste

@mcc funny how it always comes back to the “safe space for differing viewpoints” thing, isn’t it? Which of course is code for “I think I should be able to say fascist shit and get away with it”. Smh.

I have also observed the dunk culture thing about Bluesky (which I left)! I assume because that was the language of Twitter before it.

I’m okay with not being able to re create some lightning in a bottle moment for social media. Maybe it’s not *meant* to exist in that form, or not healthy too.

@mcc
in reply to EVHaste

mastodon - Link to source

Ivan Sagalaev

I think it's not really about journalists, but about people who felt they were famous, and here they suddenly are not. So they perceive it as a problem that the platform is ill suited for pumping one's celebrity status. It's not enough for them to just talk to people, as you say. They would like to talk *onto* people and expect the platform to amplify that.
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