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”.
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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?
@Haste I'm imagining a whole lot of reasons why you could expect better turnaround from social media posts, even if you treat it just like a feed and never reply to anything. Primarily engagement--like my blog probably won't get any attention not only because it sucks but also because there's no way to engage with it. Until I fix that I'm probably wasting time.
I can add comments to my site but that's going to be a new service they have to join or I'm enabling social media commentary.
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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.
@Haste good point
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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.
@Haste I think it's a question of aligned incentives. A lot of journalism has to drive eyeballs to advertisers to stay in business. And they use the same ad networks with the same engagement metrics as corporate social media, which also has to drive eyeballs to advertisements through their algorithms. So the strategy that boosts engagement one place will boost it everywhere. Then these folks try to play that same game here on Mastodon...and it doesn't work.
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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.
@Haste Fuck all of that engagement bullshit. Those parasites should stay hell away from here. I don’t miss them. I don’t want them. Anything even remotely like that shit that was on commercial social media I block with extreme prejudice.
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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?
@Haste Precisely why I eschew accounts with many followers but few followed. If I want news, I will read it elsewhere. Exchange of ideas not lectures is what I am after.
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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.
@Haste 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?
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@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.
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@Haste @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
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@Haste I wasn't on Twitter before its downfall, but from what I've heard I got the impression that microblogging was a two-way street with journalists, scientists and 'common' folk.
It probably was more like you are suggesting though. But it does make me wonder if early Twitter really was less self-serving in a way.
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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.
@Haste A quais jornalistas esse argumento se refere? Aqueles que são apegados a declarações e promessas? Aqueles que reproduzem a retórica do patronato? Aqueles que são totalmente dependentes de agências de notícias? Aqueles que são paus-mandados dos poderosos? Aqueles camaradas chapa-branca que reproduzem sempre os mesmos textos, fotos e vídeos? Aqueles que se acham mais importantes que os leitores?
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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.
Then why are WSJ, propublica, the verge, forbes, etc (crap complicit press) on #mastodon trending page without logging in?
Here for the propaganda spreading phenomenon alone or trigger bait?
Gotta believe what they tell us, nothing else, you're not to think on your own. Got it!
Hence why no uproar about the overthrow, biggest news of the century, millennium, which should be front page since billionaires made their bribes using illegal citizens united loophole. -
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.
@Haste I don’t want journalists farming for engagement, I want them doing research and writing fact-based articles for publication. Anything that tempts journalists away from actual journalism is bad for society.
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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.
We have some journalists here. Good, serious ones. We don't need the state propaganda corp.
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@Haste Fuck all of that engagement bullshit. Those parasites should stay hell away from here. I don’t miss them. I don’t want them. Anything even remotely like that shit that was on commercial social media I block with extreme prejudice.
@oberstenzian @Haste and if you look at the average news site, it's filled with trackers (hint - there's no such thing as an "essential cookie") and clickbait ads.
Block JavaScript and most paywalls stop blocking you. The ones that use JavaScript to insert story contenf, you can find alternatives elsewhere.
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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.
@Haste what this place needs is more journalists, said nobody ever.
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@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.
@Haste @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.
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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.
Exactly this.
Getting engagement on Mastodon is quite easy. But if you're uninterested in a dialogue and sees engagement as a zero-sum game you must win, then you're in for a rude awakening.
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E em0nm4stodon@infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@rhold oh I hadn’t even thought to include artists in that observation. I’d be delighted to have a feed full of artists promoting their stuff. 🤩
@Haste @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..
