After the Deluge: What’s Next on Mastodon for Journalism? [UPDATE-2]

[NB: check the byline, thanks. Updates at the bottom of this post. /~Rayne]

After Thursday’s Musk-ian tantrum booting off more than eight journalists from Twitter, there was a stampede of new users opening accounts on the open social media platform Mastodon.

It bogged down performance considerably on the largest servers. My timelines lagged by nearly three hours at one point on mstdn.social. But that was Friday; there wasn’t a lot of urgent news. We could afford the lag.

Though service improved greatly over 24 hours later, servers may still be throttled a bit. They’ll likely be upgraded over the next week or two depending on the instance and if traffic continues to level out over the next 48 hours.

The lag will be more obvious than some of the corporate-owned commercial platforms, but we’ve all seen now what the price is for the responsiveness of commercial Big Tech.

Besides, we’ve been here before during early rapid growth of a platform.

We’ll get through this.

~ ~ ~

Now that journalists have finally been confronted by the reality their go-to social media platform is run by an erratic narcissist, it’s time to ask what’s next.

Some of the outlets employing these journalists are already turning a blind eye to what happened now that Musk has lifted the suspension on several journalists. The selective approach should be yet another signal to media outlets that there is no return to normal. The big name outlets like CNN, NYT, NBC saw the ban on their journalists lifted, but the smaller independent outlets and freelance journalists are still suspended.

Among them are the only woman of color who was banned (Linette Lopez) and a commentator who’s retired from political commentary (Keith Olbermann). Hello racism, misogyny, ageism, and not a single complaint from the big media outlets about this because they’re not affected (wow, if that doesn’t say something else).

Not only is the Musk-ian problem of throttled journalism continuing, it will happen again. It’s just a matter of time before some other issue arises which trips Musk’s hair trigger and a journalist or outlet will be suspended.

(While I was writing this piece, Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz was suspended from Twitter without explanation. Her account also happens to be on the so-called antifa list circulated last month — surely just a coincidence, hmm?)

There’s purpose to this beyond an expression of Musk’s shallowness. It’s now a means to change the subject and redirect journalists’ attention — even away from some of the journalism being throttled.

What was it that Lopez reported which triggered Musk? Why isn’t that getting more attention?

And as I asked in my previous post, what really tripped the suspension of Matt Binder? Was it about Tesla’s performance?

This is among the what’s next actions: journalists and their employers need to stop getting played by Musk the same damned way they were played by another malignant narcissist who mastered undermining and marginalizing the media.

Stop navel gazing and start doing more and better reporting about Musk and his effect on free speech and press freedom.

Publish it on an open social media platform, which the narcissist’s platform isn’t.

Do that with all reporting.

~ ~ ~

Consultant Dan Hon has posted a few observations, assessments, and recommendations of media outlets’ next steps. He began writing about news organizations moving to open web platform Mastodon back in October just before Musk took ownership of Twitter, before journalists were banned:

— News outlets need a Mastodon instance;
— Instances should be associated with organization’s existing website URL to ease discovery while building on and enhancing brand;
— Instances should verify its journalists’ (and opinion columnists’) identities through the Mastodon instance;

Thursday’s journalists’ suspensions emphasize the importance of Hon’s recommendations. News media shouldn’t be held hostage by a single billionaire with an attitude, especially if these outlets don’t have financial relationship with that billionaire and his social media business.

It’s possible the big name media outlets whose journalists’ suspensions were lifted have or have had advertising purchases with Twitter which influenced Musk’s handling of the suspensions.

No outlet so far has copped to this though it’s certain some participate in Twitter’s video monetization program Amplify. We only know that some of the outlets begged for mercy *cough* asked for reconsideration of the suspensions.

The New York Times asked its reporters not get into confrontations with Musk in public view on Twitter.

In one case the news outlet has punished the journalist for their coverage of Musk. NBC dressed down Ben Collins and pulled him off coverage of Twitter for his tweets earlier in the month which were characterized as “not editorially appropriate.”

NBC’s behavior may have emboldened Musk.

Entities pleading with Musk like the American Foreign Service Association on behalf of VOA’s Steve Herman may only have fed Musk’s ego.

FreePress.net’s insistence Musk step aside as Twitter’s CEO is laughable given how much of his own wealth is invested in the business, not to mention Musk was exercising his own free speech rights suspending journalists.

None of these actions deal with the problem, which is that a media platform has been taken over by a billionaire fascist narcissist with no genuine interest in free speech and a free press.

Dealing with this effectively means building a better mousetrap which can’t be overtaken by a single person’s whims.

There have been some instances established on open platform Mastodon for some media outlets listed below:

— USA —
https://c.im/@ABC (bot)
https://c.im/@CNN (bot)
https://c.im/@NBC (bot)
https://journa.host/@onthemedia
https://journa.host/@[email protected]
https://mstdn.social/@RollingStone
https://newsie.social/@TheConversationUS
https://newsie.social/@themarkup
https://newsie.social/@Chalkbeat
https://newsie.social/@STAT
https://newsie.social/@ProPublica
https://newsie.social/@damemagazine
https://mastodon.world/@FAIR
https://mastodon.world/@foreignpolicy
https://mastodon.world/@theprospect
https://mastodon.social/@niemanlab
https://mastodon.social/@GovTrack

— US Local —
https://mastodon.social/@gbhnews
https://mastodon.social/@KCStar (bot)
https://texasobserver.social/@TexasObserver
https://newsie.social/@Chron
https://mastodon.tucsonsentinel.com/@TucsonSentinel
https://journa.host/@msfreepress
https://journa.host/@berkeleyscanner
https://sfba.social/sfchronicle
https://sfba.social/@sfgate
https://sfba.social/@sfstandard
https://sfba.social/@thevallejosun
https://verified.mastodonmedia.xyz/@theoregonian
https://mas.to/@sltrib

— Technology —
https://c.im/@Mashable (bot)
https://c.im/@Engadget (bot)
https://geeknews.chat/@arstechnica
https://mastodon.social/@macrumors
https://restof.social/@restofworld

— Sports —
https://c.im/@NBA (bot)
https://c.im/@NFL (bot)
https://c.im/@MLB (bot)
https://c.im/@NHL (bot)
https://c.im/@Soccer (bot)

— International —
https://botsin.space/@bbcworld (bot)(UK)
https://bylines.social/@BylinesNetwork (UK)
https://bylines.social/@BylinesScotland (Scot)
https://bylines.social/@BylinesCymru (Wales)
https://bylines.social/@YorksBylines (UK)
https://bylines.social/@NEBylines (UK)
https://bylines.social/@BylinesEast (UK)
https://bylines.social/@CentralBylines (UK)
https://bylines.social/@NWBylines (UK)
https://bylines.social/@KentBylines (UK)
https://bylines.social/@SussexBylines (UK)
https://bylines.social/@WEBylines (UK)
https://c.im/@BBC (bot)(UK)
https://c.im/@DW (bot)(German)
https://mastodon.social/@riffreporter (German)
https://mamot.fr/@lesjoursfr (France)
https://mamot.fr/@mdiplo (France)
https://piaille.fr/@Vert_le_media (France)
https://piaille.fr/@politis (France)
https://amicale.net/@lemondefr (bot)(France)
https://masto.ai/@linforme (France)
https://mastodon.social/@Reporterre (France)
https://mastodon.social/@Mediapart (France)
https://mastodon.social/@citizenlab (Canada)
https://mastodon.social/@rferl (International, Ukraine)

Note those marked (bot) — these may not have been established by the news organization but instead by some other entity whose identity is not clear. They are cross-posting news headlines from somewhere, possibly Twitter. Each (bot) is a failure; it may share the organization’s news articles faithfully, but the site isn’t verified and its posts will never answer any questions from readers. It’s a loss of control over IP and branding, at a minimum.

The real successes are those which set up their own instances, like the Texas Observer. Best in class is the Bylines Network which has not only established an instance but accounts for each of its local news subsidiaries. Ideally this is what news organizations like Gannett or McClatchy would do with their network of local papers.

Of course these are all news outlets which still focus on print; television news should take the same approach.

And all of the journalists who report for these entities should have verified accounts with their employers’ instance.

Not a single thin dime need be spent on Twitter Blue to achieve verification.

Every instance is an opportunity to develop a closer relationship with readers in ways Twitter couldn’t provide. Because Mastodon is RSS friendly, every one of the news outlets above can be followed with an RSS reader by simply adding .rss to each address and then adding the address to a preferred RSS reader.

~ ~ ~

Why haven’t or won’t media outlets migrate to an instance on open platform Mastodon? As Don Hon wrote, it’s a bunch of work! It needs maintenance not unlike a website, and it needs a level of creative thinking which Twitter/Facebook/Instagram haven’t required because they’ve been fairly stable for years. The open web and the Fediverse is terra nova for news organizations, and it will take some craftiness to develop an new media ecosystem with measures to determine success of any invested effort.

It’s also too tempting to look at another billionaire-funded closed platform like Post.news and assume from its polished finish that this might return media outlets to normalcy.

Sadly, no. Many users are turned off by what has been characterized as a hollow echo chamber effect with little community building.

There are still more opportunities but each has has major drawbacks. Hive.social has had a major security problem; Jimmy Wales’ WT.social in beta phase is based in the UK and subject to entirely different laws regulating speech and intellectual property; no one wants to go back to relying on Facebook or Instagram, and LinkedIn wasn’t designed for the kind of community usage Twitter has had.

I have yet to hear anyone express interest in Jack Dorsey’s BlueSky which is still in development.

At some point media outlets need to face reality, as UCLA Associate Professor of Information Studies Dr. Sarah T. Roberts explained:

As people are leaving Bird for good, I find that many are engaged in what I believe is a dangerous and misguided game of mixing apples and oranges. After what just happened, and all that it has revealed about reliance on for-profit corporate entities for interpersonal and community interaction, why advocate for another such environment? Substack is already known garbage, and Post provides no future-proofing. When I say, “seize the means of your social media production,” this is why.

Seize the means, indeed.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-1 — 12:15 P.M. ET 18-DEC-2022 —

Community member Laura Hoey informed us The Oregonian (OregonLive.com) has a Mastodon account. I’ve added it to the list of local news outlets above.

It’s a particularly interesting addition because the host instance, https://verified.mastodonmedia.xyz, is a dedicated server for use by journalists or media personalities. The owner/operator is Matt Karolian, who describes himself as “Boston Globe by day, Mastodon Admin by night.”

If you know of a local news outlet which has a Mastodon account but isn’t on the list above, let me know in comments and I’ll add it as long as comments are open on this post. Thanks!

UPDATE-2 — 3:50 P.M. ET 18-DEC-2022 —

Another local news outlet added to the list, courtesy of community member Katrina Katrinka. See Salt Lake Tribune at https://mas.to/@sltrib.

If you are a newer user of Mastodon and find the site laggy, it’s because of a crush of new accounts and more posts. I’m trying to write yet another post which should address the reason for this influx.

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81 replies
  1. Rayne says:

    I don’t understand why at a minimum news outlets haven’t worked with a single press association entity to create an instance through which their organizations can publish posts to share news.

    For that matter, why haven’t independent/free lance news journalists also asked press associations to do this for them?

    Frustrating to see so much opportunity going nowhere.

    • Legonaut says:

      Twitter’s been awesome for journos because it was dirt cheep for them. Someone else paid for all the infrastructure & moderation required by such facilities. Now Elmo’s forcing the principled to bring all that in-house; where’s the budget for that when they’s cried poor for decades? No wonder many are sticking their heads in the sands of Elmo’s ass.

      Are the press associations any better-heeled? And how would that solve the problem of being at the mercy of the purse-holders?

      • Rayne says:

        Yup, media received a free tool replacing its comments sections which it found too onerous to moderate, and one with analytics on engagement which they didn’t have to buy. They could also leave their journalists out in the wind on their own, let them make or break their own cred directly with the public, providing zero support unless it affected their business model.

        Press associations are only as monied as their donors. There should have been a bigger push to develop these organizations over the last ~16 years but now journalists may have to do this as individuals instead of waiting for their employers. Media outlets really should clue in about this or unionization will continue to look more appetizing since unions could offer both Mastodon instances and related support.

        • posaune says:

          Rayne, first: thank you for this post, plus all your thinking and research! Outstanding!

          second: the union aspect is really interesting! Gosh I wish that could happen, soon and strongly!

      • Nick Barnes says:

        Mastodon hosting is *really* cheap. The compute cost is less than the coffee bill, and the software is all free (both as-in-speech and as-in-beer). I can understand the NYT, say, being reluctant to pay to train (or hire) someone who has the right shape of clue. What is still emerging, I believe, is the Mastodon consultancy industry, who will set up your instance *and run it* – keep it secure and up-to-date, and hand-hold your journalists into using it – for (say) $100/month plus $10/month/user, plus $X per journalist training session. It shouldn’t be more than that.

        If I had the time and the years I’d be inclined to do it myself.

  2. wasD4v1d says:

    The New York Times asked its reporters not get into confrontations with Musk in public view on Twitter.

    This, it seems to me, was the point. I’m also of the opinion that a fragmented, disarticulated internet environment is a safer one. But that 2c opinion is not worth what it was in the free money days of quantitative easing.

  3. wetzel says:

    Thank you for the list of media outfits on Mastadon. With that, at least I know I could put together a kind of news feed. That’s been pretty much my experience with Twitter. I had stayed away from Twitter for years. It all gets turned into a Skinner Box. But then I started following a really good Ukraine list: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1496975442372354053 and actually started enjoying Twitter the past few months, with fifty or so like emptywheel I was following. I was a Twitter newbie when Elon took over.

    Elon will understand how people are trying to escape social isolation by making Tweets. Twitter gives me social rewards and token reinforcers through engagement of others. Musk having Twitter is like the dream of the Gingrich GOPAC memo for a Bond villain, the cognitive restructuring of America.

    Anyway, so Twitter is turning into Elon Musk’s Skinner Box, and we are the rats. It won’t just be for keeping people on the dopamine wheel of engagement, but there are going to be social cognitive models of learning built by weird panoptic Elon algorithms, and the NY Times is just fine with it. Elon Musk is just “flexing his media muscles”. Give me the brain chip already.

    The totalitarian paranoia will replicate. Elon already sees Twitter as a psy-op for “wokeness”, and so Twitter will turn into a giant red-pill psy-op. Now it will be an intentional psy-op like an FSB program. It actually will be a playground for the FSB and other global influence operators such as the Chinese Communit Party, the coup plotters, financiers in the Maldives or the Seven Mountains Dominionists. Elon Musk will dictate what algorithm at Twitter will lead us all forward to Mars as a form of social learning. Everything will then feedback through the bipolar manias of Elon Musk. He will then reconfigure things in our mental phenomenology like Rah the Sun King and bring about what is the best for all of us!

    • BobBobCon says:

      “Elon will understand how people are trying to escape social isolation by making Tweets.”

      You’ve swallowed the unproven assumption that has been swallowed by the press for far too long that Musk is all that bright.

      In the same way the press freaks out when gas prices rise but barely remarks on when they fall, people give Musk far too much credit for genius as his fortune grew and refuse believe there might be rank stupidity behind the collapse.

      We really don’t know how this all sorts out.

      • wetzel says:

        Public space is always mediated. That is the media. There are other forums, but Twitter will stay a major center of journalism. While what Twitter will represent remains undetermined, the early signs are ominous, it seems to me. It is a set-back, what is happening at Twitter, because some corrupted form of it will remain with negative influence, even if some percentage of the left-wing Twitter-sphere goes to Mastodon or Post or wherever.

        • wetzel says:

          I don’t know what I’m going to do, honestly. I had started to use Twitter to procrastinate really badly. It colonizes my attention endlessly. It has me looking at the phone “when I have a moment”. It all feels really important, somehow, but how is reading politics on Twitter all day any better than watching crap TV or reading People magazine? It should be enough to read the two or three dumb things Atrios posts or come over here. I don’t self-regulate with Twitter very well, I think. It’s like crack. Maybe I’ll use this whole fiasco to break free.

        • Rayne says:

          You may find once you leave Twitter that the algorithms fucked with your attention. If you go to Mastodon, you have to do the work the algorithms did to find what you want to read, it’s not pushed at you. It’s definitely changed my experience online and I rejected Twitter’s Home feed algorithm (versus Latest Tweets) to avoid having high controversy/low quality crap pushed into my feed.

        • wetzel says:

          People need transparent, open means of communication to succeed with this democracy thing. We are all projecting into this online space like it’s the ‘noosphere’ that we feel we need to effect with our own ideas, not abandon to its own devices if we left. People come through on Twitter with their particular arguments and unique voices, but for my part, I think it’s a bit too time consuming and ultimately a bit distracting as a medium because the feed is always engendering new feed. It plays a trick on my mesolimbic system with its variable reward schedule. I am like a gambling addict on a slot machine with Twitter. I keep scrolling. Twitter is worse even than Reddit for that. It’s diabolical how Twitter can hijack a person’s dopamine system, I think, but that is a separate issue from its integrity or usefulness. This is what I have noticed the past year with it. That’s why I think Elon wants it. He’s addicted too.

        • BobBobCon says:

          Things in tech rule, until they don’t. MySpace was king until it failed. BlackBerry dominated until it withered. And they were vastly better managed than Twitter is.

          Musk is facing a monumental financial challenge and potentially legal problems of a similar scale. We just can’t know what is happening with Twitter in five months, let alone five years.

          Press outlets can’t treat this like a corporate decision ten years ago on whether to renew a two year contract with BlackBerry or switch to iPhones. The fundamental viability of Twitter is vastly weaker, and while it may get stable leadership soon, it also very well may not.

        • Rayne says:

          Every media outlet which fails to establish an off-Twitter account ASAP is at risk of brand damage long before Musk is no longer at the helm of Twitter.

          I really don’t see how Musk is forced to leave as CEO.

        • BobBobCon says:

          My guess is Twitter is collateral damage — investors in his core businesses are sick of this and are going to give him a deadline for getting rid of Twitter, and probably some of his other side gigs like the tunnel business.

          But we’ll see.

        • Nick Barnes says:

          He will leave because his Saudi investors have told him to go. It’s a done deal. long before his phony poll.

        • Rayne says:

          It’d be nice if you qualified that statement by acknowledging you’re indulging in speculation.

          Unless, of course, you have evidence that shareholder Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal told Musk to exit, and not one of the other lenders like the VCs funded by UAE and Qatar, or his friend Larry Ellison.

    • Rayne says:

      I’m looking into an added feature which displays latest Mastodon posts, but we’re going to need to consolidate the effort with some other coding tweaks to the site in the near future. I have yet to find a quick-and-dirty tool which will readily allow me to display a limited number of Mastodon posts using its RSS support.

      In the mean time, if you use an RSS reader you can follow each Team Emptywheel member’s RSS feeds:

      Marcy: https://mastodon.social/@emptywheel.rss

      bmaz: https://mstdn.social/@bmaz.rss

      Rayne: https://mstdn.social/@raynetoday.rss

      Ed Walker: https://mstdn.social/@masaccioEW.rss

      Jim White: https://mas.to/@JimWhiteGNV.rss

      • AgainBrain says:

        Thank you so much for all your efforts guiding and educating users on the Fediverse ecosystem, and how to efficiently engage with it! Half the battle with Fediverse is knowing where to find the best people and aggregations to give a reasonably accurate view of news.

      • AgainBrain says:

        Also, what you’re wanting w.r.t. federated instancing of news sources and authentication of journalists is actually quite doable, just need to be sure to abstract away any cloud corp leverages in the infrastructure (doable) if you’d rather not build it all out somewhere private. That way it’s trivial to shift cloud consumption around if any one starts seeking editorial leverage. If you want to discuss further, you know my email (or DM @[email protected]).

  4. phred says:

    Good post, Rayne, thanks! I especially appreciate the list of news outlets on Mastodon, that is very helpful.

    Just one minor aside, though, Gannett has been an entirely destructive force for local news. They purchased our local town paper awhile back combined it with another town paper nearby, fired the local reporters, increased the font size and reduced the number of pages. They only print material submitted by what few local organizations can be bothered to write them. There is no coverage of town government or schools, no local events, nothing. Zero information about elections either before or after. It has become completely worthless as a resource for local information.

    Given Gannet’s unwillingness to actually engage in the news business, I cannot imagine them investing a penny in establishing a presence on social media.

    • Rayne says:

      Yes, Gannett has been extremely toxic for the entire local news industry. At some point their cannibalization will backfire; I think we’re seeing them hit the wall.

      Chicago Public Media’s acquisition of Chicago Sun-Times creating a vertical public media entity with print and broadcast combined is a model I think we’ll see pop up elsewhere in the U.S., salvaging local news while leaving the for-profit model which has been at the root of local news’ cannibalization. Once economies of scale for the benefit of profits are removed, we’ll see some interesting developments.

      I’ve also been worried for a long time about the Associated Press. It can be gamed and probably has been, by way of Sinclair media (if not Gannett as well). AP is a nonprofit funded by newspapers and broadcast stations across the US which in turn receive the AP stories for their use. With Sinclair owning such a large chunk of TV, you can see how that could influence AP output. If more local news was owned+operated by nonprofit public media verticals, AP might be at less risk. Now add open web platforms like Mastodon to the mix.

      • rosalind says:

        and now i’m flashing back to the first Yearly Kos, Vegas. sitting in the ballroom for closing night, finishing my second rum & coke, a man came and sat down next to me and introduced himself as a reporter for AP. asked me some questions about why i was there, etc. gave my permission for him to publish. forgot all about it.

        back home i suddenly remembered, did a serach of my name, and holy moly – dozens and dozens of his story with my quote flew around the world. drove home AP’s reach, and how their reporters weight their stories can shape a preferred narrative in a global way.

        • Rayne says:

          Yup, exactly that. Their work can appear in nearly every AP-affiliated paper AND broadcast TV/radio outlet. Now imagine that corrupted by Sinclair’s right-wing bullshit.

  5. Peterr says:

    The New York Times asked its reporters not get into confrontations with Musk in public view on Twitter.

    Time to update their masthead, I guess.

    All Some of the news that’s fit to print.

  6. Badger Robert says:

    Thanks.
    Won’t the social media audience fragment? Won’t what happened to the TV/streaming audience also happen to social media?

  7. Larry Cannell says:

    > Instances should verify its journalists’ (and opinion columnists’) identities through the Mastodon instance

    This is a dealbreaker since journalists have hybrid identities on twitter. So, when a journalist moves from Detroit Free Press to the NYT their twitter feed follows them.

    This is not like employees having separate corporate and personal email addresses. A company-run Mastodon instance will go unused.

    A neutral third-party, such as an association, may be the best option to provide assurances to both the corporations and the journalists.

    • Rayne says:

      Nope, it’s not a deal breaker at all. There’s nothing preventing a journalist from having two different Mastodon accounts — one on the current employer’s instance, and a personal one on a different instance.

      It’s possible to cross-post between these two accounts as well so that journalists only have to post once and distribute to two feeds.

      For that matter, there’s no reason they can’t have a third with an association or union instance.

      It’s just not that difficult. I’ve never understood why this didn’t happen more often as it was with Twitter since it was equally possible there.

      • Larry Cannell says:

        It’s not a technical problem. The rules it imposes on journalists are unsustainable. Which profile should I post this on? Will I have to change profiles to before boosting? Who will create the rules to decide which profile is suitable for a particular message or boost?

        In addition, journalists (at least, popular journalists) will not easily give up their social media following. This is currency for them.

        • Rayne says:

          Hmm. I still don’t think it’s as big a problem as you think it is. It’s a bigger problem not to have accounts which appear to belong to journalists which aren’t verified as employed by a particular outlet. Twitter’s blue checkmarks up until now have provided validation that the journalist/person was who they said they were, but that’s not Mastodon’s model.

          Take a good look around at how many journalists simply use their own name and don’t have checkmarks. The follower count they develop may be their currency but it can be fucked with and hard by a spoof account.

        • Larry Cannell says:

          I hadn’t consider the blue checkmark. Might be an opportunity for someone to run a Mastodon server that is known for their due diligence. So, instead of the blue checkmark the account’s domain is considered reliable. A corporation, obviously, can provide that, but so could an association.

        • Larry Cannell says:

          There are probably several companies that could provide (some level of) identity assurance. Imagine if LinkedIn provided a Mastodon server.

    • BobBobCon says:

      “So, when a journalist moves from Detroit Free Press to the NYT their twitter feed follows them.”

      That’s not always a given. Michael Schmidt is (at)nytmike and if he moves to the Washington Post that’s not going with him.

  8. earlofhuntingdon says:

    “Not editorially appropriate.” Always a good negotiating strategy to let your opponent pick who’s on your team and what they can do. FFS, there’s a woodshed so that you can punish behind it, without embarrassment or giving away your game.

    • Ginevra diBenci says:

      That remark sent me right out of Rayne’s typically excellent post and back to google what happened with Ben Collins, who has for years been one of the best reporters on the mis-/disinformation beat. I don’t understand the lack of pushback from NBC’s high-profile talent, the ones who’ve used Collins’ reporting and presence on air.

      It’s the “little” losses like this that scare me most, or rather the ease with which so many have come to accept them. Tiffany Cross vanished without mention. Ben Collins too. Both for using “inappropriate” content, meaning that which offends the powerful–which is, in fact, the definition of their job.

  9. Fancy Chicken says:

    Rayne,

    Thank you for giving your time to providing newbie info on Mastadon and great lists like you churned out today. It is extraordinarily helpful in making the leap- which is difficult because of my association of Twitter to some really meaningful periods of my life. Being saddled with that emotion makes migration more difficult making your work all the more valuable in easing the transition.

    Much Gratitude,

    Fancy Chicken

  10. Laura Hoey says:

    Just to add to your “Local” list, my statewide paper, “The Oregonian” has been on Mast since November 10th. I know you can’t track them all, but it is the biggest media outlet for the State of Oregon. @[email protected]

    • obsessed says:

      She’s on my wish list of people who aren’t on Mastodon. It seems like the vast hordes of MSNBC, CNN, Wapo & NYT writers have yet to make the migration. Maybe that’s good? I wish Robert Costa would convert.

        • Frank Anon says:

          They tried the Golden Goal sudden death about 20 years ago, all the teams just went into a defensive crouch until someone got a red card or got carted off with cramps and dehydration. PK’s are ugly, but it’s the best that can fairly be done

        • Ginevra diBenci says:

          They let playoff baseball games go into as many innings as it takes, and basketball OT periods extend until a winner emerges. I’m with bmaz on this one. After that brilliantly played game, watching it come down to penalty kicks felt tragic. Give them as many 15-minute blocks as they need.

        • Peterr says:

          You’re talking about a tournament here, where Argentina and France played 7 games in 28 days. Add in that because the World Cup was moved from the summer into Nov/Dec, all the players were in the middle of their club league seasons and had no pre-tournament rest. To adjust for that, they changed the substitution rules, giving each team 5 instead of three (though you could only stop play 3 times per match to make the changes). This was absolutely grueling, and when you add in injuries and illnesses, it makes little sense to add in yet more exhaustion by extending time beyond 120 minutes plus stoppage time.

          Getting to the finals of the World Cup is a physically punishing affair. I saw a stat somewhere (can’t recall where) that said in the first 6 matches (i.e., all but the final), Messi had averaged better than 9km of moving around the pitch per match. Some was walking, other times a long run, still other times short and vicious bursts of speed, and all of it while trying to evade his opponents (and their kicks) or while trying to chase them down. Let me know when a baseball player does anything close to that.

          One more thing, and I’m speaking as a former (non-pro) goalkeeper: if you don’t think there is strategy involved in penalty kicks, you need to watch more soccer. France’s coach chose their starting goalie because he is great during the run of play but only good at defending PKs, while Argentina’s coach made the exact opposite decision. Field players study lots of tape of the goalies they will face, to learn their “tells” and tendencies. Ditto for goalies studying field players. Then there are the in-game substitution decisions facing the coach. Do you pull a player on the field to get a bench player who is good at PKs onto the field, but risk your opposition scoring before it gets to PKs? When do you make that substitution – 10 minutes left, 2 minutes left, in stoppage time?

        • bmaz says:

          Oh noes! These claimed best conditioned athletes in the world, not just play a reasonable and full game for the fucking world championship? What a fucking joke.

      • Peterr says:

        Going to be watching this later this afternoon. My congregation would have been rather upset with me had I been watching the match during worship.

        • FiestyBlueBird says:

          Angela Merkel was in D.C. meeting with Obama and the entire G7. She’d told Obama she wanted there to be a TV on outside the conference room where they met. They were all in conference, and Merkel started receiving a flurry of texts on her phone. She got up and left. Gradually, one by one, each of the other leaders left and joined Angela in the next room watching TV. Obama was the last to join. He asked them all, “OK, are we here for a G7 meeting or are we here to watch soccer?” Merkel: “We’re here to watch soccer.” So they all watched the match.

          That story is told in “The Chancellor The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel”. My retelling here is from memory.

        • theartistvvv says:

          So the last Bulls championship we’re at a wedding reception, about 10 guys have season tickets, everyone is running to the public bar to catch snippets of the game.

          My table – we had a battery-powered 6″ TV under a big white cloth napkin.

          Later learned the bride was p.o.’d at first (when she learned why the groom was hovering), then later she decided it was good idear because at least we stayed in the room.

          (Bad user name above – post wouldn’t delete?)

          [Deleted partial comment. You’d used your old username, probably confused the system. /~Rayne]

  11. obsessed says:

    I’ve found on Mastodon nearly half of the people I follow on Twitter, although some of them don’t repost everything they post on Twitter. Still, my feed is starting to pop. As for the UI experience, once I got it up and running I’ve yet to find anything worse, and two things that are much better: the edit button and the 5000 character limit. I don’t know why those aren’t getting more publicity.

    • Rayne says:

      Depending on the mobile app used, the Mastodon experience can be VERY Twitter-ish. Tusky feels so much like Twitter’s mobile app I don’t miss Twitter at all.

    • coral reef says:

      Best thing about Mastodon is following hashtags. That can fill up your feed quickly. For example #ClimateChange. Easiest to figure out on iOS app, but doable on browser.

      • bmaz says:

        I have no interest in the world in following stupid hashtags. That zero useful search capacity being only one of the reasons Mastodon is still fairly lame. Also, too, the lack of quote tweets. This Mastodon controllers need to get their heads out of their asses. And there are many more problems as well. Maybe the primordial Mastodon will fix some of those problems, we shall see. Currently it is pretty lame though.

      • Rayne says:

        The other groovy thing I learned this weekend: though search across the fediverse doesn’t work within Mastodon (use Google instead), favoriting posts allows a body of favorited posts to be included in searches you may perform in Mastodon.

        Be selective about what you favorite to build that searchable body.

  12. bgNowThwn says:

    The way you have presented this, Rayne, feels so community based. I love that about the transition. I’m not much for the bird, but I did sign up to read what the principals here post. And I occasionally read others here and there. I noticed today there is a vote on Elmo. Should he stay or should he go? I honestly am not sure how I would answer that.

    • Rayne says:

      Any poll Elmo posts is bullshit. Don’t waste a moment even thinking about them because it’s just bait, chum intended to rile up users and increase engagement in a platform which is cratering.

      I’m less worried about whether he should stay or go than what happens to the marginalized and vulnerable who haven’t been able to move off the platform or are too confused about what to do next.

      Gods help them if Elmo and Twitter’s board installs Jared Kushner with whom Elmo had been watching today’s World Cup final.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Indeed. Like Trump, Elon is a head’s I win, tails you lose guy, who never keeps his word. He’ll move any goalpost to make sure he wins. That he would claim to hold a poll and abide by its results is a great indicator that he thinks less of the people around him than Mark Zuckerberg.

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