Summary
The Guardian has announced it will stop posting on Elon Musk’s platform, X, citing “often disturbing content” such as far-right conspiracy theories and racism.
The news outlet, with 27 million followers across over 80 accounts, stated that the US presidential election coverage on X reinforced its view that the platform had become “toxic.”
While The Guardian’s official accounts will withdraw, reporters may still use X for newsgathering.
This move follows similar actions by NPR, PBS, and other organizations concerned about the platform’s content standards under Musk’s ownership.
I just love how we went from naming it “Twitter” to “Elon Musk’s platform, X”.
If athletes leave Twitter then ESPN won’t post their tweets.
Just saying
That took way too long.
Yeah it really shouldn’t take actual fascism to get people off predatory social media but here we are
Bluesky is the number one downloaded social app right now.
I just checked in Android and it’s surprisingly #8. Friggin threads is #3 which is shocking cause I never hear or see anything about it. X is at #25 just behind mcdonalds lol. I’m not smart enough to know exactly what that means tho because pretty much everyone already has X/Twitter/whatever the fuck it’s called so of course that wouldn’t show up super high on there. I’ve also had multiple phones with it preloaded onto the OS.
Of course instagram and tik tok and Snapchat and Whatsapp are all pretty high up there so maybe it’s pretty solid evidence of that dumpster fire actually burning.
Can we get them to join Mastodon?
I think it’s ideal for new services. They can spin up an instance pretty easily through their existing IT department. They have total control and total freedom because they run the platform. Then federate with other instances to have a reach of millions instantly.
The only reason every news organization isn’t doing it is just bad marketing. As far as I know, there’s no marketing budget for mastodon.
Bluesky is like the Fediverse equivalent of bumper bowling. Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely a place for it, and it’s better than staying on Twitter, but I do hope it ends up being just a stepping stone for people to get comfortable before taking off the guard rails and moving on to actual federated services like Mastodon or Lemmy.
Tried bsky today but for the life of me I cannot understand why comments are not threaded better like on lemmy or reddit, why there’s no comments/replies sorting, saving replies/comments, etc.
Do people really just scroll for fucking ever through the replies to a skeet looking for ones that interest them?!
just like reddit is a nice alternative to digg ammirite?
we’re on lemmy for a reason mate. if digg is the equivalent of x, then reddit is the equivalent of bluesky, and lemmy is the equivalent of mastodon.
one of those three are not like the other, and one will stick around while the others won’t, because capitalism.
normies does not really care about corporate or not. the good thing about bluesky are: easy signups compare to mastodon (noobs do not want to join “servers”), better language filter than mastodon (I tried to pick specific language on mastodon setting. But, I still got unused language that I want to see), customized feed (good to find engagement), less ragebait than X and it is open source.
It’s still decentralized and has marketing far better than Mastodan. With 15 million members and its origin from Dorsey himself, it’s going to win.
Bluesky is already in the process of going to shit in more ways than one. Until they start federating they are not an acceptable alternative.
How so? I’ve been looking it over, and it doesn’t seem to have any of the enshittification I’ve seen all over Facebook (let alone Xitter, which is made entirely of festering anus now).
i remember bbc had an experimental mastodon instance, but they dont seem to post anything anymore. i hope they’ll give an update on the trial, anything they found out good bad unworthy whatsoever.
Classic first adopter problem.
The thing is I believe that there’s a real argument for a use case for news organizations, governments, and colleges.
If they’re just seeking engagement, then they have to wait for the platform to grow. But this isn’t about that.
Many news organizations already have comment sections on their website, and they want to push out information on breaking news as quickly as possible. They need a platform to do those things. So, a lot of them use Facebook for embedded comments on the page and Xitter to breaking news. The thing is that they could use mastodon for both, and run their own instance, which would give them total control and not be at the mercy of Musk or Zuck.
Colleges use expensive proprietary messaging apps for students, clubs, and teachers that they can monitor and adjust to fit their needs. Mastodon offers that.
Governments sometimes end up in legal hot water due to freedom of information, etc. that comes with corporate social media. Mastodon offers the freedoms and controls necessary to disseminate vital information and to allow or reject posts as required by local laws.
The point is that Mastodon is an effective public facing communication system that also allows internal controls by the host.
The only publicity and marketing budget that the fediverse has is us, so any opportunity to promote it is our job. Government, education, news. These are the vital areas to promote.
