It also does away with some of the really awkward practices news organizations engage in wrt social media. The number of @JournalistNameCBC handles out there is kind of super cringy, and seems to point to journos having company-specific/company-mandated social media accounts, but without any actual company support for them.
Something like this makes having a company-mandated social media account something they’re assigned, just like an email address, rather than something they’re personally responsible for.
What I’d love to see is news companies spinning up their own instances, for example, a CBC-owned Mastodon instance, with accounts such as journalistname@cbcnews. It’d work exactly like a company-assigned e-mail address, and would function as such. That each and every post on such an account would be seen as the journalist working under the company, and not their own personal views.
And if a journalist wants his own personal account, well, they can either spin up their own instance, or perhaps a union of journalists would spin up an instance, with journalists setting up their accounts that are not tied to any news agency or company.
Am I being too naive and optimistic here? Maybe. But do I want this to happen regardless, yes!
Upon reading the article more closely, this is what the BBC is doing. My bad!
It also does away with some of the really awkward practices news organizations engage in wrt social media. The number of @JournalistNameCBC handles out there is kind of super cringy, and seems to point to journos having company-specific/company-mandated social media accounts, but without any actual company support for them.
Something like this makes having a company-mandated social media account something they’re assigned, just like an email address, rather than something they’re personally responsible for.
What I’d love to see is news companies spinning up their own instances, for example, a CBC-owned Mastodon instance, with accounts such as
journalistname@cbcnews. It’d work exactly like a company-assigned e-mail address, and would function as such. That each and every post on such an account would be seen as the journalist working under the company, and not their own personal views.And if a journalist wants his own personal account, well, they can either spin up their own instance, or perhaps a union of journalists would spin up an instance, with journalists setting up their accounts that are not tied to any news agency or company.
Am I being too naive and optimistic here? Maybe. But do I want this to happen regardless, yes!
Upon reading the article more closely, this is what the BBC is doing. My bad!
Yep. It’s one pattern that I think really sells the federated social media idea.
You love to see it.
Hopefully this becomes more normalised. The idea that a company runs their own site, but not social now seems a bit backward.
Wait, so if I just make an account on twitter named @PeterRothenburgCBC, then everyone thinks I am a legit reporter?
As long as you pay for a blue checkmark, sure.