mastodon.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

Administered by:

Server stats:

336K
active users

👋 Hello ! I'm going into a meeting at 4ET to talk about our newsroom's social media options.

If you think our station and other stations should have a Mastodon server or a broader presence in the , pls boost this post. If you have thoughts, please reply, I want to hear them!

NOTE: as I mentioned to @FediFollows and @hermitary@mastodon.world earlier today, it's important to understand the barriers that face stations or networks that want to set up a server. I summarize those here: mastodon.social/@gbhnews/11018

No one should expect anything to happen instantly.

Not totally sure why my link is not working but here's the commentary I shared before:

I think it's worth understanding what the barriers are to stations or networks establishing their own servers.

As the social editor, if I see a new platform and think, "oh, that's interesting," I have the power to open an account there.

Setting up a server for a station or a network would involve the cooperation of IT, marketing, and legal folks. Big stations and big networks have to do a fair amount of prep and due diligence before they make a move like that. 1/x

So it's not just the cost of setting up/running a server (which people tell me here could be quite minimal). It's the man-hours of prep, setup, and ongoing maintenance for things like moderation, tech support, etc. that come into the equation.

And the other half of that equation is the assessment the people involved make of the opportunity. Math is a big part of that. How many users are on that network, and how many of those people are likely to see or engage? 2/2

mem_somerville

@gbhnews Yeah, we understand this. But still: you have full control--not at the whims of a psycho with more money than sense, or a government, or whatever.

Also: you get the added cred of verifying your own team. It's hard to know here who is legit, imposters are easy to create in this system--an institution server is a good solution to this.

@mem_somerville Yes. It's just that some people seem to think that the only cost is the cost to set up a server. for a station or a network a lot more goes into it.

@gbhnews @mem_somerville Maybe NPR (or NPR & PRI) could set up a server that is open to all affiliated stations so that WGBH doesn't have to bear the burden for all of it.

@gbhnews @mem_somerville I'm working to convince my School if not my University to set up instances. It's going to be about setting up the infrastructure to onboard students and faculty and admin the instance but it centralizes aspects of communication that are currently paid for and paid for DEARLY.

@mycotropic @gbhnews @mem_somerville As someone who works for a major public university, I'm very interested to know how this ends up going.

@vwbusguy @gbhnews @mem_somerville our school is regional and includes three campuses in three universities so we constantly consider how to make them ONE School. By that I mean that the argument might be different for a school vs a University system. Happy to post about it though. If it works I'll try to use the hashtags #CSPH or #CSPHstodon
If you're trying to sell this product please share your methods and results!
#Collaborate #Collaboratestodon

The Swedish University Network, Sunet, which connects the Swedish universities, has set up a server at @sunet where any Swedish university student can create an account using their student login.

I would be interested to hear about the background, concerns, methods and experiences, but unfortunately the admin account hasn't posted anything. I may look around for a bit to see if there is any material about this elsewhere.

@mycotropic @vwbusguy @mem_somerville @gbhnews

@gbhnews

There's a bit of strategy involved.

"NPR" is short for "National Public Radio", where "National" means the USA. But the Fediverse is inherently international. How to deal with that?

I notice Fediverse accounts from the USA that rather ignore the ~96% rest of the world's population. Which is a possible, maybe even reasonable choice.

If you choose differently, interacting with us needs thought. Do you want to require your target group to understand phrases like "meeting at 4 ET"?

@dj3ei I think you were the person who got me to put USA in our bio.

@dj3ei @gbhnews

Surely you don't mean that every Fediverse user MUST write for the whole world, right? Each user must be free to choose their target audience, and everybody else is free to follow them or not.

Fediverse posts can reach an international audience.

I have reason to speculate that many Fediverse users don't give the matter any thought, in particular, in my, the #hamradio community. (SW radio is inherently international.) So I'm trying to raise awareness.

I secretly hope more people would decide to target an international audience.

But I also understand that's not reasonable to ask. So all I'm saying out loud is: Think about the matter.

@JorgeStolfi: Exactly as you say.
@gbhnews

@JorgeStolfi @dj3ei @gbhnews Sorry for being late to the party, but what’s the point of this argument? Any social network inkl. twitter „can reach an international audience“, so nothing new there.

@kjuh I agree.

The problem of the thoughtlessness of using national slang when sending to an international audience is neither new nor Fediverse-specific.

@JorgeStolfi @gbhnews

@mem_somerville @gbhnews

My simple explanation is this is just email...for social media. It's federated just like email.

People didn't jump straight into email way back when (Iz is old) but it's become a simple requirement for business today. Social media with the silos has become the same.

Mastodon/ActivityPub is the first chance to fix that silo thing and get back to internet roots of how it's supposed to work