BBC Launches A Mastodon Instance

Hi! 👋 Here's our . We're BBC Research & Development; we explore and test new technology to discover how the BBC can best make use of it in the future. For 100 years our engineers have been at the forefront of developments in broadcasting. We're now researching how everyone could get TV & radio via the internet – along with all the flexibility and creativity that brings. 5G, AI, next-gen audio, UHD, personal data… we are investigating all these – and more! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzztGFXYR1Y

Kara, (edited )
Kara avatar

Honestly, this is really good to hear! More mainstream accounts will definitely get the fediverse a bit more credibility.

And here's a bit more from BBC:

The team at BBC Research & Development are researching social technologies and exploring possibilities for the BBC. One part of our work is to establish a BBC presence in the Fediverse.

This is an experiment - we will run it for 6 months, and then look at how much value it has provided, how much work it requires to maintain and then decide whether and how to continue. We're learning as we go, and we'll write about what we discover in the hope that it might be useful for others. The BBC will continue its normal social media activity in the usual places.

We're starting off small with just a handful of accounts from R&D and our colleagues at BBC Radio, but we hope to be adding more accounts from other areas of the BBC soon:

  • @BBCRD@social.bbc

  • @BBC5Live@social.bbc

  • @BBCRadio4@social.bbc

  • @BBC_News_Labs@social.bbc

  • @BBCTaster@social.bbc

  • @Connected_Studio@social.bbc

-https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2023-07-mastodon-distributed-decentralised-fediverse-activitypub

somas,
somas avatar

@Kara

FYI to anyone who doesn’t realize, you can follow each of those @names individually or just use the url https://kbin.social/d/social.bbc to subscribe to all social.bbc posts in kbin

Very_Bad_Janet,

Subscribed!

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Cheers for the link. Easy follow

Plaid_Kaleidoscope,
@Plaid_Kaleidoscope@lemmy.world avatar

Sorry, I’m a little new. I tried to sub but it brings up a login for Kbin. I created my account on .world. Will I be able to access this community w/o making a new account?

somas,
somas avatar

@Plaid_Kaleidoscope

Sorry, I don’t think Lemmy accounts can follow an entire domain (yet)

That’s a kbin feature for now

brainfreeze,
brainfreeze avatar

You can through kbin! There's a nice discussion of it here.

You can add their name to your kbin url like this: https://kbin.social/d/social.bbc. It should open the page as if it were a kbin magazine and have a subscribe button. After that, you should see it when you browse your subscribed threads (although it seems like it won't appear in your list of magazines).

csolisr,

And believe it or not, there are now people rallying for the BBC to be defederated. Sure I understand that the current British government is pushing some of their newscasters into less than reputable positions, but to ban the entire domain preemptively?

awkwardparticle,

I guess people don't want the Fediverse to gain any popularity. If people consider BBC to be quintessentially evil, what news outlet would even be considered welcome?

HipPriest,

Maybe some people actually don't want the fedi to become popular because they're into gatekeeping and despite saying 'it's the future' etc, actually just want it to stay small and underground?

And yeah, the BBC having a 6 month R&D experiment isn't exactly the same as a Fox News takeover (not that that would even be possible)

csolisr,

Any news outlet that is not capitalist or governmental at all, looks like. Which precludes the vast majority of “major” media.

HipPriest,

I saw one arts instance has defederated on the grounds that the BBC is a transphobic organisation. I would personally dispute that.

I think those people need to realise this is a massive step up for the fediverse. The BBC literally has global reach.

darq,
darq avatar

Eh, the BBC has definitely been involved in spreading transphobia.

I still think their joining the Fediverse is a good thing for the adoption of decentralised social media.

Both of those things can be true.

csolisr,

If it’s the arts instance headed by a certain pixie, then yeah, that person is an ardent balkanizer who will make that instance a walled garden if need be.

shepherd,
shepherd avatar

I supported a pre-emptive Threads defederation, because I expect them to Embrace-Extend-Extinguish the fediverse for the sake of profit.

For the BBC, I don't feel as overtly opposed. They don't really have the user base to overextend us with, even if they tried to get their audience on mastodon lol. They haven't seemed blatantly profit driven in the past. And they're starting their own instance, using fediverse tech.

Does anyone think this is the BBC's Embrace step? It's not sparking any alarm bells for me, but can I get a sanity check?

DarkGamer, (edited )
DarkGamer avatar

Glad to have the BBC on the fediverse, welcome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HF3x67VK9o

hoodlem,

Heck yeah! Great to see you on here.

can,

This is great. CBC just did a good article on the fediverse and I hope they see this and do the same.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Always great to see more people / groups joining 🦙

csolisr,

And now I hope more news sites start to cross-post their blog feed to their own subdomain, at the very least.

SnowboardBum,
SnowboardBum avatar

Was hoping NPR would have done the same when they quit twitter

Emotional_Series7814,

Welcome to the Fediverse!

nicetriangle,
nicetriangle avatar

this is great news for the fediverse. thanks for getting on board

Trekman10,
@Trekman10@sh.itjust.works avatar

brb following every single one of these accounts from my Mastodon account

MagneticFusion,

Based BBC

awkwardparticle,

Welcome to controlling your own destiny.

awkwardparticle,

deleted_by_author

    •
    trimmerfrost,

    BBC is still government propaganda

    HipPriest,

    The government don't seem to think so.

    Ask any politician, but especially the ones in power, and they'll give you a list of reasons why they want to defund the BBC because it doesn't do what they want it to do.

    Its reporting isn't always perfect but it's definitely not "government propaganda".

    robocall,

    Hey

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