Ceremonies to mark anniversary of mosque shooting
Here we go again, a report on how ceremonies to commemorate those killed in the Quebec City mosque shooting, four years ago, will be held online – with no links to the online events. You have to go on Facebook to find anything.
Do mainstream media realize how much they’ve handed off to social media over the last 2 decades, and what this means for their future, and for the general credibility of information?
Raymond Lutz 18:58 on 2021-01-29 Permalink
«handed off to _corporate_ social media» puis-je humblement préciser (see my sig). There’s even a Mtl angle to it! The fediverse is mostly based on a protocol developed here by Evan Prodromou…
Kevin 21:28 on 2021-01-29 Permalink
I don’t understand it. When I was writing online I put in links whenever I could.
I think writers are just completely ignorant of the SEO importance of linking out to sites.
Kate 10:52 on 2021-01-30 Permalink
There was an early web design dictum not to outlink because it leads the user away from your site, and you want to keep eyes on your site as long as possible. But that has ended up with mainstream media maintaining this pose of floating somewhere above social media but not “of” it – even while they keep up Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. It puts them in a closed box, and paywalls don’t help. No wonder so many people find their “information” on social media, with all the dangers that involves to truth and democracy, q.e.d.
Raymond Lutz – do you use the Mastodon/Fediverse stuff? Is there anything on there you would recommend? I think I signed up for Mastodon ages ago, but things like:
Gaming (5) – Technology (16) – Academia (1) – Furry (4) – Food (1)
kind of put me off. Any platform that has more forums dedicated to furries than to food is probably not for me.
Raymond Lutz 17:29 on 2021-01-30 Permalink
Kate, Yes I do have a Mastodon account (it’s https://mamot.fr/@lutzray). I choose mamot.fr merely because they speak french and the association running it (LQDN) has political goals I subscribe to:
«La Quadrature du Net promotes and defends fundamental freedoms in the digital world. We fight against censorship and surveillance, both from States or private companies. We questions how the digital world and society influence each other. We work for a free, decentralized and empowering Internet.»
My account runs there but I don’t follow their public timeline anyway. You don’t have to find a thematic instance nor a geographic one: being at one place doesn’t limit you to follow exclusively local people. Example: out of the 88 accounts I’m following, only 13 are from the same instance as mine, mamot.fr; the others are all spread around the world, on instances I don’t even know the name of.
Recently a (french speaking) Quebecer started an instance (and others fediverse application servers) at https://fedi.quebec/ . Here an electronic teacher started a Pleroma server (Mastodon compatible) about information guerrilla, DIY, self-hosting and IoT: https://social.technodruide.ca
If you will, I can even help you start your _own_ instance about graphic design, treadmills and typesetting 😎 . Many people start a microinstance where there is only one or two accounts and link to the outer world… ex: https://kicou.info/about/more
What’s the goal? Decentralization of hosting and of moderation (you can, and must, block instances with illegal content… gasp! Think of the children!)
Raymond Lutz 22:38 on 2021-01-30 Permalink
@manu@mastodon.fedi.quebec vient juste de me signaler l’existence de ce plugin WordPress qui permet de diffuser les updates d’un blog WP vers le fediverse via ActivityPub. Ce n’est quand même pas rien: un Montréalais d’adoption développe un protocole qui finit par être adopté (jan 2018) par le World Wide Web Consortium!
Kate 10:54 on 2021-01-31 Permalink
Merci, Raymond Lutz. Si je comprends bien, il faudrait que je devrais établir une instance Mastodon d’abord, puis y canaliser un feed? Comment ça diffère de RSS?
Raymond Lutz 13:26 on 2021-01-31 Permalink
Hmmm… Not exactly: you don’t have to deploy a Mastodon instance. I presume this plugin will broadcast each of your new blog entry (and their comments?) to existing ActivityPub servers (which Mastondon being part of) and users there will see your content (if they’re following you).
It’s effectively kind of a RSS functionality, but as far as I know, RSS (and its sibling ATOM) are more of a one to many broadcast protocol whereas ActivityPub is bidirectionnal… Me think: I’m really guessing here 🙂
One should see those bridges (the WP plugin and the mastodon-twitter bridge I’m using) as temporary tools with limited functions while the internet wakes up, leaves the GAFAM facehuggers behind and adopts open federated social webs.
“In short, federation distributes governance and cost, and can allow us to tackle challenges that we couldn’t overcome without it. The free software community needs to rally behind federation, because no one else will. For all of the reasons which make it worth doing, it is not rewarding for corporations. They would much rather build walled gardens and centralize, centralize, centralize — it’s more profitable!” Drew DeVault.