this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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[–] Dankry 384 points 1 year ago (7 children)

There will only be four remaining official ABC accounts: for news, sport, Chinese and the master ABC Australia account.

Somebody let me know when they actually leave twitter. This is a bullshit half measure.

[–] [email protected] 140 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I agree. I'd like to see them host their own Mastodon and leave a forwarding address on 'X'.

[–] [email protected] 112 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I think this might become more common over time.

Up to this point, a lot of the news company's online presence was probably pretty cut and dry. Some of my local news stations have terrible websites that take forever to load, yet those websites were probably cutting edge at some point. One of them has a layout that hasn't changed in at least 10 years.

If their IT department hasn't expanded their skills beyond making and maintaining those original websites, I could totally see a long delay happening before/if they join the fediverse.

[–] ludwig 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If their IT department hasn't expanded their skills beyond making and maintaining those original websites, I could totally see a long delay happening before/if they join the fediverse.

More likely they aren't given the budget they have requested.

They are also probably busy doing regular IT things like maintaining the IT infrastructure.

Local news stations don't really exist in my country so I don't know how many employees they usually have but it's possible they don't even have an IT department.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some of my local news stations have terrible websites that take forever to load, yet those websites were probably cutting edge at some point.

Nah, most local news sites came online as garbage and will never rise above that status. The cleverest of them came online as bare bones, no frills websites that the affordable local website developer they hired could actually maintain.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

most local news sites came online as garbage and will never rise above that status

The amount of pop-ups, sleazy Taboola ads, and autoplay videos (with 2 ads at the beginning and end of a 30 second clip) is too damn high. Just clicking a link is a fucking assault on your eyes. And yes some form of this still happens to me with adblockers or firefox.

I guess I thought the goal was to get people to use their websites, not fucking punish them for it.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So basically they're not leaving, they are silencing their political coverage. They're not going anywhere, they're caving to pressure.

[–] Dankry 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah pretty much, they might as well say "we've decided to sack Jerry from the Social Media team" because this isn't actually exiting twitter it's more like reducing someone's workload lol.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What accounts did they actually remove? News and sports seem like they would be most of their presence

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Yeah this is only a bit as the mainstay of ABC is their news account. But it is a step in the right direction.

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[–] [email protected] 181 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I hope more broadcasters will follow the BBC’s example and start running their own Mastodon servers.

It would be nice if the BBC instance had more accounts, like for breaking news, though. I know they’re just testing the waters, but they need to try having accounts posting things folks are the most interested in.

[–] Prior_Industry 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Was a interesting reaction from some in the fediverse stating they would block the BBC instance etc. In reality how welcome are entity's that are seen as corporate?

I also cannot understand why the BBC news is not live, possibly they are experimenting with the moderation and management elements. I guess the news feed would get hit harder than Radio 4.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

There are some on mastodon that want to live in a fairly defensively disconnected/defederated bubble (compared to many other instances or lemmy/kbin).

And, IMO, that's totally fine and good ... freedom of association gives people and instances that power and it should be embraced when people chose to exercise it TBH, so long as it's done by admins in a way that isn't too autocratic against their users and open and transparent.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Iirc, the big instance declaring immediately that it would defederate with them was one that’s very well known for being strict with moderation and had firm rules about anti-trans instances. Because the BBC has a history of being anti-trans, they defederated.

[–] darreninthenet 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The BBC has a history of being antitrans?

That's quite a revelation to me, it has more of a reputation of being extremely liberal and indeed any even remotely right winger here usually whinges and moans about how "woke" it is 🤷🏻‍♂️

Do you know what in particular triggered their stance that they believed the BBC anti-trans?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Do you know what in particular triggered their stance that they believed the BBC anti-trans?

There is a series by Shaun (a Youtuber) about anti trans stuff at the BBC and one article in particular.

First of 4 Videos is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4buJMMiwcg

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s the official broadcaster of TERF island. Even their foremost left wing newspaper is transphobia central.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

It still makes me so sad to see what's become of the Guardian.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

That's a total misunderstanding of what the BBC is. As a public broadcaster representing the whole of the UK, it has a duty to represent all views. While I personally disagree with them, gender critical or TERF views are extant in the UK at present and the public conversation on where this will all land legally is still ongoing, therefore they have an obligation to hear from all sides, no matter how unpalatable one of them may be to some.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lol no, because as far as i can tell they dont do it with other forms of bigotry like racism.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidance/impartiality-and-racism

BBC is not impartial on racism.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I had no role in the instance’s decision; don’t try to argue against their decision with me. I’ve got no say in it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I wasn’t aware. What’s the BBC Mastodon server?

[–] Dankry 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I hadn't heard about it either but according to their blog post announcing it, it's https://social.bbc

Apparently they'll be running it for six months and then determining if it's worth continuing to operate.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

isn't it pretty hard to determine if it's worthwhile if they aren't going all-in on making it an interesting place with breaking news & accounts for certain types of news etc?

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[–] ButtonMcLemming 7 points 1 year ago

I even noticed that ARD and ZDF have their own Mastodon servers/instances. But I'm interested in how the BBC's experimental Mastodon server would fare after their stated six-month time frame.

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[–] Arsenal4ever 165 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The top comments on X are some idiotic take by an asshat with an agenda and $8. This isn't debate, it is idiocy.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everyone has an agenda. The question is whether it's a reasonable one.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The answer is almost always "not a reasonable one".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I disagree. My agenda is not to be an asshole (although I fail more often than not, but I think is a reasonable agenda nonetheless).

[–] Resol 53 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And now it's time for them to set up a Mastodon instance.

[–] Outsider9042 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They’ve been there for a while.

[–] Resol 15 points 1 year ago

That's the W I'm looking for

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The ABC is shutting down almost all of its official accounts on Twitter – now known as X under Elon Musk’s ownership – citing “toxic interactions”, cost and better interaction with ABC content on other social media platforms.

Anderson said the closure of the Insiders, News Breakfast and ABC Politics accounts earlier this year limited the amount of toxic interactions which had grown more prevalent under Musk and made engagement with the shows more positive.

“We also found that closing individual program accounts helps limit the exposure of team members to the toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prevalent on X,” he said.

The announcement comes after the corporation recently shifted resources towards making content for other social media platforms including TikTok and Instagram.

Anderson said the vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience was located on official sites on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

The ABC is the third big public service broadcaster to remove itself from Twitter, following NPR and PBS in April.


I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] Prior_Industry 9 points 1 year ago

Tbh this sounds like it's more about cost cutting and "toxic" twitter is the excuse to cut down on their use and move resources to other platforms. The fact they have left other accounts up would seem to hint that they will cope with "toxic" users to a certain point.

Still good to see bigger entity's leaving.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So this is "Austrailia Broadcasting Corporation", not the ABC (American broadcasting Company) which I am familiar with in the US. I presume they share no more than an acronym.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago
[–] peanutyam 21 points 1 year ago (5 children)

In regards to that twats tweet regarding the “the Australian people” - as a member of “the Australian people” I want to put it on record that that asshat does not speak for many of us here…..some of us are pleased about this (the ABC app is a far better source of news without the rubbish and downright unintelligent comments that come from posting articles on social media anyway….)

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Good move by ABC, but they need to go further.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

STOP USING TWEETS ON QANDA THEN! After what happened with Stan Grant ABC really need to evaluate how they use social media sites like Twitter. They needed to do this the moment Stan raised it as an issue and had to step away from his role.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They have stopped. It’s in the article.

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