This is your friendly reminder to choose “Stop Testing” on any betas you’re not actively using on TestFlight.
I was going to watch the Trump town hall on CNN last night, but I decided to stare at a blank wall instead. It was a more productive use of my time.
Moderator Mayhem
Today Techdirt released their second game, Moderator Mayhem . It is a "game that lets you see how good a job you would do as a front line content moderator," Mike Masnick writes, "for a growing technology company that hosts user-generated content".
Not only does the game have you moderate content, but it also gives you feedback from your manager and the public.
Are you supportive of free speech, or too oppressive in your moderation? Are you allowing too much harassment and therefore not considered safe? One thing about the public is that they’re not shy about letting you know how they feel.
I did my first run on my lunch break at work and I absolutely plan to play more with this later.
Techdirt has managed to, once again, provide some fantastic context to what is going on in big tech and the platforms we all know and love.
At this point, Elon is just toying with news and media organizations. They truly should just make the active decision to leave. www.npr.org/2023/05/0…
New issue of Clicked it out!
This issue I talk about the new onboarding process for Mastodon, whether Twitter is still worth it for journalists, and 5 links to other interesting stories.
It's time for journalists to leave Twitter
I was listening to a recent episode of the podcast Hard Fork, and a specific part of it really resonated with me. It was where
Casey Newton was talking to his co-host, Kevin Roose, about NPR’s decision to leave Twitter after getting a “state-affiliated media” badge.
You know what I’ve been thinking about lately, Kevin? Do you remember during the Trump campaigns, when there would be these rallies. And in the center of the rally there would be a pit for the media. And a signature moment of every rally would be Trump pointing to the people in the media so that everyone at the rally could say, boo, we don’t like the press.
That is what Twitter has become. It is the press pit, where a bunch of people are standing around you in a circle, jeering. Adding this state-funded media badge was one of those steps. But I’m barely joking when I say that I think eventually every reporter who is still on the service will have a clown badge next to their username. And you just have to decide if you still want to be there when it happens.
I truly think this is just a matter of time, and if Elon listens to Hard Fork then he almost certainly has at least talked about it with his overworked developer team.
To add to this, I also read in a recent post by Pew Research that journalists on Twitter might not even be getting the views they deserve. Nearly 70% of journalists use Twitter as one of their top social media platforms. With that in mind, only about 13% of users use Twitter as their means of getting news.
The usage of Twitter by journalists is beyond disproportionate to their actual reach.
Huge Changes for New Mastodon Users
People signing up for Mastodon will no longer have to worry about what server to go to. Instead, Mastodon will now be defaulting to a server they operate. Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s Founder and CEO, explained his reasoning for this saying that “[m]aking the onboarding process as easy as possible helps new users get past the sign-up process and more quickly engage with others.”
ZOOM OUT: The balancing act between usability and the open web is upon us. Instead of focusing on the decentralization of Mastodon, they are opting to choose something more closed.
- This follows a more centralized platform like Facebook and Twitter. Though you can change servers.
- Bluesky, Mastodon’s competitor, is also known to do something like this as well for new users.
FURTHER READING: