It’s #NewstodonFriday! It’s been another busy week for the many newsrooms who have an active presence in the #fediverse, and we’re highlighting their work in the thread below. If you like what you see, follow the profiles and boost their stories.
If you’re a journo or newsroom that we don’t know about or if there’s a newsroom you’d love to put on our radar, please let us know in the comments.
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Members of a U.S.-based Christian sect named the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) believe that they’re prophets who receive direct revelations from God —Texan “prophet” Cindy Jacobs once attributed the 2011 tsunami in Japan to the Obama administration’s repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell."
@TexasObserver reports that this shouldn’t be written off as “fundamentalist nonsense” — the NAR is tied to former President Donald Trump and other GOP luminaries.
@josephcox has written a book, “Dark Wire,” about an encrypted messaging service app called Anom, which is used by drug traffickers but was infiltrated by the FBI and Australian Federal Police (AFP). @404mediaco has published this extract about how a kidnapping was both planned and foiled on Anom.
Think of a publisher, and there's a good chance they'll have a Flipboard account. Now, we're in the process of federating them. Publishers — like just about everyone we know — have a hard time getting their heads around the fediverse and what it means to federate your Flipboard account, so @jejord has written this blogpost. In it, she explains the fediverse, what Flipboard federation looks like, the value of our Magazine feeds, and why we think all this is important. "The fediverse is potentially the One Ecosystem to Rule Them All, and is estimated to grow to 170M users by the end of 2024," writes Jessica.
People on ActivityPub-powered platforms like Mastodon, and Bluesky, which uses the AT Protocol, can now follow each other, see posts, like, reply, and repost them, thanks to the work of @snarfed.org@snarfed.org, creator of Bridgy Fed. @Sarahp interviewed him for Tech Crunch about the future of bridging networks, how to bridge your account from the fediverse to Bluesky, and what to expect when you do.
Canadian legend Jann Arden loves Flipboard! Here's a clip of her talking on her podcast about how she's using it to plan her mudlarking trip to the U.K.
Local news is crucial to democracy, and it's disappearing — according to a new book by Steven Brill, excerpted in @Semafor, approximately twenty-two hundred papers and their websites went out of business between 2005 and 2021. That's created a vacuum into which "pink-slime" sites have poured. Brill writes about these sites that present themselves as legitimate publishers but are created to boost specific candidates and secretly financed by partisan funders, Democrats and Republicans alike.
Federated news publishers include @AxiosNews, @Semafor, @BloombergGreen, @19thnews, @ConversationUS and more. You'll also find many fantastic lifestyle publishers there, such as @Smithsonianmag, @cntraveler, @outside, @Kotaku and @TheRoot. We're working on a better way to separate publisher and curator profile details so you can easily find what you're looking for; stay tuned. If you're a publisher who'd like to onboard to Flipboard or have your account federated, fill in this survey:
It’s #NewstodonFriday — such a shame it’s been a slow news week! Just to refresh your memories, this is a day to feature work from newsrooms with an active presence in the #Fediverse. If you like what you see in the (long!) thread below, follow the profiles and boost their stories. If you’re a journo or newsroom that we don’t know about or if there’s a newsroom you’d love to put on our radar, please let us know in the comments below.
@damemagazine covered the rise of the “trad wife” influencer — where it come from, and why it’s dangerous. “A 2022 Ipsos poll found that almost half of American men surveyed believe “traditional masculinity” is under threat. Many blame feminism, saying it has done more harm than good. One in five Gen Z and Millennial men now believe violence against women is often provoked by the victim,” writes Sarah Stankorb.
Angelman Syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that affects around half a million people worldwide. Here’s a story from @thexylom about the potential for a cure, and the barriers families in Hong Kong must overcome to access it.
In the words of Fatboy Slim, "we've come a long long way together." Here, @miaq breaks down Flipboard's federation journey so far.
"We could [federate Flipboard] with a quick flip of the switch but we’ve chosen to act more intentionally," she writes. "We’re taking measured steps to test, learn, and ensure that everything we’re doing stays true to our values and those of the fediverse. Maintaining quality is top of the list."
Today is #NewstodonFriday, a day to feature work from newsrooms that have an active presence in the #Fediverse. If you like what you see in the thread below, follow the profiles and boost their stories. If you're a journo or newsroom that we don't know about (or there's someone that should be on our radar), please comment below.
🫖 During our outage this morning, people attempting to connect with Flipboard.Social found that we were declaring ourselves to be a teapot. Here's the origin of the unusual internet error message. Tell us, were you familiar with it?
Hi folks, you may have noticed that we had an outage for a couple of hours this morning on our app, website and instance. We are back online now and hopefully things should be back to normal, but please bear with us if there are any issues for the next while.
There’s a new playbook being written right now when it comes to the future of social media. The early-mover advantage is still in effect, and there’s a lot to figure out. Gone are opaque algorithms and the whims of any single company.
The fediverse represents a chance for quality journalism to shine again.
We talked to two leaders at fedi-forward publications — @TheConversationUS's @BostonAbrams, and @404mediaco's @jasonkoebler — about why they’re investing in the open social web, what they’ve learned so far, and their advice for other publishers just getting started.
We'd love to get the #NewstodonFriday hashtag going again. This, as far as we can remember, was started by @gbhnews, and is an initiative to feature work from newsrooms that have an active presence in the #fediverse
If you're a news organization, share your handle and your favorite story of the week in the comments to this! And if there's a publication in the fediverse that you love, let us know about that in the comments too.
@rticks
I have questions: 1) What does Item 1 look like? For example, we could change the tax code to more strongly benefit nonprofits and the donors/subscribers who support them, but what else? 2) Who would do the ratings, and what are the odds that if it's, say, academics, that MAGAts would take the ratings seriously? 3) Re Item 4, when you say that politicians should "phase out" Agenda journalism, do you mean no longer talk to those outlets, or what? Thanks! @BostonAbrams@404mediaco
@molly0xfff is a leading cryptocurrency critic, but get to know her and you’ll see she’s anything but cynical about the future of the web. Hear why this researcher, writer and software engineer thinks so in this fascinating conversation with @mike:
Flipboard curators have seen over 100,000 boosts, likes and replies from people across the fediverse since April 11. Given this positive signal from the community, today we're federating another 100 accounts representing more than 2,500 Magazines about everything from climate to culture. Read more here:
We ran a webinar on April 18 for creators and curators who are curious about the fediverse, have a federated Flipboard account, and don't know what to do next. Here's a link to the recording, plus the TL;DR bullet points if you don't have time to watch it.
When he built a bridge to connect Bluesky to Mastodon and other ActivityPub-powered platforms, @snarfed.org@snarfed.org started a new chapter for the fediverse. The software engineer opens up to @mike about his rollercoaster ride in the latest episode of Dot Social: