So, ready for a really seriously exciting Fediverse development?
Flipboard has announced that they have begun to federate, and the first thing they are doing is hosting a whole bunch of wonderful publications using a new Fediverse instance flipboard.com
@mastodonmigration@mike glad to see the support of getting more content on the fediverse.
That said, it’s disappointing to see the 74 associated with this effort. It’s a pro privatization corporate ed reform rag backed by the DeVos family and other billionaires
@mastodonmigration@mike
This has the potential to be massive, doesn't it? Not this one act in itself, but what it represents as a groundswell movement.
Maybe Musk's pro-fascist dumpster fire has done us all a favour, in forcing a flight from its stench towards a new promised land.
The list of publications is kinda weird: it's a bunch of relatively neutral broad information outlets and then chunked in there is a US christian conservative anti-public school lobby group (the74 / American Federation for Children). Is the idea of flipboard to smoothly legitimize this stuff?
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 1. Flipboard has approx 11K publishers from around the world on our platform, each curating into thematic magazines. We specifically do not allow organizations or people that traffic in hate speech, spam, etc. so if/when we detect that we have no qualms about swiftly de-platforming those accounts.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 4. To determine this subset, our editors apply a set of tests for quality and journalistic integrity. Each of the publishers we federated on Monday passed these tests. To be succinct I’ll highlight just two of the ways we make these judgement calls.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 2. Of our 11K publishers, there is a verified subset of these which we have achieved a quality threshold meaning they can be promoted by our editorial team and/or integrated into our content recommendation feeds on Flipboard.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 3. This is one of the ways that we put quality ahead of engagement when recommending content. Twitter, as just one example, does the exact opposite of this.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 5. First, we apply common sense. Is the content and writing interesting, factual and useful? Was it written by trained journalists? Does the publication have a track record of making corrections? Do they properly label opinion pieces from fact based journalism? etc.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 6. Second, we use a set of external resources like factcheck.org and mediabiasfactcheck.org to gather the most objective points of view we can to balance our judgement. You can learn more about both of these organizations on wikipedia but suffice to say they are both well regarded and heavily utilized in universities and non-profits.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 7. Now to your question. I was personally not familiar with The 74 when you asked. So I dug into our team’s decision making on this one and it seems clear based on our own observations as well as third party analysis that The 74 is indeed a well regarded, factual source albeit with a left-center bias.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 10. We also believe it’s important for people to see content from a range of diverse sources. For example, we will soon be federating other publishers focused on education like Education Week, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Philanthropy, and several others.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 12. Finally, we believe in the power of an educated society to make better decisions. We also see the clear and present danger of misinformation and conspiracy theories that divide and confuse people.
This is why we federated @NewsLitProject which helps people, especially students, develop the skills necessary to tell the difference between factual reporting and misinformation, seek out other points of view, and be cautious about sharing links.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 9. If you look at some of the other publishers that we federated on Monday you’ll see that many have some degree of bias. This is fairly typical. Some lean more left or more right. We believe it’s helpful for people to see stories with differing points of view, provided those stories are well sourced, fact checked and reported by real journalists.
@Pepijn@mastodonmigration 13. There is a lot to this and I was only able to provide a high level overview. Hopefully this was helpful for you. Let me know if you have other questions and I’ll do my best to answer.
@mike Thanks for reply 1-13 and the high level overview.
I'll comment in multiple post. 1/x
To be clear: it's not the 11K but specifically the "verified quality" and "promoted by the editorial board" publishers I question. For those Flipboard acts as a seal of quality & honesty.
The proces you describe appears to be done with an intent to be objective (right?) but appears to ignore a step where you differentiate between honest publishers and websites created for lobbying.
Unlike something like The Christian Science Monitor or the other 25 websites / publications in Flipboards curated "first 27 to federate" the The74 is a lobby tool created to promote a specific agenda*. It's not about being left or right but about honestly: are they a lobby group, a PR platform or a news-outlet.
While the74 published a Code of Ethics and a variety of newsarticles it is consistently the first site to turn opinion pieces from anti-union, pro-school-choice* organisations (American Federation for Children etc) into "objective news". And with the74 as an stepping stone a biased press release becomes objective news via platforms as Flipboard.
*in US context: moving funds from public systems to private -conservative Christian- systems who can exclude kids.
And naturally everyone is free to publish what they want. And as a user of #Flipboard I'm fine with the range of serious news-organisations all the way to corporate PR firms.
The majority do not get a vetted quality seal though.
With this small subset of verified publishers it is different: to give these a seal for "quality and journalistic integrity", while including a platform that is not that, undermines my trust in the others & flipboards quality seal itself.
I know I can just mute* and move on. And the74 was muted as I know it was founded to create news instead of reporting it. That's nothing to do with bias and all with dishonesty.
However. What I contemplate is whether to mute the entire flipboard.social domain as I'm afraid with this imo flawed vetting it will be vector for other fake news that I myself don't recognise.
*"@mike 11. Of course, users have choice and can decide to follow or mute any publisher they’d like."
@slothrop@mastodonmigration I really appreciate you saying that. We'll keep moving quickly but thoughtfully and gather feedback along the way. Let me know if you have thoughts at any point.
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