ABC exits Twitter: Australia’s national broadcaster shuts down almost all accounts on Elon Musk’s X
www.theguardian.com
The public broadcaster says interactions on the platform are ‘toxic’ as it closes almost all its Twitter accounts
  • @Dankry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    377•1 year ago

    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.

        • @CurlyMoustache@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          Good! They’re the leading star for many public european broadcasters. I hope many will follow. I work in public sector, and I have lobbied to get IT to start up mastodon servers on our own

      • ANGRY_MAPLEEnglish
        28•1 year ago

        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@lemmy.worldEnglish
          22•1 year ago

          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.

        • @LegionEris@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          8•1 year ago

          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.

          • @ZombieTheZombieCat@lemm.eeEnglish
            6•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.

    • Roundcat
      60•1 year ago

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

      • @Dankry@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22•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.

      • @StorminNorman@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6•1 year ago

        All the accounts for all their shows, as well as their journos. They produce a lot of original content, and have a lot of journalists. This is not an insignificant measure.

    • IHeartBadCode
      19•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.

  • stopthatgirl7
    173•1 year ago

    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_IndustryEnglish
      29•1 year ago

      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.

      • maegul (he/they)English
        23•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.

      • stopthatgirl7
        17•1 year ago

        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@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21•1 year ago

          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?

            • @darreninthenet@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5•1 year ago

              Thank you for that, most interesting.

              It’s odd given their usually quite liberal stance… I wonder if there some old conservatism creeping in with the Tories being in power for so long…?

              • punkisundead [they/them]English
                4•1 year ago

                Sadly in UK transphobia seems to be pretty common in liberals and liberal institutions. I think that is because in UK the idea to connect transphobia with “womens rights” was really successful and this results in otherwise really liberal / left leaning / feminist individuals & groups to be actively anti-trans. As far as i know even otherwise trust worthy news papers like the guardian plattform anti trans talking points.

          • @vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            9•1 year ago

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

          • @Chriskmee@lemm.eeEnglish
            3•1 year ago

            There are lots of people who just want to hear that they are right, that others agree with them. They would rather hang out in an echo chamber where it’s constantly reinforced that their opinions are right rather than hear people who disagree with them.

            Personally I value hearing and understanding why others have different opinions than I do.

        • @soviettaters@lemmy.worldEnglish
          -1•1 year ago

          I hate defederation with a passion and I’m close to leaving lemmy.world because of its rash defederating. There is no reason to restrict users based on what the few leaders believe.

          • Bo7aEnglish
            7•1 year ago

            Most of the defeds I have seen have had pretty serious community interaction prior to the decision. You need to stop seeing admins as leaders. And so does everyone else.

            An admin certainly has some power over their instance, but the users are not locked into that instance at all. They are not telling people what they can see, they are telling people what they are willing to host, or not host.

            Everyone deserves a voice. But nobody is responsible for giving them a megaphone and a box to stand on in their yard.

          • @Master@lemm.eeEnglish
            3•1 year ago

            Go for it. Lemmy accounts are easy to make and itll share the load better.

          • squiblet
            2•1 year ago

            It’s very different than a site like Facebook or Twitter banning someone. Nobody is kicking them off the internet… just making sure their own site only shows what they want. If you want to see whatever they defederated with, of course you can go there directly or to another instance.

        • TakatakatakatakatakEnglish
          -1•1 year ago

          Socialist as in they send enforcers to your house who have the right to force themselves inside and check how many screens you have got feeding government propaganda into your skull.

          You have to pay a TV licence to be lied to. Pretty sweet.

    • @ButtonMcLemming@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7•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.

    • @neutron@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      I wish they had region or language specific accounts (bbc world service, bbc spanish, french, russian, etc.).

  • @Arsenal4ever@lemmy.worldEnglish
    157•1 year ago

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

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    37•1 year ago

    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_IndustryEnglish
      9•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.

  • halfempty
    33•1 year ago

    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.

    • squiblet
      13•1 year ago

      it sucked before Elron bought it, and then after that… uh…

        • squiblet
          1•1 year ago

          I still don’t understand what gamer hate - oops, gamergate was. I’ve tried to learn for years and I still don’t get it.
          Anyway, I was whatever about Twit and used it as a useless 2 word stream or consciousness feed for 5 years, which was okay. Then in 2020 I was suddenly homeless in Portland RIGHT as the Floyd protests started and I was uh…. Twitter is a useful minute-to-minute feed of events. Then I liked it for a year or two. Then, Elron.

          • @Sludgehammer@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1•1 year ago

            Basically Gamergate started as some butthurt guy trying to get revenge on his ex by claiming she slept around to get better reviews on her (free) game. Gamergaters used this as an example of corruption, thus the rallying cry of “Ethics in gaming journalism”.

            However, in actuality Gamergate was driven by gaming going from a niche hobby to a mainstream entertainment. Many gamers were increasingly unhappy that games stopped exclusively catering to people like them (i.e. white and nerdy males) and started making token efforts to appeal to other groups. This combined with the spark of the butthurt guy’s lame attempt at slander birthed Gamergate, a fig leaf of “ethics” used to justify and to cover up a seething mass of resentment, misogyny and racism.

    • @TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11•1 year ago

      Yeah but nah. There was toxicity but it wasn’t promoted. You wouldn’t see a several pages of assholes who paid to stir up shit before a single actually interesting response in every single thread. It didn’t used to be like this

      People overstate how bad social media they don’t use is. Twitter was usable and even fun depending on who you followed. Now it’s just bulshit everywhere.

      • @Mrmcmisterson@slightlyawesome.ninjaEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        I agree, it was definitely there, but wasn’t promoted. Now, when I go there, I’ll get notifications that someone posted… Someone I don’t follow and the post is hate filled garbage. In my notifications of all places.

        The front page isn’t people I follow anymore, that’s in a different tab under Following. It’s not the default tab.

  • @peanutyam@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21•1 year ago

    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….)

    • squiblet
      -1•1 year ago

      I like “twat tweet”, but really I absolutely love twats themselves and it’s somewhat defamatory to compare Elron to them (defamatory to labias etc, I mean)

  • Grant_MEnglish
    17•1 year ago

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

  • @Nonameuser678@aussie.zoneEnglish
    11•1 year ago

    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.

      • @Nonameuser678@aussie.zoneEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Not because of the racism that Stan identified though. They’re okay with drawing a line around ‘toxic behaviour’ but not the racism, ableism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia that they have platformed for years through their use of tweets on QandA.They should have immediately responded to Stan’s experience with an assessment of how their engagement with social media enabled the racist abuse directed at Stan. The ABC has a terrible problem with racism in their own institution and have not anything to address or remedy this. Stan is not the only person who has drawn attention to this and the ABC regularly receives complaints about people like Paul Barry while continuing to give them a platform.

    • @coheedcollapse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11•1 year ago

      Not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but the recent promotion of paid accounts has created a hostile environment and a wild spread of misinformation on just about any possible post. Staying on a broken platform and continuing to participate on it is extremely undesirable, especially when the owner is outright hostile to the idea that he’s made the platform worse.

      I suspect the many people fleeing from Reddit/Spez could commiserate over that notion.

      I also disagree that the system Musk has created is “free speech”, considering people who don’t pay are drowned out by those who do.