Fediverse for journalists
Major tech news sites think its the future of the internet. Meta says it “will play an important role in the future of online platforms”. Governments want to get all their organisations on it. I’m talking about the fediverse. But what is it exactly, and why does it matter for journalism?
A definition of what the fediverse is: the fediverse is a collection of independent websites that have added methods for the websites to interoperate with each other. Usually these independent websites are social networking sites that want to connect to a larger independent social network. Why this matters and how this relates to journalism we’ll come to in a second, but let’s first describe the current ways of viewing the internet:
Over the last decade we have had two different ideas of the internet. Regular websites on the internet we have long agreed that people and organisations should own their own website, be in full control of their writing, their domain, and everything else. A website you own is your identity as an organisation. We cannot imagine a situation where CNN would not be in full control of the website cnn.com. We understand it as integral for the health of journalism that organisations are in full control of the news they write on their website. For the social part of the internet, platforms such as Instagram or X, we have accepted a different situation, where speech and your social identity is ultimately controlled by a handful of tech billionaires. If the algorithm deprioritises links in posts, news organisations follow suite and post less links in their posts. This level of control over what journalists posts is something we do not see nor accept for how we conceptualise websites on the rest of the internet.
The easiest way to understand what the fediverse is, is to see it as a shared idea of using the social web. Social networks are just like the rest of the internet: anyone can set up their own place on the social web, and join a larger network. This is what the fediverse is to a news organisation: a place on the social web where you are in control of your own place.
What does this look like in practice? Take Mastodon; software that takes inspiration from Twitter. Mastodon is not a platform like Twitter however: anyone can run their own site of Mastodon (often called a server or instance), which can all communicate with each other if they so desire. The BBC has their own Mastodon site, and only groups within the BBC will have an account there. Publishing platform Medium also runs a Mastodon site, for people who write for Medium. Or toot.wales, a bilingual community website that runs Mastodon, for Wales and the Welsh.
The relevancy for journalism is that all these sites communicate with each other. People on toot.wales can follow/reply/like with the BBC accounts just like they can on any other platform, and visa versa. But the BBC did not have to give up control to someone else for this to happen. The BBC has their own accounts, their own data, their own place, that is completely theirs.
What makes the fediverse even more interesting is that this interoperability is not limited to microblogging, any type of website can join the fediverse; whether that is blogging, video streaming, or even just any regular WordPress website. Flipboard is part of the fediverse, and you can interact with Flipboard accounts from your Mastodon account. So is the website for the dutch government for digital affairs.
The fediverse is often presented as an alternative to the current social platforms, and in many ways, it wants to be so. But if you are news organisation, the practical way to use the fediverse is to treat it similar to your current own website:
- Your website is your home: this is where your news articles live. Social platforms such as Threads are used to distribute links to your article, and to get reach.
The next step is to use your social fediverse website as your home for your social posts:
- Your social site in the fediverse is your home: this is where the canonical version of your account, your social graph, and social media posts live. You place your social media posts in all platforms of choice, in order to get reach.
This setup gives your news organisation full control of your social networking posts, while still getting the advantage of distribution and reach that the large commercial platforms offer.
https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-for-journalists/