Football for Everyone
Over here in the United Kingdom, over the weekend of 29th April to May 3rd there was a social media boycott by, at first Football (soccer) players and this was joined by other sports over racism in sport.
This has got me thinking, if main stream social media continue to fail at dealing with abuse of people, then it may present us a real opportunity to not only provide alternative platforms so that genuine fans can follow their favourite sports team / players but also an environment where users are more in control over this.
A team could set up an instance, and have all it’s players on that one instance, another instance could be set up for a supporters club (which generally you pay to be part of ) so as part of that membership you can join the fediverse instance, this would allow some communication between clubs and fans (a sort of membership perk)
Out side of this, those who are not members can join the fediverse but have some sort of limited access, maybe connect but in follow only mode (not commenting for example)
I just wondered if the fediverse is ready for that, it may perhaps require
- Easy set up
2 for clubs it may need an instance with say :-
- Mastodon,
- Pixelfed
- Peertube
- Single sign on for all 3 services
4 2 factor authentication
For fans we would need to get across the idea that you just need Mastodon and your instance can still follow the other services (a concept that may be harder to grasp at first
Finally, I think Mobile first is expected so make sure there is a full range of apps, or perhaps an app that could handle all 3 services in some way.
I am not sure if this would solve the issue, but it may get more people on here if some of the big clubs took up the idea and abandoned centralised social media
Of course these clubs all have sponsors so the sponsors would probably need to join too, and also accept the model of ‘advertising’ that is different here. So they need to adapt to our way of doing things, rather than the fediverse surrendering to money making and advertising.
Just an thought as a way to reach out and perhaps help solve a problem at the same time.
Of course the ‘skills’ needed to set these services up are not exactly out there in huge numbers, so perhaps there is money to be made from people here, but perhaps with some of that revenue being channelled back in to development of the fediverse.
Perhaps also these services need to be based in the UK or EU to comply with data protection laws and a UK based instance.
This may encourage the decentralisation model giving users back control as the primary selling point
Paul
(Image credit: levelplayingfield.org.uk)