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Comment by tapoxi | Hacker News Reader

Good. It's clear now that Twitter is just an information control mechanism for Musk, and journalists should quit their addiction to it. I think every major news outlet should have their own ActivityPub compatible service, essentially as a modern replacement for RSS.

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> Twitter is just an information control mechanism for Musk, and journalists should quit

agreed. That was the case long before Musk.

Would you have felt comfortable articulating that opinion, two years ago? When anything but Twitter was "an extremist echo chamber"? When the only censorship they were indulging in was the censorship we still can't talk about?

>Would you have felt comfortable articulating that opinion, two years ago?

I posted rather often about how awful Twitter was long before there was a whiff of Musk buying it. (It's still awful.) I didn't really talk about "information control", but I don't care about that now, either; Twitter's audience was never that big.

Twitter was also an extremist echo chamber. It's how the January 6th insurrection happened, a violent attack on the US Capitol that was organized, launched, and coordinated in real-time on Twitter. You can't do that if voices of sanity are seeping in. It's just that Twitter as many echo chambers, some bigger and more dangerous than others.

Not that rss really needs replacing - in fact using both is a great experience

with ActivityPub you can have specific actors like @breaking@npr.org, @sports@npr.org, @finance@npr.org, @waitwaitdonttellme@npr.org, @reporter@npr.org, et cetera.

for some reason I'm annoyed by all the @ symbols in these new things

it was annoying to me to type it too! There are also webfinger URLs that serve the same purpose like https://mastodon.social/@gargron == @gargron@mastodon.social

That's not a WebFinger URL. WebFinger URLs point to /.well-known/ path that returns a JSON document with links to other places for the user. To simplify WebFinger use by a human, we introduced acct:user@example.com syntax. And (at least my) WebFinger clients can assume the acct: part, much like email clients do for the email: scheme.

Yah, the one thing that I like about bluesky is their name-spacing: “sports.npr.org”

We are coming full circle back to Usenet.

I like the Matrix format, "@user:domain.tld"

I prefer the email format: user@domain.tld. There's no reason that can't be used for social media.

what's the reason for the initial @ symbol, seems superfluous

So it doesn't get mistaken for an email address.

It's on Mastodon though, the automatic linking wouldn't add mailto: at the front, think it's worth the cost of a few people not being able to post their email address without a mailto:

Referencing one of these username handles in external CMS systems (news sites, blogs, etc) might automatically convert them in Rich Text editors, or just Word processors, or even operating system toolings. Seems worth not re-using the same URI format.

I would guess so that people don't confuse it with an email address

It originated organically on Twitter as early users wrote “at” each other. Following that Twitter formally adopted it, and Mastodon imitated Twitter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mention_(blogging)#@_(at_sign)

Within Mastodon’s UI usernames are typically displayed as just e.g. @breaking, avoiding the visual noise of multiple at signs.

Email remains undefeated as the original, indestructible, federated social network. It's a shame about the flub with Google Buzz, that could've been the basis for something great.

Too bad it's so centralized now.

Strange that labelling medias with their true funding diminishes their credibility so much that they’d flee to any place where this information is not disclosed.

I suspect this is a bad-faith argument, but just to be clear, NPR get's a tiny fraction of its funding from the government *and* maintains editorial independence.

> The news organization says that is inaccurate and misleading, given that NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Being free of direct government funding does not make it free from editorial independence. You can listen and get an idea of their underwriting. They're clear to walk the line around a lot of topics to not upset their corporate and non profit overlords. We live in a corporatocracy and these companies and non profits are revolving doors for regulatory capture through lobbying and other methods.

If you really want to delve into how, where, and whom makes the news I suggest start by looking at the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_agency

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agence_France-Presse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters

> They're clear to walk the line around a lot of topics to not upset their corporate and non profit overlords.

That's true for virtually all news organization - public or private. NPR is not an outlier in this regard.

A significant percentage of NPR member station funding is from individual donations, NPR is obviously also very conscious about producing the type of content its audience expects. No media outlet on planet earth is free from the influence of its audience.

Editorial independence from government funding.

what percentage of NPR’s true funding was from the government?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding

I'm seeing about ~10% from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which if I'm reading correctly is itself primarily funded by Federal grants.

Yeah I'm sure it has nothing to do with months of the CEO putting out right wing agitprop and promoting QAnon conspiracies. He openly promoted GOP candidates on his media site.

The problem isn’t that Twitter is labeling media with true funding. If it was, you’d be seeing under MSNBC or CNN or Fox News who their main sponsors are (which are probably bigger than NPR’s government contribution).

So by cherry picking only some funding sources to label with, that means that you are trying to present a narrative.

(or if Twitter is not trying to present a narrative, instead it means that they‘re just being naive)

The label was "State Affiliated" not "publicly funded".

As long as Twitter lists itself as a Qatari/Saudi backed social media company I suppose fair is fair and at least they are being consistent in how they apply the rules. I wonder if they will do so.

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