JOURNALISTS WANT TO RE-CREATE TWITTER ON MASTODON. MASTODON IS NOT INTO IT:

Unfortunately for some of the journalists who have joined the service, this mass-blocking (or “defederation”) approach is now being applied to them. A server that caters specifically to journalists was set up recently by Adam Davidson, creator of NPR’s Planet Money podcast. At last count, the server, called journa.host, had about thirteen hundred users, including some prominent journalists (and me). Earlier this week, a user of another network pointed out that about forty-five “instances” are blocking all content from members of journa.host.

Among the reasons given for blocking users from the server are that it is allegedly populated by “click-bait/tabloid journalists” who “can be expected to collect, search through, and misinterpret anything you say with the goal to share this publicly to an as big audience as possible, enabling hate and harassment to any one as long as it gives them clicks [sic].” Others who have blocked the server say that its members are likely to be “surveillance capitalists” or “mainstream propagandists.”

The administrator of an academic server wrote that the journa.host server is “willing to host some extremely scumbag journalist types and we don’t need to be on their radar.” Another said that “reporters mining social media for fodder without the authors’ knowledge or consent is a plague on every other social media platform, and I think [the Mastodon universe] should nip it in the bud.” (For the record, I’m aware that some users might think that what I’m doing with this article also fits that description.)

One journalist who is on Mastodon noted that there is also a cultural difference between the way people often behave on Twitter and expectations on Mastodon. “I’m seeing a clear signal that this is at least in part about norms and conduct,” he said, including “a legacy insistence on sharing your articles, live-posting breaking news, etc.” from journalists more used to Twitter. “That doesn’t fly here.” Despite attempts by Mastodon veterans to educate new users about these differences, he said, many journalists are “stomping around doing the same-old same-old.”

It’s hall monitor hell: Thread about activist (woke) journalists eating one another on Mastodon accidentally hilarious.