The daily News enters new digital territory: With an account on the microblogging service Mastodon, new insights are to be collected on an independent platform for the first time.
The social media editorial team daily News goes with the launch on the microblogging service Mastodon ([email protected]) first steps into a digital world beyond commercial platforms. The aim is to gain experience for the entire ARD and its playout channels. These should also be used in the further development of our own ARDIncorporate digital platforms.
Mastodon offers users a lot of familiar things: short messages, hashtags, likes and followers, as well as private messages. Mastodon is “hooted” – not “tweeted” – like Twitter. Instead of hearts, Mastodon responds to posts with asterisks. A “Tröt” can be up to 500 characters long. The special feature: In comparison to Twitter and other social media services, the short messages are not displayed according to a specific algorithm, but chronologically according to the time of publication. In addition, Mastodon is ad-free – it is currently not possible to place advertising on the platform itself.
“Think social media differently again”
For the ARD chairman Kai Gniffke is the start of the daily News on Mastodon “a promising approach to think differently about the internet and social media”. The platform is more user-focused and less dependent on American or Chinese tech companies. The attempt offers the opportunity to set new public-law standards on social media, such as “public participation, independence and fact-based, hate-free communication”.
Recently, networks such as TikTok and Facebook have repeatedly been criticized by users for their lack of data security and opaque algorithms. Critics complain that the platforms do not take enough action against hate speech. Juliane Leopold, Editor-in-Chief Digital ARD currentsees the launch of the daily News-Accounts on Mastodon fulfilled the desire of the communities “which ask for alternatives to the commercial platforms”.
Mastodon network decentralized
Unlike other platforms like Twitter, the Mastodon network is decentralized. Various servers, each of which is independent, have joined together to form a network. These different servers are called “instances”. These can be run by organizations or individuals.
“We want to build the daily News-Follow the Mastodon community intensively from the start,” say social media editors Isabella David-Zagratzki and Patrick Weinhold. After the success of the daily News on TikTok and Instagram they now want to conquer the “Fediverse”, part of which is Mastodon. The “Fediverse” describes a merger of different independent systems in which a number of non-commercial social media services and communities are networked.
Mastodon was started in 2016 by the developer Eugen Roschko from Jena. However, the platform only received a lot of attention when billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter in autumn 2022 and has since rebuilt the network according to his ideas – despite ongoing criticism.
According to Mastodon, more than 10.7 million users were registered worldwide in spring 2023. In comparison: According to Twitter, it had around 238 million users in spring 2023.