ABC shuts down official Twitter accounts due to 'toxic interactions'
ABC shuts down official Twitter accounts due to 'toxic interactions'
The public broadcaster says interactions on the platform are ‘toxic’ as it closes almost all its Twitter accounts
There will only be four remaining official ABC accounts: for news, sport, Chinese and the master ABC Australia account.
Somebody let me know when they actually leave twitter. This is a bullshit half measure.
372I agree. I'd like to see them host their own Mastodon and leave a forwarding address on 'X'.
135BBC has just started doing that at https://social.bbc
109I think this might become more common over time.
Up to this point, a lot of the news company's online presence was probably pretty cut and dry. Some of my local news stations have terrible websites that take forever to load, yet those websites were probably cutting edge at some point. One of them has a layout that hasn't changed in at least 10 years.
If their IT department hasn't expanded their skills beyond making and maintaining those original websites, I could totally see a long delay happening before/if they join the fediverse.
27
So basically they're not leaving, they are silencing their political coverage. They're not going anywhere, they're caving to pressure.
58Yeah pretty much, they might as well say "we've decided to sack Jerry from the Social Media team" because this isn't actually exiting twitter it's more like reducing someone's workload lol.
20
What accounts did they actually remove? News and sports seem like they would be most of their presence
29All the accounts for all their shows, as well as their journos. They produce a lot of original content, and have a lot of journalists. This is not an insignificant measure.
6
Yeah this is only a bit as the mainstay of ABC is their news account. But it is a step in the right direction.
18So, a cop-out and a half then.
6Bruce Willis and Burt Reynolds?
2
This just comes off as "trying" to look good, to me
2
I hope more broadcasters will follow the BBC’s example and start running their own Mastodon servers.
It would be nice if the BBC instance had more accounts, like for breaking news, though. I know they’re just testing the waters, but they need to try having accounts posting things folks are the most interested in.
171Was a interesting reaction from some in the fediverse stating they would block the BBC instance etc. In reality how welcome are entity's that are seen as corporate?
I also cannot understand why the BBC news is not live, possibly they are experimenting with the moderation and management elements. I guess the news feed would get hit harder than Radio 4.
29There are some on mastodon that want to live in a fairly defensively disconnected/defederated bubble (compared to many other instances or lemmy/kbin).
And, IMO, that's totally fine and good ... freedom of association gives people and instances that power and it should be embraced when people chose to exercise it TBH, so long as it's done by admins in a way that isn't too autocratic against their users and open and transparent.
23
I wasn’t aware. What’s the BBC Mastodon server?
8I hadn't heard about it either but according to their blog post announcing it, it's https://social.bbc
Apparently they'll be running it for six months and then determining if it's worth continuing to operate.
14They’re just testing it out for now.
The BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decentralised social media
5
I even noticed that ARD and ZDF have their own Mastodon servers/instances. But I'm interested in how the BBC's experimental Mastodon server would fare after their stated six-month time frame.
7I wish they had region or language specific accounts (bbc world service, bbc spanish, french, russian, etc.).
5
And now it's time for them to set up a Mastodon instance.
51They’ve been there for a while.
21That's the W I'm looking for
15
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The ABC is shutting down almost all of its official accounts on Twitter – now known as X under Elon Musk’s ownership – citing “toxic interactions”, cost and better interaction with ABC content on other social media platforms.
Anderson said the closure of the Insiders, News Breakfast and ABC Politics accounts earlier this year limited the amount of toxic interactions which had grown more prevalent under Musk and made engagement with the shows more positive.
“We also found that closing individual program accounts helps limit the exposure of team members to the toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prevalent on X,” he said.
The announcement comes after the corporation recently shifted resources towards making content for other social media platforms including TikTok and Instagram.
Anderson said the vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience was located on official sites on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
The ABC is the third big public service broadcaster to remove itself from Twitter, following NPR and PBS in April.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
37Tbh this sounds like it's more about cost cutting and "toxic" twitter is the excuse to cut down on their use and move resources to other platforms. The fact they have left other accounts up would seem to hint that they will cope with "toxic" users to a certain point.
Still good to see bigger entity's leaving.
9Good bot
5
So this is "Austrailia Broadcasting Corporation", not the ABC (American broadcasting Company) which I am familiar with in the US. I presume they share no more than an acronym.
33Correct
7
lets face it this was an issue way before the dipshit changed the name and logo...twitter was and is just a boiling cesspool and should beavoided at all cost.
31Permanently Deleted
17Yeah but nah. There was toxicity but it wasn't promoted. You wouldn't see a several pages of assholes who paid to stir up shit before a single actually interesting response in every single thread. It didn't used to be like this
People overstate how bad social media they don't use is. Twitter was usable and even fun depending on who you followed. Now it's just bulshit everywhere.
11I agree, it was definitely there, but wasn't promoted. Now, when I go there, I'll get notifications that someone posted.... Someone I don't follow and the post is hate filled garbage. In my notifications of all places.
The front page isn't people I follow anymore, that's in a different tab under Following. It's not the default tab.
3
In regards to that twats tweet regarding the “the Australian people” - as a member of “the Australian people” I want to put it on record that that asshat does not speak for many of us here…..some of us are pleased about this (the ABC app is a far better source of news without the rubbish and downright unintelligent comments that come from posting articles on social media anyway….)
21Good move by ABC, but they need to go further.
17STOP USING TWEETS ON QANDA THEN! After what happened with Stan Grant ABC really need to evaluate how they use social media sites like Twitter. They needed to do this the moment Stan raised it as an issue and had to step away from his role.
11They have stopped. It’s in the article.
9Not because of the racism that Stan identified though. They're okay with drawing a line around 'toxic behaviour' but not the racism, ableism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia that they have platformed for years through their use of tweets on QandA.They should have immediately responded to Stan's experience with an assessment of how their engagement with social media enabled the racist abuse directed at Stan. The ABC has a terrible problem with racism in their own institution and have not anything to address or remedy this. Stan is not the only person who has drawn attention to this and the ABC regularly receives complaints about people like Paul Barry while continuing to give them a platform.
2
Roll
5Free speech is so inconvenient!
3Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but the recent promotion of paid accounts has created a hostile environment and a wild spread of misinformation on just about any possible post. Staying on a broken platform and continuing to participate on it is extremely undesirable, especially when the owner is outright hostile to the idea that he's made the platform worse.
I suspect the many people fleeing from Reddit/Spez could commiserate over that notion.
I also disagree that the system Musk has created is "free speech", considering people who don't pay are drowned out by those who do.
10
To be clear, this is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
1We want freedom of speech!
-2corporations can't be on a platform where detractors can be on an equal level as them. they just want to make money and influence elections not debate about it.
-7They were there for a decade just fine. The abusers and Nazis are the problem.
8Yea, nazis they probably don't want to hear from. Also people who disagree with their support of the military industrial complex and support for proxy wars.
0
media bias being called out too much
-11Yes sure, tinfoil hat is getting hot i see
4
Boo hoo! a giant corporate outlet owned by disney is being bullied! ABC leaving twitter is a good thing.
-12ABC as in Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the public broadcaster.
5