Can someone ELI5? What is the problem that this solves?

Deeply disturbing. It’s so easy to forget that this is a picture of Iran in the 1970s.

who view Musk as overly assertive and self-promoting

… that’s one way to put it.

YikYak, GroupMe, Ready Education, Remind, UniBuddy, Viva, etc. Etc.

Reposting this here from the discussion in !news@lemmy.world:

There’s a real argument for a Mastodon use case for news organizations, governments, and colleges.

If they’re just seeking engagement, then they have to wait for the platform to grow. But this isn’t about that.

Many news organizations already have comment sections on their website, and they want to push out information on breaking news as quickly as possible. They need a platform to do those things. So, a lot of them use Facebook for embedded comments on the page and Xitter to breaking news. The thing is that they could use mastodon for both, and run their own instance, which would give them total control and not be at the mercy of Musk or Zuck.

Colleges use expensive proprietary messaging apps for students, clubs, and teachers that they can monitor and adjust to fit their needs. Mastodon offers that.

Governments sometimes end up in legal hot water due to freedom of information, etc. that comes with corporate social media. Mastodon offers the freedoms and controls necessary to disseminate vital information and to allow or reject posts as required by local laws.

The point is that Mastodon is an effective public facing communication system that also allows internal controls by the host.

The only publicity and marketing budget that the fediverse has is us, so any opportunity to promote it is our job. Government, education, news. These are the vital areas to promote.

That’s exactly right.

Classic first adopter problem.

The thing is I believe that there’s a real argument for a use case for news organizations, governments, and colleges.

If they’re just seeking engagement, then they have to wait for the platform to grow. But this isn’t about that.

Many news organizations already have comment sections on their website, and they want to push out information on breaking news as quickly as possible. They need a platform to do those things. So, a lot of them use Facebook for embedded comments on the page and Xitter to breaking news. The thing is that they could use mastodon for both, and run their own instance, which would give them total control and not be at the mercy of Musk or Zuck.

Colleges use expensive proprietary messaging apps for students, clubs, and teachers that they can monitor and adjust to fit their needs. Mastodon offers that.

Governments sometimes end up in legal hot water due to freedom of information, etc. that comes with corporate social media. Mastodon offers the freedoms and controls necessary to disseminate vital information and to allow or reject posts as required by local laws.

The point is that Mastodon is an effective public facing communication system that also allows internal controls by the host.

The only publicity and marketing budget that the fediverse has is us, so any opportunity to promote it is our job. Government, education, news. These are the vital areas to promote.

If news organizations, universities, and governments begin adopting Mastodon, then others will follow

Great, where can I find a list of instances?

Not really, it’s still corporate

They are planning to dismantle the entire country and sell it for scrap

Can we get them to join Mastodon?

I think it’s ideal for new services. They can spin up an instance pretty easily through their existing IT department. They have total control and total freedom because they run the platform. Then federate with other instances to have a reach of millions instantly.

The only reason every news organization isn’t doing it is just bad marketing. As far as I know, there’s no marketing budget for mastodon.

I’ve been pretty happy with Tuta. I just have a free account, but it does seem like it has pretty good features and phenomenal security.

In all seriousness, there are women in Texas who are escaping into Mexico to receive reproductive healthcare.

I would live to see a Western aligned Iran with human rights and religious freedom. But an Iran aligned with hardline western right wing ideology sounds more nightmarish than the present regime.

Electrinic intifada:

From Wikipedia:

There is consensus that The Electronic Intifada is generally unreliable with respect to its reputation for accuracy, fact-checking, and error-correction. Almost all editors consider The Electronic Intifada a biased and opinionated source, so their statements should be attributed.

Mondoweis:

“Mondoweiss” is a hate site (UPDATED) from the Washington Post.

Oh absolutely! But we will never know if it was motivated by racism, political or religious extremism, etc.

“Dissatisfied about his divorce” reeks of state media censorship. We’ll probably never know his real motivation.

Very cool! It’s a pretty specialized use case, but still awesome to see.

They seem pretty legit based on the research I’ve done. With a small niche program like that, they kind of have to be because one misstep and they would lose their entire base.