Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 07:33:09 JST Zecharias Zelalem

   • Zecharias Zelalem

   🧵 Hey all! This is a new account, I'm still Zecharias Zelalem, freelance journalist and aspiring OSINTer providing news and analysis on the Horn of Africa for a variety of international media outlets. For the past year or so, I posted via @zekuzelalem@journa.host, but I've transitioned away from that instance. I'll be posting from this account from now on. After recent changes on the journa dot host instance, I had no choice but to set up elsewhere. Hope to continue exchanges and friendships here.

   • AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 07:33:06 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     Last week, the Journa server was taken over by new management. None of us were notified, and I found out when server updates caused account to freeze for a few hours.

     The instance has now been taken over by a "Jeff Brown" from Newsie. Now, I have no idea who he is and have no ill will towards him. But the individual is not a journalist. I couldn't find anything on him online that would suggest that he would be trustworthy enough to oversee management of Mastodon's largest journalism instances.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 07:33:08 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     When I left Twitter, I joined the Journa server primarily because it was run by journalists with verifiable credentials who were keen on creating a safe, clean space for journalists to interact free of the toxicity that was ubiquitous on Twitter. I'm still grateful to the likes of Evan Urquhart and Adam Davidson who administered the instance and never let us down in that regard. Journa was a refreshing change from what we had grown accustomed to, especially in the wake of the Musk takeover.

     novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️ and AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     mia (mia@freespeechextremist.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:04 JST mia

     in reply to
     @ZekuZelalem
     
     Journalists are subhumans.
     Sexy Moon likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Toxic Darkest Sinner (galena@paws.moe)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:22 JST Toxic Darkest Sinner

     in reply to
     @ZekuZelalem Journos have literally never been welcome on fedi. We're an anti-journo community. Keep moving, journo scum.
     Sexy Moon likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:23 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     Lastly, considering that journalists are by nature people who question and dig away at anything screaming a lack of transparency, I'm surprised that only a few (if any?) journalists have sounded alarms or protested.

     Journalists flocked to Mastodon last year, and a year later, there's barely a whimper as one man's silent takeover/ownership of journalism platforms and even a verification tool here has him establish a monopoly, despite none of you knowing anything about him.

     You shock me!

     FIN.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:24 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     Personally, I'm not willing to compromise. I lived and worked in a country where journalism results in life sentences. As a result, I spent years in exile, investigating war crimes and it came with maneuvering past cyber lynch mobs, daily death threats, and slander both online, offline and on regime propaganda TV.

     Forgive me if I'm unwilling to gamble or risk anything. I can do without the uncertainty.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:25 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     Monitoring instances is no easy task. It requires commitment, finances and a dedicated team.

     I can understand if the team overseeing Journa decided that after a year, other parties should shoulder the burden. On top of your day job, family etc...you're dealing with the daily demand to clean a platform that threatens to be swarmed by fascists, trolls and racists if abandoned for even a day. I imagine it can be rigorous.

     But...journalists should have been notified.

     Not notifying us was wrong.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:27 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     But as a journalist, it would be immoral and extremely selfish for me to stay quiet after taking care of my personal needs, and not express my serious concerns and worry for the future of journalism safety on Mastodon, and for the friends and colleagues who remain connected to both instances.

     I feel very uneasy at how things are looking like for the press. This is the last thing I expected to see happen on a platform that marketed itself as a safe escape in the midst of the #TwitterMigration.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:28 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     • DAIR

     I think you get the point. I'm now on the @DAIR instance, which was founded by someone I consider a sister to me, and a team renowned globally for their commitment to online safety and ensuring the harms caused by big tech/AI don't get shoved under the rug. With my transition away from Journa dot host, I feel much more reassured about my Mastodon use. They may not be journalists, but I'm acquainted with some of the team and can vouch as being 100% uncompromising when it comes to online harm.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:29 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     So Journa & Newsie, two of Mastodon's most prominent journalism servers and home to journalists from around the world seeking safer online havens...are overseen by Mr. Jeff's entity known as "Fourth Estate."

     I can't find anything solid on this Fourth Estate, which claims to be a non profit focused on press related issues.

     It has a Wikipedia page, citing dead links or Fourth Estate's own website for all of its questionable claims.

     Again, red flags, red flags.
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate_Public_Benefit_Corporation

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:30 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     • Fifi Lamoura

     These concerns and more, are what convinced me to stay on Journa and not to consider "Newsie." Standards were upheld by actual journalists at Journa. I can't say the same for newsie, which as @fifilamoura and others pointed out, hosted the US based infamous climate change denying, far right extremist outlet known as Newsmax. At best, the individual took no precautions or was sloppy or worst, outlets like Newsmax are considered purveyors of journalism.

     https://circumstances.run/@amtiskaw/110437393480951772

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:31 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     Coincidentally, a number of fediverse friends & I engaged in discussion a month ago about a journalism verification portal that was set up by the very same individual. I had expressed shock at how some of the most renowned journalists in the game, permitted him to become the authority figure for establishing our journalism credentials on Mastodon...even though none of us could verify his own. Imagine my shock to learn that this individual had since taken over the server.
     https://journa.host/@zekuzelalem/111065323361408802

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Zecharias Zelalem (zekuzelalem@dair-community.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:32 JST Zecharias Zelalem

     in reply to

     Just as you wouldn't expect a doctor's forum to be run by someone who never went to medical school, or a gardeners' club to be run by someone who has never pulled weeds before, I find it unacceptable that a platform for journalists, including many who left Twitter due to trolling, slander, death threats...would be run by someone who has never worked in our field. How would I be certain that someone would uphold journalism ethics and values if they haven't walked a mile in our shoes?

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     autism :verified: (jeff@misinformation.wikileaks2.org)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:52 JST autism :verified:

     in reply to

     • Boud
     • Open Collective
     • Jeff Brown
     @boud @ZekuZelalem @opencollective @jeff lol
     Sexy Moon likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Boud (boud@framapiaf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:54 JST Boud

     in reply to

     • Open Collective
     • Jeff Brown

     @ZekuZelalem

     2/2

     Profile as a venture capitalist: "Brown has been an angel investor in South Florida through various venues, including Honey Tree Holdings, Startup Quest, the Digital Venture Capital Association and Palm Beach Angels Inc. He is past director of the Gold Coast Venture Capital Association. He has also work [sic] with various nonprofits to fund innovative journalism projects around the world." [2]

     [2] (disable javascript!) https://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2015/10/21/fiu-looks-to-bring-entrepreneurship-to-journalism.html

     @opencollective @jeff

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Boud (boud@framapiaf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:46:55 JST Boud

     in reply to

     • Open Collective
     • Jeff Brown

     @ZekuZelalem

     1/2

     Have you tried @ mentioning some of the journa.host people who know you well? They're probably new to taking responsibility for coordinators/moderators FOSS style. GAFAM encourages passivity; FOSS encourages responsibility.

     Seems like @opencollective might want to check if Brown's journa.host management is consistent with opencollective's ethics.

     @jeff has a page there [1] and has a right to publicly answer this thread too.

     [1] https://opencollective.com/jeff-brown

   • Embed this notice
     tyil (tyil@fedi.tyil.nl)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 18:51:14 JST tyil

     in reply to

     @ZekuZelalem@dair-community.social If only #Mastodon users would learn from their #Twitter mistakes, stop trying to all hoard together on a single instance. The #Fediverse is federated by nature, it encourages lots of small servers, and it seems everyone except the Mastodon userbase understands this very simple idea.
     
     Stop trying to be the largest instance, and stop supporting those trying to become large instances. Stick to instances hosted by people you know or otherwise trust, and promote the idea of thousands of small servers rather than a couple of huge ones.
     
     Any instance over 200 users is too big.

     翠星石 likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     tyil (tyil@fedi.tyil.nl)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 22:21:19 JST tyil

     in reply to

     • Hugo 雨果

     @whynothugo@fosstodon.org @ZekuZelalem@dair-community.social I'm arguing that people should use more and smaller instances, rather than concentrating on a handful of big ones, as that goes against the spirit of the #Fediverse. #Mastodon not scaling well isn't a problem of the Fediverse at large, that's just Mastodon being bad. There's various alternatives out there, some which have even existed for longer than Mastodon has! The ones I've tried so far have been much easier to set up than Mastodon, come with more features, and perform better.

     翠星石 likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     tyil (tyil@fedi.tyil.nl)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 22:21:22 JST tyil

     in reply to

     • Hugo 雨果

     @whynothugo@fosstodon.org @ZekuZelalem@dair-community.social On what specifically?

   • Embed this notice
     Hugo 雨果 (whynothugo@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 22:21:23 JST Hugo 雨果

     in reply to

     • tyil

     @tyil @ZekuZelalem I don't quite understand what point you're trying to make.

   • Embed this notice
     tyil (tyil@fedi.tyil.nl)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 22:21:26 JST tyil

     in reply to

     • Hugo 雨果

     @whynothugo@fosstodon.org @ZekuZelalem@dair-community.social Almost every time that I hear that someone runs their own instance, they mention how resource-demanding it isIt is true #Mastodon is very resource intensive, and it scales poorly to boot. This is why all those large instances require quite a bit in donations to keep going. Smaller instances (especially those not running Mastodon) are much cheaper to operate. If you're under 10 users, you can likely just host it on a raspi in your home without too much worries.Running an instance for others is an even bigger commitmentThere's several companies doing this, I'm sure.there's no easy way to delegate a domain to an existing instanceI'm not sure if this is desired either, if someone hosts an instance for you, you should simply have a subdomain point to their servers, much like with any other hosted web application.All this leads to making the most convenient thingThen being on the Fediverse is already a contradiction, no? I keep hearing how difficult the Fediverse is to use and understand, and how hard it is to host an instance. #Twitter still exists, even if they're trying to rebrand in the dumbest way possible, but it's super duper easy and you won't have to think about anything for more than half a second!

   • Embed this notice
     Hugo 雨果 (whynothugo@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 22:21:27 JST Hugo 雨果

     in reply to

     • tyil

     @tyil @ZekuZelalem I think the big problem is how Mastodon itself scales.

     Almost every time that I hear that someone runs their own instance, they mention how resource-demanding it is, and how heavy it is to run one. Running an instance for others is an even bigger commitment, and there's no easy way to delegate a domain to an existing instance.

     All this leads to making the most convenient thing: "few very large instances". People always go for convenience.

   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 22:25:34 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • tyil
     • Hugo 雨果
     @tyil @whynothugo @ZekuZelalem You really don't even need to set up an instance - it's quite easy to find a small instances hosted by a based GNU hackers and join it - which is what I did.
   • Embed this notice
     gnutelephony (gnutelephony@floss.social)'s status on Thursday, 12-Oct-2023 00:45:31 JST gnutelephony

     in reply to

     • Boud
     • Open Collective

     @boud @ZekuZelalem @opencollective @jeff@honeytree.social this makes me think of gnn two decades ago, where many journalists who refused to be "embedded" with the US military so they could honestly report on Iraq had congregated. Yet many were being identified, and seemed to be targeted by sniper teams. That site turned out to be ran by a pair of apparent grifters secretly funded by USAID.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Thursday, 12-Oct-2023 00:45:44 JST Fifi Lamoura

     in reply to

     • Boud
     • Open Collective
     • gnutelephony

     @gnutelephony Yeah, there was definitely a bit of a grifter thing going on with GNN, though I think it was more a "charismatic leader" and wanna be rock star/guru type issue from them (though they were getting funding from the US government). I had NOT heard about the independent journalists being targeted, do you have more info on that?

     As for Jeff at Newsie, I think it's just greed and being a Florida based businessman that's probably the issue. He seems in it for the money and clout and not particularly ethical or to care about journalistic ethics. Also, ti's completel opaque who his "team" is that moderates and apparently runs the business for him (his main interest seems to be farming business back to Honeytree). I personally don't even have an issue with someone providing a server service, it's just mixing up journalism with this and him/his team not even caring or thinking there was anything problematic about hosting NewsMax that makes me worry for journalism on the fedi and capture by purely corporate interests (and it's become VERY clear to me that a lot of journalists and news orgs are VERY naive when it comes to the internet and just generally incurious). @boud @ZekuZelalem @opencollective