Notices by Mike McCue (mike@flipboard.social), page 8

@dcreemer *whew.

@thomasfuchs Yeah I have to say I think it's an amazing experience but it actually hurts my face. I started watching Star Wars in 3D while sitting in a land speeder on Tatooine and at first it was really cool at first. But then my cheek bones and forehead started to hurt even after I took it off. I've tried lots of adjustments with both straps but it's just way too heavy to use for more than demo lengths of time. That said I'm keeping mine because I think there are so many amazing apps and design breakthroughs to explore even if briefly.

@earth_walker @Flipboard Yes we decided to accelerate the ability to follow magazines before we federate all public curators. We're a few weeks away from that now. Stay tuned!

@angdraug @ukraine-thenewsdesk @timkmak Excellent. I have been following Timkmak for a long time now and am grateful for his posts as I deeply care about what is happening in Ukraine and follow the events there daily. CCing @NewsDesk

@angdraug @caseynewton @dangillmor @Flipboard The cool thing is that ActivityPub solves the disintermediation issue. Content creators can now build direct relationships with their followers that they can own forever independent of whatever tools or platforms they use for distribution or monetization. This is a HUGE step forward and if something like scroll or Patreon were to happen on ActivityPub with a few other tweaks to that model I bet it'd be far more successful.

I'm optimistic this will eventually happen and that it will lead to a far more functional, useful, authoritative and beautiful web than what we have now.

@angdraug @caseynewton @dangillmor @Flipboard Yes I was a fan of the scroll model too. There have been a number of attempts at this but they are very, very hard to execute in a way which delights both users and publishers. I think this is an idea that will eventually happen in some form and I hope we can help. Ultimately the situation on the web is not durable. The user experience is disastrous and the monetization is falling off a cliff so everyone is losing. A high quality user experience combined with a simple to understand and affordable monetization model *that doesn't disintermediate content creators in the process* (I'm looking at you Apple) is very much needed right now.

@angdraug @dangillmor @Flipboard Further to the Euronews discussion, I do see a lot of content they have written which harshly calls out Russia for their lies and propaganda. Here's an example I saw in their magazine recently:

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2024/01/10/russian-propaganda-film-to-be-screened-in-italy-despite-backlash

Also, I think the reason for the magazine name they chose is that it was created before the invasion actually happened.

Nevertheless I will continue looking into this with my team as I take your feedback very seriously.

@codedbydan @rmondello you need an option for "it depends" :-)

@mikedev Thanks for the feedback Mike. CCing @JsonCulverhouse and @greg

@luana @following-the-fediverse-mike Thanks Luana!

@angdraug @caseynewton @dangillmor @Flipboard So far our primary focus has been to drive lots of high quality traffic to the publishers and bloggers featured on Flipboard which in turn enables those content creators to monetize with whatever combination of ads, paywalls or memberships they choose. Our commitment to helping content creators get their content discovered, visited and monetized has been a longstanding goal of ours and is the foundation for the thousands of partnerships we have maintained with publishers around the world for over a decade now. Today Flipboard is typically one of the top 5 traffic drivers on the Internet and sometimes we rank in the top 1-3 referrers for smaller sites. We are particularly helpful for independent content creators looking to get discovered and build audience within an interest area.

All that said, I think we can do more here and our work in the fediverse will set the stage for us to build new and more flexible ways for both content creators and curators to be rewarded with revenue and loyal community members that they actually own (via ActivityPub) rather than rent (via a proprietary walled garden). Stay tuned for a lot more to come on this topic later this year.

And for the record, I too think the Arc Browser is exploitative.

@angdraug @dangillmor @Flipboard Well that's a shame to hear and given your local knowledge I think this is valuable feedback. I am CCing my team here @NewsDesk and I have already removed this link from my Medium post while we look into this more.

In the meantime, here is a link to the magazine Flipboard's curation team has been curating about Russia's invasion of Ukraine that you may find useful: @ukraine-thenewsdesk

This magazine includes posts from a variety of US and other sources including the Kiev Post, The Moscow Times and the YouTuber Denys Davydov. Let me know what you think of these or if you have suggestions for additional sources you trust on Ukraine that we should be curating.

Thanks for your post on this.

@tod OK I just tried from both ivory and mammoth on iOS and both worked fine. Will download mona and try it out. Meantime I'm CCing @FlipboardCS and @JsonCulverhouse who might have some clues as to why these links are opening in Flipboard app instead of going to the mastodon accounts on flipboard.social.

@tod hmmm. this is why we are still testing. :-) What app are you using for Mastodon?

@WarnerCrocker @chessert If you're referring to ads on the websites you find on Flipboard try out reader mode. You can also mute websites that have too many ads. That also sends a signal to us to review whether or not we should really be recommending content from that site. Unfortunately many web sites are now drowning in ads and popups.

@chessert @WarnerCrocker let me know what you think and if you have suggestions.

@bart @Flipboard yeah that’s a good one!

@timothyjohnson @following-the-fediverse-mike no it does not. What you see now is a consequence of enabling the Flipboard app to do programmatic advertising via google. We will be revising this and taking a new approach for the fediverse. In fact I am meeting with my team tomorrow on this very topic. More to come here.

@angdraug @dangillmor @Flipboard Dmitry, are you saying that Euronews and/or Flipboard does not recognize Ukraine’s right to exist? As far as Flipboard is concerned I can tell you that we have always viewed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a monstrous and abhorrent act of unlawful and evil aggression. Accordingly we’ve worked hard to curate reporting from many sources around the world who are giving people a raw look at what has been happening there.

As far as this Euronews magazine is concerned, it looks like they started curating this magazine well before the invasion occurred and they’ve posted more than 1.600 stories since then. Their reporting seems very fact based and clearly they believe this is both a horrendous and unjustified invasion as well as a global crisis that gets at the very foundation of modern civilization. Take a look at the stories in their magazine and let me know if you disagree.

@Lizette603_23 🙏