6 ms·

Find Verified Journalists on Mastodon

34 points by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago

psychphysic 4y ago
Even if you find them it'll be a chore to follow them and see interact if not on your server.
- satya71 4y ago
  Why?
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    On android at least it's not easy to find people on other servers other than if someone you follow reblogs them. Even then you might need to "open in browser" copy their link and paste it in to follow. Done all that? Great the app won't pull their recent toots. So that was useless wasn't it?
    - kibwen 4y ago
      Twitter refugees are so accustomed to the Twitter website being godawful that it apparently has gone unnoticed that the Mastodon web interface is excellent, even on mobile. Who needs apps?
      - psychphysic 4y ago
        Yea, the users are wrong. Mastodon is perfect.
        kibwen 4y ago
        It's been five years since I quit Twitter, and after using Mastodon for a week I'm of the opinion that, yes, the UI is much superior (Twitter's UI has even somehow gotten worse since then). People don't use Twitter because of its terrible UI, they use it despite it.
ageitgey 4y ago
I made a similar thing for finding people to follow but covering all different kinds of interests and topics: https://getstarted.social/ https://getstarted.social/
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing it!
MichaelCollins 4y ago
This seems pathetic, like a bunch of twitter addicted journalists who've walked away from twitter but can't give up their addiction to being special on twitter. The twitter check was never a mark of credibility. Most of Fox News had twitter checks.
- dvngnt_ 4y ago
  FREE INSULIN FOR ALL
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    That's a good example of the way the sensation of importance manufactured by social media is to the detriment of society. If a company has something market-moving to say, let them go to newspapers. When traders are reading social media instead of newspapers, society has a serious problem.
- CaptWillard 4y ago
  Fox are corporate, pharma-funded and biased, but looking objectively at the last 6-10 years they've proven more credible than the legacy networks, let alone their cable peers.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    If you really think Fox are credible, then swap MSNBC into my comment instead, the point stands. Or Graham Hancock and the ancient aliens sphere of influencers. Or Ben Shapiro or Richard Spencer. No matter which way you slice it, the twitter check has never been a mark of credibility.
    - CaptWillard 4y ago
      Agreed on that point. I just thought it was a good time to point out that the popular opinion about their relative credibility is outdated. Look at the big stories of the last 6-10 years. How many did Chuck Todd or NPR get totally wrong? And this is the important part: They got a lot wrong by simply not asking obvious questions, let alone any that would require the skepticism or curiosity that used to be requisite to the profession.
rdtwo 4y ago
I never understood “verified” tags for press. It allowed then to impersonate real experts. They should have just had a press tag
- paulgb 4y ago
  “Verified” was never meant to mean “blindly trust this person”, it was meant to mean “this is the (notable/famous) person it says it is, not an impersonator”. Some people put too much weight on it, and I partly blame Twitter for making it a status game (e.g. using verified status to influence ranking algorithms) and for kneecapping the security feature by allowing display name changes without further verification.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Rightly or wrongly, Twitter decided that there were certain classes of people--the mainstream famous, big media journalists, politicians--for whom it was important to know if tweets were really from that person or not. Not even past impersonation attempts were taken into account. However, as you say, it became a status thing with even people well-known in various communities with thousands of followers being algorithmically denied checks and taking it as a personal slight.
    - rdtwo 4y ago
      I just didn’t think having verified for press made much sense. Their opinions were/are as well informed as that of an average joe blue blow. A press tag wold have helped inform that they were also likely to be poorly informed.
- ajross 4y ago
  Indeed, you seem to have misunderstood the whole point. If "verified" was supposed to mean "expert", then they would have called it the "expert" tag. Instead "verified" means (meant) "verified" -- Twitter checked the poster out and will vouch that the human being behind the account is who they say they are. That this then led to scarcity and a weird status stratification is unfortunate. But literally no one at Twitter or elsewhere ever tried to say these checkmarks denoted "expertise", so I don't know where you got that.
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
Why would I care or want to?
Ligma123 4y ago
God, what would I do without my status quo parrots? Has any of these "journalists" have ever done any journalism, like investigating political officials, exposing corruption scandals, even if at a local level, you don't need a global story.
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
that would make a great blacklist
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Yes, that is a good point. For instance, if you saw a Twitter FOX news verified account, you could safely assume it's not satire and block that account. (If you want to protect your bubble.)
thejosh 4y ago
Wow the comments here are very bitter. What do people have against people wanting to be verified for who they really are? For press this is important, so you know you're talking to the right person. Was always surprised there was no independent website/source for this (Hey, my name is X, my details are at example.com/1234 if you want to find how to contact me).
- zikduruqe 4y ago
  https://keyoxide.org https://keyoxide.org supports Mastodon and other sources. Here's the dev's profile - https://keyoxide.org/9f0048ac0b23301e1f77e994909f6bd6f80f485d https://keyoxide.org/9f0048ac0b23301e1f77e994909f6bd6f80f485... I was hoping https://keys.pub https://keys.pub was going to win out but the dev has moved on to other projects.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  Because the concept of "verified" journalists implies that those "unverified" journalists outside the MSM aren't "real" journalists.
  - darkwater 4y ago
    The issue is that the unverified ones are basically the rest of the pool of Mastodon users. Let's put this to an extreme: if Mastodon were the only way to communicate, how would you trust a name over another, identical name?
  - thejosh 4y ago
    Hence an independent source would be great. I should have stated I don't believe the existing Twitter verification system is good, nor is the proposed (now active?) one. I don't know what a good solution is, apart from a directory.. which would probably be hacked..
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > For press this is important, so you know you're talking to the right person. That presumes their tweets are important. That's what twitter wants them to feel, the purpose of checkmarks on twitter is to make them feel important. If a journalist has something actually important to say, let them publish it and let their publisher confirm their identity. The byline on a New York Times article can be trusted, it doesn't need some dumb little check symbol next to the name. The tweets of somebody with articles in the New York Times are not important. When a journalist tweets, they bypass the mechanisms and customs which would normally make what a journalist says important, namely their editors. The apparent importance that tweeting has is an illusory sensation cynically engineered by twitter, to the detriment of society.
kc0bfv 4y ago
Keyoxide and similar are a great way to establish and verify identity across a variety of platforms, and are open to more than just journalists. https://keyoxide.org/ https://keyoxide.org/
jp57 4y ago
I think the thing that makes sense here, assuming Mastodon actually becomes a popular thing, is for companies and other institutions to run their own servers and limit accounts to their employees or members. E.g. nytimes or wapo or national review or whatever could run their own servers for their journalists. NBA and NFL for their players. SAG-AFTRA for actors and TV personalities, etc. I know that there's a kind of verification mechanism already in Mastodon where you put a backlink in your website and then you get a badge. But it is an order of magnitude more complicated than "this server vouches for the identity of this account," and website ownership isn't really identity anyway.
- Macha 4y ago
  The issue with the publications running instances for the journalists is it means the journalists social media presence is owned by their employer which is a problem if they change jobs.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Of course for the publications, that's a feature. They (as well as analyst firms etc.) have been pushing back against their employees having personal brands since social media (including blogs) got big. Emphasizing personal brands in this setting was a big thing for a while which organizations ended up really clamping down on.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    You can always migrate your account... or if your account is tied to your publication then too bad, you start from scratch.
    - Macha 4y ago
      The second part of your post _is_ my point. It might be good for news media to run their own instance, but not so good for their employees to use it
  - jallmann 4y ago
    Not sure if Mastodon supports this, but the account could belong to one instance while being verified by another. This also lets folks be verified by multiple organizations - which also increases trust.
bertman 4y ago
I clicked randomly on one of the "latest additions" (https://www.presscheck.org/journalists/lauren-wolfe https://www.presscheck.org/journalists/lauren-wolfe) and ... Well, the linked mastodon profile (https://mastodon.world/LaurenWolfe https://mastodon.world/LaurenWolfe) doesn't even exist.
- Goronmon 4y ago
  They are missing the @ symbol. https://mastodon.world/@LaurenWolfe https://mastodon.world/@LaurenWolfe
adolph 4y ago
Seems like this is run by one well-meaning person on off hours. I wonder if this sort of multi-domain "verification" be automated similar to ACME protocol. Let's say you are a bonafide reporter at the Daily Globe (or any social media entity with any org). The reporter goes to presscheck, makes an assertion, receives a token, places the token in a known location on Daily Globe's website, presscheck watches for token and once it is present issues "verification" to reporter. Maybe Daily Globe has to keep the token in place for the verification to stick or maybe there is a re-verification at a certain interval. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Certificate_Management_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Certificate_Manageme... Who is eligible? Any journalist globally, including freelancers, newsletter writers... any category, really. This site is about confirming someone is who they say they are, not defining what a "journalist" is. How are profiles verified? Applications are to be made here. The quickest way to get verified is by tweeting a link to your Mastodon profile on an already-verified Twitter account. Failing that, providing a company email address for us to follow up with is another great method. Freelancers and newsletter writers should include as much background information and linked worked as possible in their application.
_chu1 4y ago
Who cares? Is an SVG on their profile the only thing that makes them happy in life?

34 points by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago

psychphysic 4y ago

Even if you find them it'll be a chore to follow them and see interact if not on your server.

satya71 4y ago
Why?
- psychphysic 4y ago
  On android at least it's not easy to find people on other servers other than if someone you follow reblogs them. Even then you might need to "open in browser" copy their link and paste it in to follow. Done all that? Great the app won't pull their recent toots. So that was useless wasn't it?
  - kibwen 4y ago
    Twitter refugees are so accustomed to the Twitter website being godawful that it apparently has gone unnoticed that the Mastodon web interface is excellent, even on mobile. Who needs apps?
    - psychphysic 4y ago
      Yea, the users are wrong. Mastodon is perfect.
      - kibwen 4y ago
        It's been five years since I quit Twitter, and after using Mastodon for a week I'm of the opinion that, yes, the UI is much superior (Twitter's UI has even somehow gotten worse since then). People don't use Twitter because of its terrible UI, they use it despite it.

ageitgey 4y ago

I made a similar thing for finding people to follow but covering all different kinds of interests and topics: https://getstarted.social/ https://getstarted.social/

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
Interesting, thanks for sharing it!

MichaelCollins 4y ago

This seems pathetic, like a bunch of twitter addicted journalists who've walked away from twitter but can't give up their addiction to being special on twitter. The twitter check was never a mark of credibility. Most of Fox News had twitter checks.

dvngnt_ 4y ago
FREE INSULIN FOR ALL
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  That's a good example of the way the sensation of importance manufactured by social media is to the detriment of society. If a company has something market-moving to say, let them go to newspapers. When traders are reading social media instead of newspapers, society has a serious problem.
CaptWillard 4y ago
Fox are corporate, pharma-funded and biased, but looking objectively at the last 6-10 years they've proven more credible than the legacy networks, let alone their cable peers.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  If you really think Fox are credible, then swap MSNBC into my comment instead, the point stands. Or Graham Hancock and the ancient aliens sphere of influencers. Or Ben Shapiro or Richard Spencer. No matter which way you slice it, the twitter check has never been a mark of credibility.
  - CaptWillard 4y ago
    Agreed on that point. I just thought it was a good time to point out that the popular opinion about their relative credibility is outdated. Look at the big stories of the last 6-10 years. How many did Chuck Todd or NPR get totally wrong? And this is the important part: They got a lot wrong by simply not asking obvious questions, let alone any that would require the skepticism or curiosity that used to be requisite to the profession.

rdtwo 4y ago

I never understood “verified” tags for press. It allowed then to impersonate real experts. They should have just had a press tag

paulgb 4y ago
“Verified” was never meant to mean “blindly trust this person”, it was meant to mean “this is the (notable/famous) person it says it is, not an impersonator”. Some people put too much weight on it, and I partly blame Twitter for making it a status game (e.g. using verified status to influence ranking algorithms) and for kneecapping the security feature by allowing display name changes without further verification.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Rightly or wrongly, Twitter decided that there were certain classes of people--the mainstream famous, big media journalists, politicians--for whom it was important to know if tweets were really from that person or not. Not even past impersonation attempts were taken into account. However, as you say, it became a status thing with even people well-known in various communities with thousands of followers being algorithmically denied checks and taking it as a personal slight.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    I just didn’t think having verified for press made much sense. Their opinions were/are as well informed as that of an average joe blue blow. A press tag wold have helped inform that they were also likely to be poorly informed.
ajross 4y ago
Indeed, you seem to have misunderstood the whole point. If "verified" was supposed to mean "expert", then they would have called it the "expert" tag. Instead "verified" means (meant) "verified" -- Twitter checked the poster out and will vouch that the human being behind the account is who they say they are. That this then led to scarcity and a weird status stratification is unfortunate. But literally no one at Twitter or elsewhere ever tried to say these checkmarks denoted "expertise", so I don't know where you got that.

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago

Why would I care or want to?

Ligma123 4y ago

God, what would I do without my status quo parrots? Has any of these "journalists" have ever done any journalism, like investigating political officials, exposing corruption scandals, even if at a local level, you don't need a global story.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

that would make a great blacklist

actionfromafar 4y ago
Yes, that is a good point. For instance, if you saw a Twitter FOX news verified account, you could safely assume it's not satire and block that account. (If you want to protect your bubble.)

thejosh 4y ago

Wow the comments here are very bitter. What do people have against people wanting to be verified for who they really are? For press this is important, so you know you're talking to the right person. Was always surprised there was no independent website/source for this (Hey, my name is X, my details are at example.com/1234 if you want to find how to contact me).

zikduruqe 4y ago
https://keyoxide.org https://keyoxide.org supports Mastodon and other sources. Here's the dev's profile - https://keyoxide.org/9f0048ac0b23301e1f77e994909f6bd6f80f485d https://keyoxide.org/9f0048ac0b23301e1f77e994909f6bd6f80f485... I was hoping https://keys.pub https://keys.pub was going to win out but the dev has moved on to other projects.
RobotToaster 4y ago
Because the concept of "verified" journalists implies that those "unverified" journalists outside the MSM aren't "real" journalists.
- darkwater 4y ago
  The issue is that the unverified ones are basically the rest of the pool of Mastodon users. Let's put this to an extreme: if Mastodon were the only way to communicate, how would you trust a name over another, identical name?
- thejosh 4y ago
  Hence an independent source would be great. I should have stated I don't believe the existing Twitter verification system is good, nor is the proposed (now active?) one. I don't know what a good solution is, apart from a directory.. which would probably be hacked..
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> For press this is important, so you know you're talking to the right person. That presumes their tweets are important. That's what twitter wants them to feel, the purpose of checkmarks on twitter is to make them feel important. If a journalist has something actually important to say, let them publish it and let their publisher confirm their identity. The byline on a New York Times article can be trusted, it doesn't need some dumb little check symbol next to the name. The tweets of somebody with articles in the New York Times are not important. When a journalist tweets, they bypass the mechanisms and customs which would normally make what a journalist says important, namely their editors. The apparent importance that tweeting has is an illusory sensation cynically engineered by twitter, to the detriment of society.

kc0bfv 4y ago

Keyoxide and similar are a great way to establish and verify identity across a variety of platforms, and are open to more than just journalists. https://keyoxide.org/ https://keyoxide.org/

jp57 4y ago

I think the thing that makes sense here, assuming Mastodon actually becomes a popular thing, is for companies and other institutions to run their own servers and limit accounts to their employees or members. E.g. nytimes or wapo or national review or whatever could run their own servers for their journalists. NBA and NFL for their players. SAG-AFTRA for actors and TV personalities, etc. I know that there's a kind of verification mechanism already in Mastodon where you put a backlink in your website and then you get a badge. But it is an order of magnitude more complicated than "this server vouches for the identity of this account," and website ownership isn't really identity anyway.

Macha 4y ago
The issue with the publications running instances for the journalists is it means the journalists social media presence is owned by their employer which is a problem if they change jobs.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Of course for the publications, that's a feature. They (as well as analyst firms etc.) have been pushing back against their employees having personal brands since social media (including blogs) got big. Emphasizing personal brands in this setting was a big thing for a while which organizations ended up really clamping down on.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  You can always migrate your account... or if your account is tied to your publication then too bad, you start from scratch.
  - Macha 4y ago
    The second part of your post _is_ my point. It might be good for news media to run their own instance, but not so good for their employees to use it
- jallmann 4y ago
  Not sure if Mastodon supports this, but the account could belong to one instance while being verified by another. This also lets folks be verified by multiple organizations - which also increases trust.

bertman 4y ago

I clicked randomly on one of the "latest additions" (https://www.presscheck.org/journalists/lauren-wolfe https://www.presscheck.org/journalists/lauren-wolfe) and ... Well, the linked mastodon profile (https://mastodon.world/LaurenWolfe https://mastodon.world/LaurenWolfe) doesn't even exist.

Goronmon 4y ago
They are missing the @ symbol. https://mastodon.world/@LaurenWolfe https://mastodon.world/@LaurenWolfe

adolph 4y ago

Seems like this is run by one well-meaning person on off hours. I wonder if this sort of multi-domain "verification" be automated similar to ACME protocol. Let's say you are a bonafide reporter at the Daily Globe (or any social media entity with any org). The reporter goes to presscheck, makes an assertion, receives a token, places the token in a known location on Daily Globe's website, presscheck watches for token and once it is present issues "verification" to reporter. Maybe Daily Globe has to keep the token in place for the verification to stick or maybe there is a re-verification at a certain interval. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Certificate_Management_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Certificate_Manageme... Who is eligible? Any journalist globally, including freelancers, newsletter writers... any category, really. This site is about confirming someone is who they say they are, not defining what a "journalist" is. How are profiles verified? Applications are to be made here. The quickest way to get verified is by tweeting a link to your Mastodon profile on an already-verified Twitter account. Failing that, providing a company email address for us to follow up with is another great method. Freelancers and newsletter writers should include as much background information and linked worked as possible in their application.

_chu1 4y ago

Who cares? Is an SVG on their profile the only thing that makes them happy in life?