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Flipboard Begins to Federate
(flipboard.medium.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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Fediverse
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"If you’re a publisher, creator or brand on Flipboard, you’ll start to see new visitors and engagement as people discover and share your content across the growing Fediverse."
And there's the rub. Once something starts talking about brands, the whole thing just means someone is trying to make money off of someone else's work.
Now, that's not an inherently bad thing! That's part of how an open system works. It just means that whatever is joining the fediverse has to be watched carefully and pruned as soon as it starts turning into spam.
Not really sure how flipboard is working (I believe it was "included with my old samsung phone but that's it). However, would I see spam if I don't follow them ?
I known brand have CM whose job is to get re-tweet/boost whatever how it's called and use hashtags to extend theirs reach. But if I don't follow them, I doubt the person I follow would start massively boosting corporate content. If once in a while I hear about a new phone/jacket/book I'll survive
If you only use your own feed of followed users and hashtags, you won't likely see any of it. But it can still be a problem for new users, and it's antithetical to the idea of the fediverse being run by people for people. There's a certain degree of leeway in what can be considered a person for this idea, but once a company that's publicly traded dives into things, it starts fraying at the edges.
Basically, those companies start treating their ability to "toot" as free ad space. That isn't cool. We should all be able to use an "all" feed without the bullshit.
And that's ignoring the possibility of a company making accounts on instances to artificially "retweet" their bullshit, which just isn't cool. It's bad manners.
Like it or not, social media is part of a lot of company's marketing and ad campaigns. If you want engagement, you have to eat the shitty apple.
Mastodon should be building a fair and anonymous ad platform to support this business, but I know that goes against federation and the principles.