ABC shuts down official Twitter accounts due to 'toxic interactions'
The public broadcaster says interactions on the platform are ‘toxic’ as it closes almost all its Twitter accounts
Worth noting, for those that aren't going to bother reading the first line of the article, this is ABC the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not ABC the American Broadcasting Company
This is hilarious. Not only are they only shutting down all but four of their biggest Twitter accounts it's also not even the company people are thinking about. This is literally news about nothing happening and people are still riled up. Well done OP. I love it.
It's not nothing. This is similar to if BBC stopped using it, only on a smaller scale.
We're so mad at the changes that we're going to consolidate our accounts to make it easier to use this platform!
That makes it so much more relevant to me. I wasnt going to read it because I figured it was the American ABC
American Broadcasting Company
I've never heard of the American Broadcasting Company. Is that a thing? It's always Australian anytime anyone mentions the ABC.
It's a thing, yeah. Disney acquired them in the mid-90s. Pretty reliably top 3 in viewership numbers, just above Fox and Fox News, who round out the top 5.
There were basically 3 channels for a while -- ABC, NBC, CBS. But yeah, their brand has really diminished.
Ten percent of people didn't know and now feel bad they were tricked...
The other ninety percent don't care because they just have hate boners for Twitter.
About time. Well done. More to follow, hopefully.
The BBC just set up their own Mastodon instance: https://social.bbc/@BBC_News_Labs
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that BBC experiment is going well. They've barely posted anything, relative to what they could post. They should set up their systems to auto-post to Mastodon when they post to Twitter or where ever else.
That's on them for hardly posting anything, they're getting plenty of engagement when they do.
BBC is usually full of lies though, who cares
Eh? They've got a transphobic streak, for sure, and should be rightly called out for that. But are they "full of lies" in the rest of their discourse?
Found the nutjob
Reading the article with the letter X in place of Twitter makes me feel like I am reading a pre-generated article with someone forgetting to replace the placeholder with the brand name.
Meta, x alphabet... All these renamings and they all suck donkey balls. Not one cool name. And all 3 have gotten SIGNIFICANTLY worse.
Nah, they'd fit pretty good to the dystopia you'll be / you're already living in. Don't tell me the acronyms of GAFAM (Google (Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon and Microsoft ) and FAANG ( Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google ) don't sound like some end-of-world ushering big corps à la umbrella corporation.
embedded tweets just look like they have a close button now
Title is a bit misleading:
The ABC is shutting down almost all of its official accounts on Twitter – now known as X under Elon Musk’s ownership – citing “toxic interactions”, cost and better interaction with ABC content on other social media platforms.
There will only be four remaining official ABC accounts: @abcnews, @abcsport, @abcchinese and the master @abcaustralia account. ABC Chinese reaches Chinese-speaking audiences on X.
“Starting from today, other ABC accounts will be discontinued,” the ABC managing director, David Anderson, has told staff.
So they're keeping their main, largest accounts alive.
Having 4 active accounts is anything but leaving the platform. Hell, I thought they had a single account they are giving up (like most companies).
What bullshit.
Exactly, any other time that would be called consolidation .. but that doesn't drive engagement so we will say leaving. ..
Ignoring also it's Australia instead of America broadcast channel... Which most people would assume.
Such a non story.
Wow. Imagine that. It's almost as if when you let neo-nazis and far right rats take over a platform it becomes a toxic environment.
Let's be honest, Twitter has always been a cesspool if you read below the top tweet.
It has gotten orders of magnitude worse since Elmo took over.
"But it was a cess pool in the way I like it .. fuck it I'm going back to Tumblr .. "
I've filed at least three reports to X about incitement of violence and racial issues, and each came back as "the did not contravene our policies". So that was the last time I opened X to read anything. It's one thing to have a differencing point of view and debate it, but it's another thing to stir up hatred without any reason or logic. It has got super toxic. I think more, and more brands are going to start realising this. No-one really needs all that negativity and hate, and there are better options on the Internet.
TBH for many years it's felt like most accounts (or at least the ones that bubbled up into my feed) were angry people venting about whatever. Like, the angrier they were, the more engagement they were hoping for. That was a surefire way for me to at least move on to someone else, or to just close the app. Don't need anyone harshing my mellow. The shouty people can go find a wall to yell at.
I barely get on these days. And I don't doubt that it's gotten worse.
I think twitter admitted, years ago, that they are heavily biased in favor of right wing conservatives, because if they made rightwingers follow the rules like everyone else, they'd have to ban the majority of them, and lose all that advertising income "look like they are specifically targeting political ideaology"
What would be the correct government agency to complain to that might result in pressure and fines? FCC because it's a comms platform? SEC (though I don't know the justification)? Other?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The ABC is shutting down almost all of its official accounts on Twitter – now known as X under Elon Musk’s ownership – citing “toxic interactions”, cost and better interaction with ABC content on other social media platforms.
Anderson said the closure of the Insiders, News Breakfast and ABC Politics accounts earlier this year limited the amount of toxic interactions which had grown more prevalent under Musk and made engagement with the shows more positive.
“We also found that closing individual program accounts helps limit the exposure of team members to the toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prevalent on X,” he said.
The announcement comes after the corporation recently shifted resources towards making content for other social media platforms including TikTok and Instagram.
Anderson said the vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience was located on official sites on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
The ABC is the third big public service broadcaster to remove itself from Twitter, following NPR and PBS in April.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This begins with ABC, will end with other media resources. But I doubt Mastodon will be the future. Facebook and Instagram seem to be more viable options for mainstream media outlets, though I would also like to see more of them creating Mastodon servers, the way the BBC did recently.
Actually mastodon is the more viable option for journalist, because you're not depending on the good will of a company (or some rich people in control of it) to not block you or restrict where you can be seen and where not.
It's just that so many people don't care about this.
I can see European outlets, especially state-funded ones going the Mastodon way. Here even municipalities and governments are rolling their own Mastodon instances.
Yea it is crazy. Like most German ministries have their own mastodon Account and sprinkle in some news. And like some news channels have at least a Twitter relay.
Tech and scientists moved in big waves, so to be fair: I switched with the first waves and am fine. Yes I am using it less then I was using Twitter, but less social media is never bad.
Moving a little slow, eh?
The social media team in my company stopped buying ads on Twitter last year after Musk's chaotic purchase. And in April, have fully stopped all content posts because of extremely low engagement (and constant errors/issues with scheduling posts).
Not surprised one bit. Escape the cesspool.
From when do you people trust thse big corporations, news companies, ha? 😁😁😁
ABC sucks anyway
The Australian one, the American one, or both?
Elon! Welcome to Lemmy!
