[samizdis]

I'd be interested to see what might happen if quality daily/weekly news publications, science journals, academic institutions, professional bodies (representing educators, medics, dentists, climate scientists, mathematicians etc) were to set up and run Mastodon instances. Seems like a possible way to encourage a return to the old-school newsgroup discussion communities; to bring focus and avoid the chaff clogging up the centralised megaplatforms.

[akavel]

As for one example, a fairly well known body has set up an official Mastodon server half a year ago:

https://social.network.europa.eu

"EU Voice is the official ActivityPub microblogging platform of the EU institutions, bodies and agencies (EUIs). Together with EU Video, it is part of an alternative social media pilot program proposed, and provided by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS). The pilot program contributes to the European Union’s strategy for data and digital sovereignty that aims to foster Europe’s independence in the digital world.

EU Voice provides EUIs with privacy-friendly microblogging accounts that they typically use for the purposes of press and public relations activities."

A list of the official accounts present there: https://social.network.europa.eu/explore

A stream of recent activity from all the accounts on the instance: https://social.network.europa.eu/public

[toofy]

my guess is this will absolutely happen over time.

whatever forms will be similar to libera being the logical irc network for open source projects channels. if you’re a science org, you’ll just naturally join $science_instance.

it’s still early in the process but i’m stoked to watch it all unfold. it really feels like we’re watching in real time what people mean when they explain how the internet was prior to everything being centralized behind walled gardens and google.