Just saw someone saying that the lack of quotes on here means journalists won't adopt the platform, and that is the single best argument against quotes I have seen here.
Sorry but I can't get over this. Having been the subject of numerous pile-ons I can say that the absolute worst occurs when it's a QT from a journalist or media account. It isn't pissmage420 or FirstNameBunchOfNumbers who are the toxic instigators: it's Brian Eton-Schooling from the New Statesman who got offended by some rando saying the Iraq War was unjust that has been the biggest problem.
Just about the only use case I've ever seen among journalists for QTs is to instigate pile-ons of the great unwashed. It has made the entire profession a joke, a toxic joke. When they started to use social media, at best it fell out as lazy content-scraping articles. At worst, it has been attacking random members of the public for saying "hey, trans people deserve some rights".
Journalists don't *need* QTs, which is evident in that the craft existed for fucking centuries before twitter. They've had, what, five years of having this tool, absolutely abused the shit out of it in this time, and now they're crying that they can't do journalism without it? Grow the fuck up, your job is to convey information, figure something out.
FWIW, I thing a quoting function could work quite well on here; the moderation here is imperfect but better than The Other Place, and many servers explicitly ban instigating pile-ons. The ones who use quotes abusively would probably find themselves or their instances defederated pretty quickly. And then the journalists will whine about getting blocked, too, quicker than you can say "fediblock".
My first pile-on from journalists happened in about 2012-2013ish. I'd pointed out that a New Statesman journalist has said something a bit biphobic. This was long before QTs, so instead it was a bunch of pissy tagged tweets sending nasty people my way, culminating in an article in said magazine coining an entirely new slur for bi women.
Then there was the time a columnist randomly decided to accuse me of a violent crime. Or the time a columnist decided to start attacking my ex for having tainted themself by having shagged me (several times). Or the time I literally had to get a cease and desist sent to the Mail. All of these originated on twitter. This is what I mean when I say that perhaps journalistic abuse of power on social media might be a problem and maybe we should be concerned about it.
I think the reporting feature on the fediverse may help, as I am sure admins of instances dedicated to journalism, should also be committed to professional standards. It only takes one or two people to bring down the reputation of others, so acting on reports is in the best interest of the admin AND other journalists.
But yes, something that the fediverse needs to be aware of so we can perhaps as a community decide what to do BEFORE a problem arises, so when something happens the community can act.
What do others think about this?
