It’s Pledge-Drive time, so they’re playing far less music and doing a ton more talking, begging listeners to contact them, pleading for interaction, suggesting support. But on their website, all the ways they interact with the public are… distasteful. So I emailed them.
Been an MPR supporter off-and-on over the years, specifically a supporter of the Current for the past 14 months.
Given the way Zuckerberg put his thumb on the scales of the 2016 election, and how most of these services have drifted further and further right-wing, it feels antithetical that Minnesota Public Radio leverages these platforms for public interaction Though I understand it was the path of least resistance, and surely started long before the most unseemly factors were as clearly evident as they are now. I suppose it could be worse – you could re-brand yourselves as the official radio network of the oil industry. LOL
I humbly suggest that MPR should strongly consider the Fediverse. Independent. Open. Not owned by anybody.
Mastodon – if you want a somewhat twitter-like experience.
Funkwhale – if you want to do music sharing/streaming (and probably searching for new indie music).
PeerTube – for video sharing, channel-following, etc.
The one I’m most familiar with is Mastodon. As Elon began gutting many of the best features of Twitter, there began a signification migration of those users to Mastodon (and other platforms). The thing I hear repeatedly from other ex-tweeters is that they had 10x as many followers on Twitter as compared to how many followers they have on Mastodon, yet their posts on Mastodon get them 10x more meaningful engagement/discussion than they got from Twitter.
If you did, thank you for reading & considering,
—
KDO
