MPeel-WMF

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Lack of Fediverse contact on Wikifunctions announcement

hi Mike (in WMF role),

It's quite embarrassing that now that UCOC is hypothetically policy across all Wikimedia wikis, the announcement about Wikifunctions advertises Twitter despite its increasing propagation of antisemitism and other forms of hate speech and does not have any link to WMF contacts on the Fediverse, although the existence of a thriving Wikis World Fediverse instance that is especially friendly to the Wikimedia community (though not restricted to it) would make it quite easy to include a link to a WMF account on the Fediverse.

There's a Fediverse thread discussing this. Could you please contact whoever at WMF handles the "social media" policy, get him/her to respond either here or directly on the Fediverse thread, and maybe give us a few URLs to show where this is being discussed and why the Fediverse is still absent? The WMF ought to be transparent, not opaque. And it should support social media that are the most compatible with the aims of the Wikimedia movement: diversity and community self-management in communication about knowledge, rather than amplification of hate speech.

Even the World Wide Web Consortium has just stated a few days ago that it "is no longer active on X/Twitter and ha[s] directed all [its] followers here to [the Fediverse]".

WMF could at least start to show that it is active and present in the non-hate-speech part of social media.

Thanks! Boud (talk) 01:57, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi Boud,

My name is Lucas Pasqual. I manage the Wikimedia Foundation social media accounts. Mike told us about your message. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

Many Wikimedia volunteers still have a presence on Twitter and engage in conversations there; these include individuals, user groups, and affiliates. The Wikimedia Foundation is active on the platform to respond to their needs and to amplify movement messages to general, external audiences. The Foundation is aware of the recent developments with Twitter and continues to monitor the situation to evaluate our presence there.

The Product & Technology Department manages the official Mastodon account for the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as the wikimedia.social instance. It is primarily used as a space for people to connect and talk about tech related topics.

We appreciate your suggestion of adding a social media share button linking to the fediverse. We are actively exploring the possibilities of integrating a plug-in to our website. LPasqual (WMF) (talk) 01:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

@LPasqual (WMF): hi Lucas, glad to hear that you're aware of the problems with Twitter and that you're thinking of adding a Fediverse plug-in. :) Boud (talk) 18:59, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Clarify: by "you" I meant the WMF. Boud (talk) 19:13, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Just to clarify: Facebook is credibly accused of amplifying the Tigray genocide and of playing a "determining role" in the Rohingya genocide. The choice to only use and display social media links with these sorts of track records is not consistent with goals of the Wikimedia movement (and makes the UCOC look like reputation washing). Boud (talk) 02:08, 11 December 2023 (UTC)