So I’ve been thinking about the whole PSKY winning the bid for WBD situation, plus a ton of other US News sites being owned and controlled by MAGA — and now that PSKY owns massive legacy brands like CNN and platforms like TikTok, it got me wondering:
What would it look like if the Fediverse built its own large-scale news station?
And I don’t mean news apps (I know things like Flipboard already exist and are experimenting with federation). I mean:
A full-on journalism operation that is:
Fediverse-first
Hosted via PeerTube, Loops, its own website, etc.
Producing regular news broadcasts, investigative journalism, live streams, analysis panels, documentaries, etc.
Two Possible Models
- Professional Model (CNN-style equivalent)
A structured newsroom:
Editors, reporters, correspondents
Daily live broadcasts via PeerTube
Clip distribution via Loops
Federation across Mastodon/Lemmy/Pixelfed
Transparent funding (co-op model? public donations? instance-backed?)
Essentially: a decentralized alternative to cable news, but not algorithm-driven or corporate-owned.
- Amateur / Grassroots Model
Think:
Independent PeerTubers collaborating
Loop creators reporting locally
Lemmy communities functioning as distributed editorial desks
Citizen journalism amplified through federation
This could look more like a decentralized wire service, where stories propagate organically across instances.
Alternative Idea: Federated News Aggregator
Instead of building from scratch, what if the Fediverse collaborated with existing independent outlets like:
World Socialist Web Site
Communist.red
Mother Jones
The Nation
Common Dreams
The Intercept
Jacobin
(And many others.)
Podcasts:
The Deprogram:
https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/The_Deprogram
Revolutionary Left Radio:
Guerrilla History:
https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/
Jacobin Radio:
https://jacobin.com/author/jacobin-radio
The Majority Report:
https://majorityreportradio.com/
Against the Grain:
https://kpfa.org/program/against-the-grain/
etc
YouTubers:
https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Hakim
Second Thought:
https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Second_Thought
YUGOPNIK:
https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/YUGOPNIK
r/TankieTheDeprogram
https://www.reddit.com/r/TankieTheDeprogram/s/mJqfxpGOYK
r/TheDeprogarm
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogarm/s/Re7CYFSaSW
Maybe:
A federated aggregator
A shared ActivityPub-based publishing layer
A “news hub” instance that boosts and categorizes content
Or something similar to the federated streaming marketplace idea I suggested before — but for journalism instead of an Amazon Prime alternative
https://lemmy.world/post/40697282
Big Questions
Would a Fediverse news network increase credibility — or fragment it?
How would editorial standards work in a decentralized ecosystem?
Could co-op funding sustain professional reporting?
Would mainstream journalists ever migrate?
Should this aim to compete with centralized media — or complement it?
Also: would this risk becoming ideologically siloed? Or would federation naturally diversify perspectives?
Curious what everyone thinks.
Is this unrealistic? Inevitable? Already quietly happening?
Link to same post, but on Reddit:
Existing independent organisations is probably the only realistic one of these. Creating an actually competent news agency build from scratch takes a lot of work resources, making it dependent on the fediverse seems like an arbitrary limitation.
But freelancers and existing networks starting to work with the fediverse because our ideals match, that could definitely happen.