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
Cpusa.org
(And many others.)
Podcasts:
The Deprogram:
https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/The_Deprogram
Revolutionary Left Radio:
Guerrilla History:
https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/
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:
Sure would be neat, but it always comes down to funding.
Ads? No thanks, I'm here bcause the fediverse is not doing that.
... and content.
Can you be super fast and exclusive and sell that? not really, all the super fast stuff is delivered by random people who witness things, or press releases that are piped directly into the feed anyway.
Can you be super high quality and sell that? That's just a regular website and people haven't believed in "it's a website, it'll make money for sure", since 1999
Some publishers do it for free or rely solely on donations. It’s hard for me to imagine a payment system—never mind a paywall system—being built into a fediverse platform. Donations would probably have to be out-of-band, through existing platforms like Ko-fi & Liberapay.
There's also apparently Crowdbucks
https://wedistribute.org/2025/08/introducing-crowdbucks/
Yeah there are many of them. Patreon is big, but I’ve heard nothing but bad things about it from donees.
I think that CB is attempting to become a wrapper for all of them.
Ie you could use CB to pay using crypto, or Stripe, Apple/Google Pay, SAMSUNG Wallet, or etc
Oh. Hosting videos is very expensive, so if anything needs a solution, it’s PeerTube.
Don't forget about Loops