“As the social media landscape ebbs and flows, the team at BBC Research & Development are researching social technologies and exploring possibilities for the BBC. One part of our work is to establish a BBC presence in the distributed collection of social networks known as the Fediverse, a collection of social media applications all linked together by common protocols. The most common software used in this area is Mastodon, a Twitter-like social networking service with around 2 million active monthly users. We are now running an experimental BBC Mastodon server at https://social.bbc where you can follow some of the BBC’s social media accounts, including BBC R&D, Radio 4 and 5 Live. We hope to be able to add more accounts from other areas of the BBC at some point.”
While the person you’re replying to seems to be trolling, there is a legitimate argument that the BBC is influenced by the current government. The argument is that the current government has had a hand in appointing the current BBC director, and he’s a member of the Conservative party or a donor.
I haven’t looked into it for a while, so am not up to speed on the details, but if the detractors are correct, it’s not a good look for the BBC.
Unfortunately, BBC news has been corrupted from the inside. It used to be impressively independent of the UK government. It was happy to hold any politician’s feet to the fire. This is why the conservative party worked so hard to put their own stooge at the top. Careers now stop progressing, if you are overly critical of the government, at least in the news department.
Overall the BBC still leans slightly left, and produces a lot of good material. I no longer trust it to report evenly on our government anymore. It’s still a lot better than most news organisations overall however.