Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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@scottjenson it’s kind of what you said. Read what you said again if you don’t believe me. Black Twitter didn’t succeed on Mastodon not due to “gatekeeping”. But a failure of gatekeeping, at keeping the baddies out. E.g. racists or those not sensitive enough to recognize their racism.
@devlord @scottjenson current theory: scott is jake archibald with a stick on moustache
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As this conversation is spiraling a bit I want to make a few things clear:
1. I'd like Mastodon to be MORE inclusive and bring in more voices
2. Some people don't seem to want that
3. This is core problem to solve: How do we let more in, but not "pollute" your feed?
4. The solution is NOT "gatekeeping", revelling in the fact that AI journalists aren't welcome
5. This is the same reason we lost "Black Twitter" when it came over in 2022Yes, a lot of you don't want AI posts in your feed (or pick any other topic) but the solution isn't to keep "AI People" from joining Mastodon, any more than it is keeping marginalized communities off of Mastodon.
@scottjenson Which part of "federated" has your precious Apple-trained and AI-fawning mind not been able to wrap around? Go ahead and build a community of prompt fondlers. You can then all sit around and fondle prompts in your timelines. It'll be great. And the rest of this federated mess IS TOTALLY WITHIN THEIR RIGHTS to block your prompt fondling instance. Like we block nazi instances. And Trump instances. And whatever-the-fuck-else instances we don't want nothing to do with. It's FEDERATED. You not getting that in your head is your fault alone.
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@bogosian @scottjenson I’m not head of Mastodon! Have a good day.
@Gargron @bogosian @scottjenson Yeah, direct all complaints to John Mastodon
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@Gargron @bogosian @scottjenson they must've mistaken you for John. easy mistake to make.
@falcennial @Gargron @bogosian @scottjenson I should have named my instance admin account John… regrets.
Suppose I can spin up another account for when he’s summoned.
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As this conversation is spiraling a bit I want to make a few things clear:
1. I'd like Mastodon to be MORE inclusive and bring in more voices
2. Some people don't seem to want that
3. This is core problem to solve: How do we let more in, but not "pollute" your feed?
4. The solution is NOT "gatekeeping", revelling in the fact that AI journalists aren't welcome
5. This is the same reason we lost "Black Twitter" when it came over in 2022Yes, a lot of you don't want AI posts in your feed (or pick any other topic) but the solution isn't to keep "AI People" from joining Mastodon, any more than it is keeping marginalized communities off of Mastodon.
@scottjenson the solution would be focusing on harm reduction when responding to AI topics
this is one of those classic problems that cannot be solved with tech - only with community and communication
(also your comments around this topic eerily remind me of X acting entitled to their previous advertisers - nobody is stopped from joining and sharing their stuff, but also not entitled to engagement on it)
YinYin Falcon (@YinYinFalcon@mastodon.online)
incredibly important video on harm reduction from LLMs on an individual/interpersonal level https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y85nqc2zm7M
Mastodon (mastodon.online)
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@Gargron That is a personal choice and one which I totally respect. But I do think Mastodon should be big enough, and open enough, to allow an "AI community" to form, even thrive.
Too many people in my replies don't seem to agree with that.
@scottjenson but no one disallows that…? Ever thought about the idea that people here don’t WANT this much AI stuff? I think people on Mastodon are generally more critical of AI and see it more nuanced than the current hype in mainstream media. And this reflects in the engagement. I have more engagement and more followers in my niche hobby topics here on Mastodon than I ever had on Birdsite. I think communities here form much more naturally instead of being shoved into your stream.
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Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber? This post from @carnage4life has me questioning our community. The Mastodon team is finally getting some traction, the product improvements are increasing, The #UX is improving, yet people posting on multiple platforms are making comments like this. It's confusing.
I *know* people here don't want this to be a classic social media-clone but we'd *like* journalists to be here right? They aren't coming with examples like this!
@scottjenson @carnage4life Let me guess, "Mastodon [is] ... lukewarm to politics" is because you're refusing to CW stuff and have bad takes?
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As this conversation is spiraling a bit I want to make a few things clear:
1. I'd like Mastodon to be MORE inclusive and bring in more voices
2. Some people don't seem to want that
3. This is core problem to solve: How do we let more in, but not "pollute" your feed?
4. The solution is NOT "gatekeeping", revelling in the fact that AI journalists aren't welcome
5. This is the same reason we lost "Black Twitter" when it came over in 2022Yes, a lot of you don't want AI posts in your feed (or pick any other topic) but the solution isn't to keep "AI People" from joining Mastodon, any more than it is keeping marginalized communities off of Mastodon.
@scottjenson "How do we attract the shittiest people in existence to this platform that is currently enjoying the absence of said shitty people?"
We don't. Put the crackpipe down.
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Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber? This post from @carnage4life has me questioning our community. The Mastodon team is finally getting some traction, the product improvements are increasing, The #UX is improving, yet people posting on multiple platforms are making comments like this. It's confusing.
I *know* people here don't want this to be a classic social media-clone but we'd *like* journalists to be here right? They aren't coming with examples like this!
@scottjenson @carnage4life nobody is stopping ai bros from coming over here. Most people just don’t like you, that’s all. With no “for you” algorithm this becomes clearer.
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@scottjenson the solution would be focusing on harm reduction when responding to AI topics
this is one of those classic problems that cannot be solved with tech - only with community and communication
(also your comments around this topic eerily remind me of X acting entitled to their previous advertisers - nobody is stopped from joining and sharing their stuff, but also not entitled to engagement on it)
YinYin Falcon (@YinYinFalcon@mastodon.online)
incredibly important video on harm reduction from LLMs on an individual/interpersonal level https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y85nqc2zm7M
Mastodon (mastodon.online)
the hostility towards AI and leaders/companies pushing it is perfectly fine
it doing collateral antagonising of people reporting/talking about it is not
good luck trying to figure that out
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@evan @cratermoon Exactly, even asking that question "What value do they bring" is kind of scary.
It's a fine line, I get it. We draw the line at nazis and scammers but let's not cross the line into "intellectual purity" tests
@scottjenson @evan @cratermoon but no one is stopping them from joining? But people are free to not follow or interact if they don’t want to.
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@MisuseCase @Mabande @corbden @isagalaev @scottjenson @devlord @carnage4life
Good looking out, but it is not. I'll try and find the original later, I got busy at work. It was a journalist type who posted the one I'm talking about. Thank you for checking though.
@TeflonTrout @Mabande @corbden @isagalaev @scottjenson @devlord @carnage4life Oh okay. Yeah that sounds more like the “marketplace of ideas” crap I was thinking about.
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@scottjenson @evan @cratermoon
I don't see whats holding the "AI" people back from creating their own instances on the fediverse.
If someone will federate is another question but this "buh huh we're not allowed here" sounds pretty fake tbh.
@fzer0 @scottjenson @evan @cratermoon I think I know what's holding them back - they can't be bothered to do it themselves, they just want a whole community served up to them on a plate.
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@scottjenson @Gargron I just came back to my Mastodon account and one of the first things I see is people who have an interest in something being compared to puppy-killers by the "head" of Mastodon.
<turns it back off again>
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As this conversation is spiraling a bit I want to make a few things clear:
1. I'd like Mastodon to be MORE inclusive and bring in more voices
2. Some people don't seem to want that
3. This is core problem to solve: How do we let more in, but not "pollute" your feed?
4. The solution is NOT "gatekeeping", revelling in the fact that AI journalists aren't welcome
5. This is the same reason we lost "Black Twitter" when it came over in 2022Yes, a lot of you don't want AI posts in your feed (or pick any other topic) but the solution isn't to keep "AI People" from joining Mastodon, any more than it is keeping marginalized communities off of Mastodon.
@scottjenson
AI people are going to gravitate to platforms with dopamine fueled algorithms that are easier to manipulate people using their AI tools for engagement. The organic nature of Fedi's self curated feed is antithetical to algorithmic hype and going to be of very little appeal to anyone trying to market their AI products here.I have seen numerous people spamming their AI stuff here, what I haven't seen is anyone giving them any attention, which they seem to think theyre entitled to.
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As this conversation is spiraling a bit I want to make a few things clear:
1. I'd like Mastodon to be MORE inclusive and bring in more voices
2. Some people don't seem to want that
3. This is core problem to solve: How do we let more in, but not "pollute" your feed?
4. The solution is NOT "gatekeeping", revelling in the fact that AI journalists aren't welcome
5. This is the same reason we lost "Black Twitter" when it came over in 2022Yes, a lot of you don't want AI posts in your feed (or pick any other topic) but the solution isn't to keep "AI People" from joining Mastodon, any more than it is keeping marginalized communities off of Mastodon.
@scottjenson I want to push back on a couple of things. first, the idea that "this is the same reason we lost Black Twitter" - to me they aren't really comparable at all. This example you led with, is a person observing that Masto doesn't meet their goals from engaging with social media professionally. That's very different from the combination of access, lacking mod tools & culture friction that repelled early Black adopters and made bluesky the path of least resistance.
In fact, the post in your OP doesn't seem like a gatekeeping problem at all, to me. It sounds like the dude just didn't find the engagement he wanted here, and therefore chose to invest energy otherwise. Only an issue under the assumption that a space has to be for everyone (big assumption!)
if I said "yknow there's just not a lot of response on bluesky to my cranky too-online autistic anticapitalist ravings" would that feel like an accusation of untenable gatekeeping?
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@Gargron That is a personal choice and one which I totally respect. But I do think Mastodon should be big enough, and open enough, to allow an "AI community" to form, even thrive.
Too many people in my replies don't seem to agree with that.
@scottjenson @Gargron I find there's lots of "AI positive" people on Mastodon, just like there are many other "communities" I disagree with here. But we shouldn't pretend that the few posts we see ourselves are what constitutes the whole of Mastodon, much less the Fediverse.
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@cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron This is a very rich ethics question hidden in a specific example.
Would you permit or allow any community with which you disagree to participate on a platform, even if you’re not forced to participate?
A shortlist of thought experiments, to broaden the perspective, some of which are already here, some not…
- The oil & gas community
- Forestry workers (logging)
- The cryptocurrency community
- Workers at a chick rendering plant
- The finance industry
- Adult content creators
- Religious communitiesIs there a litmus test for topics that you can or can’t discuss on the fediverse? Specific servers sure, but the whole fediverse?
Does that align with the values put forth by mastodon or the fediverse in general?
I don’t have the answers.
@trisweb @cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron my take is simple: make the community you want to live in. For me, that excludes bigots, trolls, advertisers, anyone that refers to themselves as "content creators" or "influencers" but I repeat myself... Those extroverted attention seeker types who have tons of "followers" but no real friends, and don't post anything but paywalled news headlines and don't actually talk to other people... people who think human connection can and should be quantified and measured and analyzed and commodified SHOULD NOT BE ON FEDI.
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@vfrmedia @mattwilcox
But even in these last two replies, you're perfectly making my point for me. Do I want AI Grifters? Of course not! But should people be allowed to discuss possible uses of AI? Absolutely! The person I quoted is NOT a grifter but due to our culture, he is seen as one and gleefully shoo'ed away.That is the slippery slope I'm worried about. We can likely agree on many bad actors that should not be here. What we can't seem to agree on is "what is honest debate"
You are 100% correct and if the _loud minority_ (because that's what they are - even though they love to proclaim differently) don't realise that they can mute/block instead of screaming off the top of their lungs in everyone's mentions then there will in the end be very little said.
Troed Sångberg (@troed@swecyb.com)
The anti-AI sentiment seen from some here on Mastodon has gotten way out of hand. The comments on Mozilla's post yesterday is a horrifying read for anyone who would like to see the Fediverse becoming a de facto public square, or the European social network of choice for public functions and companies. A lot of the people belonging to this very vocal crowd are also ... just wrong. I saw a comment to another post yesterday where a bus driver proudly proclaimed that anyone who talks positively about "random word probability generators" having no clue about how they work. I wrote my first back-propagating neural network in 1993. I hold a degree in Software Engineering. I've studied the human underpinnings (neurofysiology/neuropsychology) of today's LLM architecture. ... and I consider the truth to be somewhere inbetween of the "LLMs are 100x developers" and "they're just parroting out training data with no insight". They're simply useful tools for some purposes. It's sad to see exactly the same polarizing happen here on Mastodon that happened on Xitter.
Swedish Cybersecurity Community (swecyb.com)
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@EndlessMason @scottjenson @cratermoon @evan this. I’ve been struggling to articulate that this whole conversation appears to be nonsense. Nobody is stopping AI bros or even straight-up Nazis from joining mastodon. This platform is literal anarchy.
Anybody can join. Anybody can say whatever they want. Anyone can chose to block or defederate from anyone they want. There are no limits or rules, beyond those imposed by individual instances and users over their own feeds.
What more could you possibly ask for in terms of ‘inclusiveness’?
The only thing you cannot have on this platform is a guaranteed audience. If people don’t want to follow you or see your toots, they have that option. There absolutely, 100% are pro-AI people on Mastodon. Technically, even Truth Social is Mastodon, it’s just not federated with anyone else.
@josh0 @scottjenson @cratermoon @evan
A good portion of media is people complaining about how they're being silenced or cancelled or discriminated against by the "inclusion people" when they're rich as shit and are literally complaining on the front page of the paper of record, or posing for the poster of a comedy special with duct tape over their mouths, or guesting on a high circulation show/channel.Algofeeds love to promote this shit because it attracts so much "engagement" from team sports-type people either agreeing or eyerolling in the comments, which just makes the silencing complaints louder - it's exhausting.
Please, I'm begging you, be silenced more quietly.
