Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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@scottjenson @carnage4life I've been privately sharing this link to a post by @MozillaAI , an Open Source non-profit announcing an Open Source AI project to make development with AI safer, more efficient, and less costly. They got brigaded in a pretty threatening way, and people I know and respect jumped in to join the dogpile.
mozilla.ai (@MozillaAI@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Agents shouldn’t have to figure everything out from scratch. Right now, they do. cq is a Stack Overflow for agents, where knowledge is shared and improved over time. Less repetition. More reliable outcomes. See how it works: https://link.mozilla.ai/cq-stack-overflow-for-agents
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
@evan @scottjenson @MozillaAI Mastodon as a community is quite hostile to AI and anything that isn’t a criticism of AI is viewed with skepticism at best and typically with hostility as the default.
It’s unfortunate because, as in your Mozilla example, there is still time to shape how AI is used in our industry. It’s better to engage and try to influence it versus stick your head in the sand and have the change thrusted upon you.
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@octothorpe @Gargron I think the "Black Twitter" migration of 2022 would disagree.
Of course there are no technical reasons this can't happen. My original post wasn't about technology but culture. The Mastodon culture (for complex reasons) chased away black twitter. It's doing the same with AI and my biggest worry, many other topics that "don't fit".
There *is* a culture to Mastodon outside of the tech and I'm suggesting that it is too exclusive. This ultimately hurts us.
@scottjenson @Gargron The evac of Black Mastodon is a very complex and nuanced topic that was mostly fuelled by coordinated active racist harassment campaigns.
But let’s not at all try to equate what happened there with what is a general disinterest / distain / hostility for what was a computer science topic turned sociopolitical.
They are not the same.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life Mastodon is 100% an echo chamber in my experience.
Some topics are taboo, and there is very little tolerance for everything that is not the accepted opinion.
I think Mastodon is the platform where I’ve seen the smallest diversity of opinions on any non-technical topic.
Yet I want the fediverse to succeed as a platform to liberate the general public from monopolistic and toxic platforms.
@thibaultamartin @scottjenson @carnage4life this, exactly.
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@mattwilcox @Gargron But that is a slippery slope. I realize this might seem contentious but I believe it's is exactly the same mechanism that chased away black twitter in 2022. If we celebrate our culture, to the point that we are happy we are excluding others, it can cut both ways.
"Being inclusive" is like being "ethical" it only matters when things get hard.
@scottjenson @Gargron It feels like you are looking at this backwards to me. The *system* needs to be fair and the result is what happens. When Black people told Mastodon they needed safety features like shared blocklists etc; that could benefit *everyone*, they were not listened to. They left. That was a culture choice at Mastodon HQ.
What do AI people / journalists need *to express themselves safely*? Safety and inclusivity to engage is the goal. Not being owed an audience.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life I've been privately sharing this link to a post by @MozillaAI , an Open Source non-profit announcing an Open Source AI project to make development with AI safer, more efficient, and less costly. They got brigaded in a pretty threatening way, and people I know and respect jumped in to join the dogpile.
mozilla.ai (@MozillaAI@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Agents shouldn’t have to figure everything out from scratch. Right now, they do. cq is a Stack Overflow for agents, where knowledge is shared and improved over time. Less repetition. More reliable outcomes. See how it works: https://link.mozilla.ai/cq-stack-overflow-for-agents
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
I understand and agree that some content is unacceptable.
We can and should cut off racist, homophobic, misogynistic and transphobic harassers and abusers.
I just don't think using CoPilot tab completion falls into that same bucket of unacceptable behaviour.
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@evan @scottjenson @MozillaAI Mastodon as a community is quite hostile to AI and anything that isn’t a criticism of AI is viewed with skepticism at best and typically with hostility as the default.
It’s unfortunate because, as in your Mozilla example, there is still time to shape how AI is used in our industry. It’s better to engage and try to influence it versus stick your head in the sand and have the change thrusted upon you.
@carnage4life @scottjenson @MozillaAI well, bless their hearts for posting through it. There are some more troubling threads in their stream, especially when they highlight team members.
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@scottjenson @Gargron It feels like you are looking at this backwards to me. The *system* needs to be fair and the result is what happens. When Black people told Mastodon they needed safety features like shared blocklists etc; that could benefit *everyone*, they were not listened to. They left. That was a culture choice at Mastodon HQ.
What do AI people / journalists need *to express themselves safely*? Safety and inclusivity to engage is the goal. Not being owed an audience.
@mattwilcox First, thank you for this conversation, it's very helpful. Second, while not shipping shared block lists was an issue, there was also issues at the culture level that chased people away. Finally I don't think AI folks need anything, they are just a lightning rod for the "people I don't personally want around" problem. It's a test for how we navigate this going forward.
There are people saying in my replies "we don't want them here". I realize a line that needs to be drawn somewhere (e.g. nazis) but my point is that "as a culture" we should want to have more voices here (in general)
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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 The people here that are knowledgeable on AI have interesting conversations. I share articles about it almost daily, however both of these situations are not what I would call enthusiast friendly. For that we should make no apology.
Having an audience with a known preference for human generated art, media and data is an important metric to be considered & it is a personal pleasure to see it reflected.
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@scottjenson @Gargron I'd have to ask, what value would an an AI Booster community bring to the FediVerse?
@cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron nobody has to earn their place on the Fediverse. Access to free and open social networking is a human right. You don't get to gatekeep this network.
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@evan @scottjenson @MozillaAI Mastodon as a community is quite hostile to AI and anything that isn’t a criticism of AI is viewed with skepticism at best and typically with hostility as the default.
It’s unfortunate because, as in your Mozilla example, there is still time to shape how AI is used in our industry. It’s better to engage and try to influence it versus stick your head in the sand and have the change thrusted upon you.
@carnage4life @evan Strongly agree. The current AI companies have done much to be criticized but the tech itself, especially the open source and local versions (which this community should love) is actually a positive force here. We need to have discussions to understand the differences.
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@cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron nobody has to earn their place on the Fediverse. Access to free and open social networking is a human right. You don't get to gatekeep this network.
@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
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@carnage4life @scottjenson @MozillaAI well, bless their hearts for posting through it. There are some more troubling threads in their stream, especially when they highlight team members.
@evan @carnage4life @scottjenson @MozillaAI
It is unfortunately very easy to convince yourself that abuse and harrassment are OK as long as they're in service of a morally just cause.
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@scottjenson It's not that people who want to talk about AI aren't allowed. They're on here.
Most of us just don't want to follow them because it's tedious.
@mayintoronto @scottjenson @Gargron there's a big difference between ignoring people and abusing people.
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@scottjenson @Gargron The evac of Black Mastodon is a very complex and nuanced topic that was mostly fuelled by coordinated active racist harassment campaigns.
But let’s not at all try to equate what happened there with what is a general disinterest / distain / hostility for what was a computer science topic turned sociopolitical.
They are not the same.
@octothorpe i agree they are not exactly the same. But "inclusivity" is *always* a complicated topic and never an easy one to solve. Mastodon has always tried to be a safe haven for marginalized people (although it has been a bumpy road and could be better!)
My point is that many of the replies to my post were basically "AI bad, they shouldn't be here" and while I respect anyone's right to think that, it's something else to say we should actively chase them away. They are not nazis and they are not scammers (well, most of them aren't)
I'm just saying the kicking people out for their ideas is a slippery slope and one which we should discuss more and be very careful with.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life on the topic of AI, I find the abusive conversations on the Fediverse pretty dispiriting. People I like and respect have worked themselves into the position that use of AI is an inexcusable sin, and that anyone who uses AI merits harassment and abuse. Given that 85% of developers use or plan to use AI (Stack Overflow poll), that means a huge number of tech people getting brigaded by our anti-AI squad.
@evan @panos @scottjenson @carnage4life Two things can be true at the same time:
- Using LLMs is unacceptable
- We should not abuse individuals for using LLMs, both because that is ineffective at stopping LLM use, and because everyone does harmful things to survive capitalismThe real problem is when people deny the harms, or decide to ignore the harms because of "inevitability" etc. It's understandable that you want the thing you're doing to not be harmful, but wishing won't make it so.
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@mayintoronto @scottjenson @Gargron there's a big difference between ignoring people and abusing people.
@evan Yeah, I mute people who are that aggressive, so I don't see it. You probably see it a lot more than me as an admin.
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@thibaultamartin @scottjenson @carnage4life this, exactly.
@stairjoke @thibaultamartin I'm happy to get comments like this. It's bit frustrating that there do appear to be two camps here, although I'm not surprised.
Part of the reason I "bait" these conversations is to at least bring this discussion into the open. We must realize that our culture *is* the driving force behind our success (or failure)
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@Gargron @scottjenson Put more simply; I care about mastodon being equal opportunity, and improving ease of access for all.
That does not mean the audience segmentation should match other places. Those other places have their own biases skewing their own audiences. I sure as hell don’t think mastodon ought to have the same representation of fascists as twitter does “to be fair”, for example. That place grows those, we do not.
@mattwilcox @gargron @scottjenson
By and large modern Mastodon / Fediverse *is* a welcoming and diverse place.
There have been historical issues with lack of timely moderation, ongoing issues about reply controls and a long standing problem that parts of Fediverse are run by edgelords that had already been yeeted from just about everywhere else (even corporate socials) and they actively try to disrupt things, but its endured this and even attracted interesting segments of folk such as older adults (age 60-70+) who are *not* all tech focused.
What is generally unpopular here is any kind of "hustle" or tech/AI bro culture (no matter who it is from), and those who push it too hard can end up being chased off to the sound of Yakety Sax
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@scottjenson thank you for starting this thread scott, its both good and painful
@laurenshof The only way out is through
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I understand and agree that some content is unacceptable.
We can and should cut off racist, homophobic, misogynistic and transphobic harassers and abusers.
I just don't think using CoPilot tab completion falls into that same bucket of unacceptable behaviour.
@scottjenson @carnage4life I think one opportunity we have on the Fediverse is using AI for richer, deeper social engagement, making ourselves happier and more fulfilled.
