Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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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 always has been, to be honest. Niche platform means you need to be fed up with mainstream enough to leave your friends, high barrier to entry and general decentralization struggles cause mostly technical folks to be here. Not surprised, that the opinions here are quite homogenous
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@ben But that's the very definition of a mono-culture. A vibrant community allows all of these topics, encourages them even. Then, with filters, who you follow, hashtags, and blocking you get the feed you want.
To get the culture you want by cutting off the supply is counter productive.
@scottjenson @ben I think that is in parts what happens. I noticed that my timeline, thanks to blocks and mutes has become quite monotone.
To get out of that, I recently went to some instances outside my bubble and follow (more or less) random people.
As a thought bite: I think in the earlier days the federated timeline countered this experience better, but AFAIK as part of UX improvements for instances like mastodon.social that has moved more out of focus.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life Not sure why a journalist would be disappointend that people hate "AI".
Generally taking engangement as a KPI for journalism is understandable for obvious economical reasons. But I don't want to be engaged by journalism. I want be informed and often enough also left alone and look at kittens and nerdy projects instead.@mormund And you have every right to do that. But do that with filtering/blocking/hashtags. Don't do it by chasing away people that want to be part of the community. "Gatekeeping" is not a good look for an "open social" network.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life Bluesky on the other hand resolves this (partially) with its starter packs. The user experience being that you essentially subscribe to 'sections of interest' (e.g. as if federated, but technically not so), but still see the overall system of all posts from anyone ever, if you would like to.
@scottjenson @carnage4life To be clear here, I am unhappy with both Mastodon and Bluesky, but they are both the best options out of all available. I wrote about Bluesky's issues here: https://bsky.app/profile/rystorm.com/post/3lq2n5oahs22y
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@patrick_h_lauke So is the only alternative "number go DOWN" metrics? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm trying to find a way to have both be possible: how can we keep our soul but still have a diverse community.
My concern is that your comment uses the "we don't want a number go up mentality" argument to hide the fact that our community is a mono culture.
@scottjenson sounds a bit like "people don't engage with my content, so it's a monoculture"?
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@scottjenson sounds a bit like "people don't engage with my content, so it's a monoculture"?
@scottjenson the alternative is a "number mean NOTHING" metric...
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Anecdotally, the last few times I have seen a Bluesky user mention Mastodon it's been to complain they see "trolls over the bridge". Screenshots refer to servers I never see on fedi actual.
1) there's a lot more diversity on ActivityPub than is visible
2) it may be the kind most mainstream fedi servers block as trolls
@scottjenson @carnage4life@osma The number don't lie, active users on Mastodon are going DOWN not up, we're hemorrhaging users, most likely because we're chasing many of them away with these 'purity tests'. I certainly am not experiencing this diversity you are referring to.
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@RYStorm
Sorry but I'm not parsing "I bet I could manually edit a deck together for both but... even I don't, because UX."Could you explain that a bit more?
@scottjenson Sure: I use the 'deck' view of mastodon. I have a home column, a local timeline column, and a notifications column.
I do not have a simple + button on the right side of these columns to then add more columns such as timelines from other servers. I know there is another gamedev server out there, and I would like to read their posts too. And I would like for them to read mine. But there is no way for either of us to easily do that, so we just stay blind and confined.
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@mormund And you have every right to do that. But do that with filtering/blocking/hashtags. Don't do it by chasing away people that want to be part of the community. "Gatekeeping" is not a good look for an "open social" network.
@scottjenson totally with you. I apologize if I came across like that, I think this place could do lot more to welcome people, especially from marginalized groups. But I think we shouldn't chase the content machinery here either
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@scottjenson Sure: I use the 'deck' view of mastodon. I have a home column, a local timeline column, and a notifications column.
I do not have a simple + button on the right side of these columns to then add more columns such as timelines from other servers. I know there is another gamedev server out there, and I would like to read their posts too. And I would like for them to read mine. But there is no way for either of us to easily do that, so we just stay blind and confined.
@scottjenson Similarly, if I do find someone on a different server who I would like to follow, this is sometimes easy and I can just hit 'follow'. Other times, it immediately asks me to write out my full mastodon server account, which I do not even know what it is, because when I am logged in all I see is '@RYStorm', not 'mastodon.gamedev.place/@rystorm', if that is even what I need to type out
So the technical ability of the federation is neat, the UX to make it not an echo chamber is missing
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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 Errr. I don’t see a problem with this at all, frankly.
No. I don’t particularly want them here. I don’t mind if they are, but I won’t see them. This isn’t a space where I want the typical stuff that I can see anywhere and everywhere else. I like here for precisely what *isnt* here. No chasing clout, no engagement farming, no monetary driven agenda. But nothing is stopping such people from being here except *it doesn’t work well here*. And that’s good. IMO.
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@scottjenson the alternative is a "number mean NOTHING" metric...
@patrick_h_lauke The metrics are clear, people are leaving mastodon, our daily actives are going down. I agree that pursing follower count is not what Mastodon should be about, we likely agree on many points here. I'm just trying to say 'being more welcoming of other points of view' shouldn't be controvertial. Yet so many replies have been "we don't want them here!" which feels very head-in-the-sand to me.
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@patrick_h_lauke So is the only alternative "number go DOWN" metrics? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm trying to find a way to have both be possible: how can we keep our soul but still have a diverse community.
My concern is that your comment uses the "we don't want a number go up mentality" argument to hide the fact that our community is a mono culture.
@scottjenson seems like now you're shifting the goalpost. are we talking about "people don't like / fave / reply as much" (engagement) or "people actively tells me they don't want my content here" (and again, on which server are they? that's always an important aspect too)
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@scottjenson @carnage4life Errr. I don’t see a problem with this at all, frankly.
No. I don’t particularly want them here. I don’t mind if they are, but I won’t see them. This isn’t a space where I want the typical stuff that I can see anywhere and everywhere else. I like here for precisely what *isnt* here. No chasing clout, no engagement farming, no monetary driven agenda. But nothing is stopping such people from being here except *it doesn’t work well here*. And that’s good. IMO.
@mattwilcox but our numbers are steadily going down. We are NOT in a steady state. You won't be able to have this place if we just keep going the way we are.
I"m a bit surprised that asking for "big tent mentality" is considered a bad thing! I thought we wanted diversity? I thought this was meant to be the place where we all could come? This gatekeeping is not a good look (or a healthy one)
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@scottjenson Similarly, if I do find someone on a different server who I would like to follow, this is sometimes easy and I can just hit 'follow'. Other times, it immediately asks me to write out my full mastodon server account, which I do not even know what it is, because when I am logged in all I see is '@RYStorm', not 'mastodon.gamedev.place/@rystorm', if that is even what I need to type out
So the technical ability of the federation is neat, the UX to make it not an echo chamber is missing
@scottjenson Just thinking out loud here, so this may be incorrect:
I think the 'federated' part is technically very neat, and resolve the potential issue of yet another social media service dying out, which Mastodon cannot do as it is FOSS. As long as someone wants it to exist, it will exist.
But, I think federation was incorrectly used as part of the user experience, rather than the technical lifeline it should have stayed. Thus creating echo chambers by default, and rough onboarding UX
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@patrick_h_lauke So is the only alternative "number go DOWN" metrics? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm trying to find a way to have both be possible: how can we keep our soul but still have a diverse community.
My concern is that your comment uses the "we don't want a number go up mentality" argument to hide the fact that our community is a mono culture.
@scottjenson we have fedi instances for LGBTQ+ furries, all the way to instances for rabid right-wing neonazis. i'm not sure i'd call that a monoculture (compared to, say, monolithic platforms like threads and bluesky, where they are all smushed into a single instance)
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@scottjenson seems like now you're shifting the goalpost. are we talking about "people don't like / fave / reply as much" (engagement) or "people actively tells me they don't want my content here" (and again, on which server are they? that's always an important aspect too)
@patrick_h_lauke Good point, I didn't mean to shift the goal posts! Part of my goal here is to understand the problem better. The original post was superficially about engagement but it was really about how a journalist isn't welcome here on Mastodon. (and people seem to be quite happy about that!)
So yeah, my argument is likely shifting with the replies I'm getting. But I can't believe that asking for 'a big tent' is considered a bad thing.
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@mattwilcox but our numbers are steadily going down. We are NOT in a steady state. You won't be able to have this place if we just keep going the way we are.
I"m a bit surprised that asking for "big tent mentality" is considered a bad thing! I thought we wanted diversity? I thought this was meant to be the place where we all could come? This gatekeeping is not a good look (or a healthy one)
@scottjenson We want opportunity to have those things. But if they don’t come here… oh well.
It’s not gate keeping if some sorts of content simply don’t work well with the ecosystem.
Why are you wanting to chase growth? Why do you feel *this* is the issue, for example, and not the long storied history of neglecting Black voices in this space? As an example.
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@scottjenson Just thinking out loud here, so this may be incorrect:
I think the 'federated' part is technically very neat, and resolve the potential issue of yet another social media service dying out, which Mastodon cannot do as it is FOSS. As long as someone wants it to exist, it will exist.
But, I think federation was incorrectly used as part of the user experience, rather than the technical lifeline it should have stayed. Thus creating echo chambers by default, and rough onboarding UX
@scottjenson A potential solution (with a probably huge cost that makes it impossible to achieve), is to essentially have the data of each user saved to the federated server they are on, but have extremely easy to use connections and timelines that folks can set up between them.
For example, so that while there are 2 major game development servers, we both subscribe to the same 'timeline', on which we then all see our posts, and share our posts. But our account data is saved to separate servers
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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 mastodon has a reputation for being filled with tech bros and linux guys. this drives other types of people away. I use linux myself but if you join some instances, it seems like that's all people ever talk about, and it can be very boring, if not incomprehensible for people not familiar with technobabble. more diversity is needed, both in terms of demographics and interests, but I don't know the best way to reach out...
I think trying to appeal to the small/indie web crowd might be a good idea, they're not traditionally techy but they skew young and lots of them have made their own sites on neocities, etc. "make your own social media site" seems like the next natural step.
