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 Mastodon is lukewarm to politics? That hasn't been my experience at all.
In fact, that rejection of AI is very political in its roots.
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@cratermoon @evan should everyone who joins mastodon be forced to pass that gauntlet? Who are the gate keepers? There shouldn't be a purity test. Catch the scammers of course, but passing judgement on the quality of someone's thoughts is very dubious
@scottjenson @cratermoon @evan I am the gatekeeper of MY timeline. So if I don't want some content, I don't follow it or I can even block it. And you have all the tools to create your own instance about AI things... that I won't follow.
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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 LLMs are dehumanizing technologies. Most people here value community, connection, and authenticity. What exactly do you expect?
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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 I think the issue is that the fediverse has issues with the engagement-farming business models of the other platforms.
I think any niche can fly here, it just needs to be genuine. I see plenty of politics, but also plenty of music and the arts.
Tech also thrives on here, but from a retro/maker/open source perspective, not a big tech one.
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@scottjenson @Gargron They could even create their own server, and let people decide if they want to follow them, or not, or mute or block them.
I suspect the "problem" here is that people has power to decide what they want to see at their timeline...
@andrewblasco @scottjenson @Gargron Oh no! If Mastodon doesn’t grow at all costs, how will it generate value for the shareholders and investors?
At this rate, Mastodon will never IPO…
/s
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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 isn't a voice, the confusion lies there I believe.
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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 don’t know how to word this in a less inflammatory way but comparing the organic rejection of techbros who feel entitled to treat social media as some sort of stock market they can manipulate and growth hack and whatever so they can make money off of people (plus: who will have forgotten their grift in a year or two. how’s their NFT collection going?) to actual racist harassment is, frankly, despicable
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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 Comparing "AI people" to Black people is vile.
Everybody is free to post whatever they want. Posting boring stuff is a choice. Nobody has to follow them, everybody is free to block them.
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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.
Who's keeping them from joining? That's not a thing.
As a user though I have the right to not engage with 'AI people' and no amount of needless philosophising is going to change that.
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@jkmcnk @scottjenson @Gargron the Fediverse has a thriving community of straight up neonazis, but everyone fucking shuns them. AI can have that, sure.
@davidgerard @jkmcnk @scottjenson @Gargron Truth Social is a fork of Mastodon, so...
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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@mas.to "least engagement with tech topics"? i find that very hard to believe. i see posts on here from people complaining that all they see are posts from linux nerds. my timeline is full of programmers, makers, scientists, maths nuts — and not because i follow these people, for the most part.
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@scottjenson @Gargron we need neither neo-nazi instances nor Ai culture.
@remove_huilo @scottjenson @Gargron just think how much we miss not federating with gab
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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 Not sure how a discussion of what is *allowed* is relevant here. AI talk certainly isn't forbidden.
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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@social.coop @carnage4life@mas.to Well, there is more to the fediverse than Mastodon. Not engaging with something is not gatekeeping.
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@cratermoon @evan should everyone who joins mastodon be forced to pass that gauntlet? Who are the gate keepers? There shouldn't be a purity test. Catch the scammers of course, but passing judgement on the quality of someone's thoughts is very dubious
@scottjenson @cratermoon @evan
Which gauntlet?Nobody is stopping you posting. Nobody is stopping you firing up an instance on a $30 second hand rpi on your home internet, or a vps. There is very minimal oversight on creating an account on most instances. Moderation is manual, minimal and usually only reacts to reports.
If you're posting with hash tags your readers will look for and you're getting nowhere it's because there's just no "organic" audience for what you're doing. Maybe check out an instance you share more interests with? Find your people.
I'm on this thing, at least in part, because I do not want a "for you", I don't want a "people like you wanted" or a "trending" or a "most heart upvoted by gold users" algo feed. I definitely don't want a "somebody paid me to show you this post" feed. What I want is to see posts from the people on whom I clicked the "show me this persons posts" button
If users don't want to read/interact with the content you'll find "Boosting" it by changing the machinery of the platform is just going to piss people off. They'll just block you, or defederate
I don't see how "people wanting to read your posts" is too high of a bar — in the context of a posts by/about AI there's a good chance the poster didn't even care enough to sit down and write the post. Why in the world would anybody be ok having that "boosted" in their faces. More importantly, would they be happy about it?
Maybe post something appealing, like cat pics or lockpicking or xcom shitposts or some gay shit or a skirt go spinny? That ikea shårk is pretty popular on here, maybe that's something?
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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 why is "what value do they bring" scary to you? no-one is saying that Mastodon Central Authority will block them if they don't bring value! there's no such thing!
if they don't bring value, no-one will follow or boost them. that's it. folks are almost certainly talking about these things on a fediverse server now, and i'm not seeing them.
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@scottjenson @cratermoon @evan
Which gauntlet?Nobody is stopping you posting. Nobody is stopping you firing up an instance on a $30 second hand rpi on your home internet, or a vps. There is very minimal oversight on creating an account on most instances. Moderation is manual, minimal and usually only reacts to reports.
If you're posting with hash tags your readers will look for and you're getting nowhere it's because there's just no "organic" audience for what you're doing. Maybe check out an instance you share more interests with? Find your people.
I'm on this thing, at least in part, because I do not want a "for you", I don't want a "people like you wanted" or a "trending" or a "most heart upvoted by gold users" algo feed. I definitely don't want a "somebody paid me to show you this post" feed. What I want is to see posts from the people on whom I clicked the "show me this persons posts" button
If users don't want to read/interact with the content you'll find "Boosting" it by changing the machinery of the platform is just going to piss people off. They'll just block you, or defederate
I don't see how "people wanting to read your posts" is too high of a bar — in the context of a posts by/about AI there's a good chance the poster didn't even care enough to sit down and write the post. Why in the world would anybody be ok having that "boosted" in their faces. More importantly, would they be happy about it?
Maybe post something appealing, like cat pics or lockpicking or xcom shitposts or some gay shit or a skirt go spinny? That ikea shårk is pretty popular on here, maybe that's something?
@scottjenson @cratermoon @evan
Also for a "why am i being excluded" post it seems a bit odd to name Mastodon explicitly when there's a whole universe of activitypub software -
@SharpCheddarGoblin @scottjenson @mattwilcox Hi, I may disagree with Scott on this but he’s a coworker of mine, I know he means well, probably not getting his point across in writing in quite the right way, and I would ask you to please remain civil. Thank you!
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@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.
"people are leaving mastodon, our daily actives are going down"
Same thing has been happening to Bluesky over the past year.
Bluesky User Growth and Active Users
See how activity and usage of Bluesky has been growing over time. How many users are currently active? How many posts are posted daily on Bluesky?
(bluefacts.app)
From some of the anecdotes I've seen, it sounds like at least part of this is the same reason people don't stick around here: not enough activity and/or diversity (you might know Bluesky is very US-centric).
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"people are leaving mastodon, our daily actives are going down"
Same thing has been happening to Bluesky over the past year.
Bluesky User Growth and Active Users
See how activity and usage of Bluesky has been growing over time. How many users are currently active? How many posts are posted daily on Bluesky?
(bluefacts.app)
From some of the anecdotes I've seen, it sounds like at least part of this is the same reason people don't stick around here: not enough activity and/or diversity (you might know Bluesky is very US-centric).
@scottjenson But of course, the fediverse does have some unique challenges, such as the federated bits poking out too much, confusing people, and, well, random people enforcing unwritten, sometimes contradictory rules across different communities.
The only way I see out of that is to stop gatekeeping the fediverse, and focusing on communities. Anyone should be able to join the fediverse, just like anyone can go on the internet.
I don't care that Meta is part of the fediverse through Threads, we can all just block them and move on.
Or if Truth Social decided to turn federation back on. Them federating means nothing. We'll block them, and move on.
