Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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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 can’t speak for everyone, but I’d like to think we on Mastodon see LLMs for what they are —a cancer.
There is no AI ‘community’. Just a group of people who hate other people and their contributions to society.
It is the only reason I can think of why they seem to want to drown us out with worthless slop.
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@codinghorror You're absolutely correct. Part of my method (which I'm fairly transparent about) is that I make these provocations just to test the waters, see what people say, and how the conversation flows. It's basically research for the blog post.
I've gotten some extremely thoughtful comments that have made me rethink several of my original points.
I've even been accused of "baiting" some people which isn't entirely unfair either. It's helpful to 'poke the bear' occassionally
@scottjenson @codinghorror "lol i was only trolling" ok m8
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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!
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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 oh you can come but be prepared to be blocked... right now
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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 equating AI Boosters to black twitter is, for a lack of a more polite way to say it, disingenuous or just a lie upfront.
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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 fedi is like a big restaurant (https://www.esdin.net/post/the-restaurant-analogy-mastodon-the-fediverse)
and anyone can have their own community. That having been said, nobody is forced to be an audience for things they aren't interested in. Fedi has a culture, pretty diverse and inclusive of all who aren't obnoxious. Some people don't understand fedi culture when they come over from other more "obnoxiousness normalized" places, and can't handle the culture shift. Fedizens tend to be hostile to influencers and the ragebait that tends to be promoted on obnoxious networks. Fedi skews very anticapitalist and hostile as fuck to capitalist argument amplification and the "social networks must keep growing or lose relevance" mentality. Fedi is too big already, actually... The big instances are too big to moderate. People have said that for years. Fedi is like making real life friends. Remember that? Corp platforms try to make us forget human connection in favor of parasocial bs that keeps people from making real friends. -
@bogosian @scottjenson I’m not head of Mastodon! Have a good day.
@Gargron @bogosian @scottjenson they must've mistaken you for John. easy mistake to make.
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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.
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I really have a problem with putting groups of marginalized humans in one group with tech-people who love Ai.
The one thing is a core human thing, not an interest or a hobby, while being a fan of Ai stuff is a choice and an interest and the fact that the fediverse, albeit filled to the brim with tech and It Nerds, seems to have not much interest in this, is not gatekeeping. I
t simply shows that most people here are interested in other stuff. -
@scottjenson @carnage4life There's nothing keeping the Twitter journalist class off here as long as they want to come here and follow the basic rules about consent, abuse, and hate speech (something some of them seem rather poor at though, for example treating transphobic hate speech as "just asking questions").
But we sure as hell don't have to kiss AI bros' asses trying to convince them to come here. Much less nazis'.
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@dalias @scottjenson All social media apps are filter bubbles either based on who you choose to follow or what content is recommended to you.
The apps themselves are filter bubbles. X and Truth Social are right wing. Bluesky and Mastodon lean left. Threads leans left as it’s also a Twitter/X refugee app but less so than the latter two.
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@scottjenson @Gargron I'd have to ask, what value would an an AI Booster community bring to the FediVerse?
@cratermoon it doesn't matter, that shouldn't be a treshold.
@scottjenson @Gargron -
@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 why do you feel that AI as a product has any special "too important to fail" property such that people who choose to invest in it are entitled to systemic protections that guarantee their product visibility and success in a place where most people do not want it? This is not gatekeeping a person, this is choosing not to buy a product. I like Obasanjo's writing just fine but making articles about a topic that I do not want to read is his choice as a professional.
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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 that's just it, every single person is a gatekeeper, allowing or disallowing hot takes from others to inform their belief structure. Are you upset you're not finding others that share your views or upset people have their own agency?
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@trisweb @cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron by definition, no. Literally anyone can spin up a server and talk about anything/try to get more folk to listen…
But other folk have to want to listen to whatever they are saying. Servers and individuals can just decide not to. No one is guaranteed an audience, just the ability to speak.
@octothorpe @trisweb @cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron This. The fake question framed as if not pandering to their "AI" fawning bullshit is "not allowing them to be on fedi" is bad-faith sealioning. If they don't come here because they know folks here don't want to listen to their shit, that's not our problem.
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1/2
I really have a problem with putting groups of marginalized humans in one group with tech-people who love Ai.
The one thing is a core human thing, not an interest or a hobby, while being a fan of Ai stuff is a choice and an interest and the fact that the fediverse, albeit filled to the brim with tech and It Nerds, seems to have not much interest in this, is not gatekeeping. I
t simply shows that most people here are interested in other stuff.2/2
Ai bros/ fans can join the fediverse all they want, maybe even show gen.Ai slop, but the beauty of the fediverse is: i can just mute and block them.
I am not obligated to read about stuff i find annoying, or watch imagery that i find awful.
Free speech and a free community does not entail the right to be listened to.
There is lots of artist, activists, minorities etc.here and the Ai hype is harming us, so sorry if we don't interact with such content likely.
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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 mean it’s like different communities have different interests and that influences how they interact with content. Who would have thought?
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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?
@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.
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@scottjenson One reason I'm not on Threads/Bluesky anymore is that they both feel like an echo chamber, just a very large one. I've heard it expressed by others here: the other platforms have a strong US presence which is hard to steer clear of.
There's a certain "type" of post that gets boosted a lot. It's hard to describe but it's a style that runs across the US spectrum but it isn't particularly relevant to me.
@scottjenson I should add that I'd welcome more people on Mastodon. But part of the UX challenge, I think, is to prevent one big group from sucking air out of the room. Even if that group has a lot of subgroups.
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@scottjenson @Gargron why do you feel that AI as a product has any special "too important to fail" property such that people who choose to invest in it are entitled to systemic protections that guarantee their product visibility and success in a place where most people do not want it? This is not gatekeeping a person, this is choosing not to buy a product. I like Obasanjo's writing just fine but making articles about a topic that I do not want to read is his choice as a professional.
@scottjenson @Gargron and the comparison with black Twitter is a huge false equivalency as black people cannot opt out of being discriminated, they write about their experience and organization, and being hostile to that writing is tantamount to being hostile to them as people. I absolutely affirm that happened in 2022. But "being an AI supporter" is not by any measure a type of otherized social group subject to discrimination. It is a PRODUCT and if your product doesn't sell you have to take it
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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!
I don't understand why growth is a metric on this inherently non-capitalist platform. It doesn't need to get bigger - it just needs to be fun and useful for the people who use it.
Niche communities used to be everywhere, without expectations of growth. If I was on a forum for VW Golf owners, the admins didn't complain that we needed to attract Ford Focus owners too.
