Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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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.
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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 "lukewarm to politics" isn't at all my perception of Mastodon, quite the opposite.
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@scottjenson @Gargron There is nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping anyone from creating and cultivating an AI community on Mastodon. Start a server. Knock yourself out.
But expecting to *farm acceptance* from a group of people, one which most members vastly dislike AI, is quite the hubris.
But sure, the community at large is the problem.
Clean up your kitchen and maybe folks will join you for a meal.
Seriously, @scottjenson 's attitude here seems to really boil down to "Our technology based largely on theft is owed acceptance and adoration".
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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 the replies to this thread are 50 times the exact same older white guy into computers photographed from a different angle
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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.
"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 2022"I don't like how this frames "AI journalists" as the same kind of category as "Black Twitter".
Racism kills people.
Badly-implemented so-called AI also kills people, e.g. via medical mistakes or (sometimes racist!) funding decisions, and via chatbots encouraging suicide.
_Criticising_ it has so far _not_ killed anyone as far as I'm aware, correct me if I'm wrong.
A rejection of AI hype (even if expressed in a snarky way), or a lack of interest in news about it, are not in the same category as racism. Nowhere near the same league.
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If we're talking about reasons for Black Twitter not settling in here, here's 2:
(a) Black people getting horrible racist harassment via their Fedi accounts: often invisible to Fedi-in-general due to how following & replying works, hence then also having to deal with endless naive "Fedi is lovely, I never see any racism".
(b) Initially the Mastodon team was adamantly against implementing quote-boosts, which are/were a vital element in the flow of Black Twitter - whereas Bluesky _did_ implement quoting, making it a much closer match to Twitter in its affordances.
So I don't think what's actually happening day-to-day is very similar, either.
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If we're talking about why the Fedi average is more negative than other social media environments about so-called AI... well it might have something to do with it being tech geek central, hence full of people who have a pretty good idea of how the sausage is made.
I have some sympathy for people who _have_ been using LLMs. There are some things they can do okay if you don't trust them too far, a lot of people are unaware of the so-called externalities, and for a non-techie person they can seem almost magical. But my sympathy doesn't extend to, like, "don't pour cold water on the hype". It seems to me that "scepticism, wariness and major ethical reservations" is an entirely reasonable position, and I like it that the Fedi seems to be thereabouts on average.
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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.
What's more, the straight-up nazis are here. The anarchists are here. The AI bros are here. They have their own servers already. They show up time to time in replies. Some of them are posting DMs out of the blue. And they're getting fediblocked, sometimes appropriately, sometimes less so. The additional inclusiveness demanded smells like "I want to dictate what you see and I don't like the control you have over that".
@josh0
@EndlessMason @scottjenson @cratermoon @evan -
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 I think Mastodon will never be that though, and that's by design of how ActivityPub works rather than gatekeeping. I'm trying really hard to curate AI content from instances that specifically gather people that discuss ML, NLProc, etc. I still find it hard to understand what's going on.
Frontends like #Phanpy help with 'catchup' features, but I think the entire ecosystem is ill suited for engagement. Maybe that's a good thing, idk.
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@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
@Siph @scottjenson Well said.
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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 I’ve personally seen a mix, certainly more heavily negative, on AI since I’ve been here. Time is precious. It’s a waste of my time to interact with an ephemeral LLM and I only want human interaction in a social context.
I do use AI at work and with local models to learn at home. My personal use runs on 3 GPUs that consume a max of 175, 125 and 35 watts. I find it interesting but I don’t expect anyone else to.
I would suggest the negativity is all on the LLM type of AI - I don’t personally see anyone being negative on the ML variants. Marketing LLMs as AI implies to me they’re pushing an AGI narrative which is simply false. These models lack cognition and are simply good enough at predicting the next token to fool many into believing they do.
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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 @patrick_h_lauke do the same metrics of the Attention Economy apply to Mastodon? Should them?
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@scottjenson @carnage4life threads and bluesky are single monolithic platforms. masto federated. so would likely depend on which masto server someone's posting on i'd guess as a starter...
also, purely anecdotally/for my own part, there's less of a culture of boosting/liking/trying to make things go viral for the algorithm. lack of apparent engagement may not signal lack of people actually reading posts/following links/etc.
@patrick_h_lauke @scottjenson @carnage4life Exactly, this. Structurally it's not the same. Virality is not a feature.
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@scottjenson I’m not interested in following any “AI people”. That doesn’t make it an echo chamber. We don’t need equal amounts of people who love puppies and want to kill puppies, not everything needs to be equally represented.
@Gargron @scottjenson these conversations always sound like “why can’t Mastodon be more like US corporate social media? Why aren’t you Americaning properly?”
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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.
There's room for (almost) everyone on Mastodon. You want to have AI discussions it might be best to find a server that is into AI - like https://sigmoid.social ?
But yeah, many people aren't a fan of AI, myself included. Luckely we have the choices here
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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.
You seriously compared AI bros to Black folks. You did that. With your whole chest.
I'd need to subject myself to Trump's ranting to read something more foul today.
Take your racist shite along with your slop cheerleading and go.
