Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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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 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.
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@scottjenson I really appreciate you advocating for a flexible and inclusive platform. I don't know what to do, but I support the mission. I'd love to see everyone on for-profit social media take collective ownership of their platforms. I'd love Mastadon to be welcoming to all sorts of people.
Based on your replies (including the founder of Mastodon!) I'm not optimistic that this platform will ever grow beyond niche microblogging for losers.
@seanwolter @scottjenson You were making decent points until you called everyone here a loser.
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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 Scott, let me reframe your stance in another way. Maybe it is precisely the success of Mastodon’s design and direction that allows here to be a place that *is not* being subjected to the artificial and bubble-nature of AI that exists everywhere else. (1/2)
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@Gargron @scottjenson Scott, let me reframe your stance in another way. Maybe it is precisely the success of Mastodon’s design and direction that allows here to be a place that *is not* being subjected to the artificial and bubble-nature of AI that exists everywhere else. (1/2)
This is a space that lets anyone say anything. It is a space that doesn’t give benefits to engagement farming techniques. It is largely *human centred* and free. Soooo… baring more controls for people to be safe as an ongoing problem causing misrepresentiaon of some peoples; why is it a problem if we don’t see bitcoin grifts here? AI grifts? Business accounts? Etc? The values simply don’t align. (2/2)
@Gargron @scottjenson -
As technologists we need to do more to smooth those junctures and make them less of a barrier. I hope in a few years when @carnage4life looks at his network, it feels more integrated and less separated.
@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.
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@scottjenson @Gargron There are no blockers with the software for any community, AI or otherwise.
What’s the definition of ‘thrive’? Federation means de facto, traditional metrics like ‘reach’ and ‘engagement’ won’t ever be on a scale like a monolith like Twitter/Bsky/Threads.
Mastodon is as open as it can possibly be… in fact, it is SO open, the scale of reach you can achieve with those other platforms is literally impossible. Millions of intersecting communities, at a more human scale.
@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.
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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.
@scottjenson @carnage4life I've tried to mitigate that a bit by sharing my own experience with AI as a development tool. I know there are other people on the Fediverse who talk about how and when they use AI, with or without misgivings.
Evan Prodromou (@evan@cosocial.ca)
I use Claude and Thaura for search in my daily life. I use Claude as a rubber duck for coding. I also let it review my code for errors or make recommendations. On occasion, I'll let CoPilot or Claude add a few lines of code directly. I don't "vibe code". I enjoy both uses. I don't feel guilty about either.
CoSocial (cosocial.ca)
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@scottjenson That’s not an observation about your stance specifically but that of Mastodon as a larger entity. It is undeniable that there have been many years of failure to listen to Black voices, which led to the massive disparity in representation here. I would far rather *that* get listened to than the concern about what boil down to corporate representation.
It’s not that journalists etc can’t post here. If the value they cared about was information dissemination they’d do it already.
@mattwilcox @scottjenson your literal first reponse to a Black writer was verbatim: "No. I don’t particularly want them here.", how do you think that gets interpreted?
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@scottjenson @Gargron It already allows that. The culture simply isn’t permissive of it. But that has nothing to do with the technology.
Mastodon is a system which attracts certain audiences because of its values and choices. Those are different to other systems. That’s perfectly fine. That’s good.
We don’t need to seek an audience with the same make up as other services. We need to work on systems that have the values we care about. Nothing more.
@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.
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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 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.
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This is a space that lets anyone say anything. It is a space that doesn’t give benefits to engagement farming techniques. It is largely *human centred* and free. Soooo… baring more controls for people to be safe as an ongoing problem causing misrepresentiaon of some peoples; why is it a problem if we don’t see bitcoin grifts here? AI grifts? Business accounts? Etc? The values simply don’t align. (2/2)
@Gargron @scottjenson@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.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life I've tried to mitigate that a bit by sharing my own experience with AI as a development tool. I know there are other people on the Fediverse who talk about how and when they use AI, with or without misgivings.
Evan Prodromou (@evan@cosocial.ca)
I use Claude and Thaura for search in my daily life. I use Claude as a rubber duck for coding. I also let it review my code for errors or make recommendations. On occasion, I'll let CoPilot or Claude add a few lines of code directly. I don't "vibe code". I enjoy both uses. I don't feel guilty about either.
CoSocial (cosocial.ca)
@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)
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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 thank you for starting this thread scott, its both good and painful
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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)
