Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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@TeflonTrout @corbden @isagalaev @scottjenson @devlord @carnage4life If you didn't want to talk about it you could've so very easily just ignored the thread.
@Mabande @corbden @isagalaev @scottjenson @devlord @carnage4life
on the same token, if you don't like what I say you can ignore or block me, it goes both ways.
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@davey_cakes @scottjenson Agreed. I'm reminded of a science journalist who turns up about once a year to post one-way toots for a few days before disappearing again. Last time, she complained that she was 'screaming into a void'. Literally hundreds of people replied from 'the void', welcoming her. She responded to 0 of them. 2000 people follow her. She follows 0. She's never replied, boosted or engaged with anyone. Fediverse held the gate wide open for her, but she just shouted at us and left.
@CiaraNi @davey_cakes @scottjenson I think if I was concerned about bringing more voices to fedi journalists wouldn't be a high priority considering they have quite a voice (reach) already by nature of their occupation. Not that I have anything against journalists or am opposed to them being here…
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@CiaraNi @davey_cakes @scottjenson I think if I was concerned about bringing more voices to fedi journalists wouldn't be a high priority considering they have quite a voice (reach) already by nature of their occupation. Not that I have anything against journalists or am opposed to them being here…
@reynir @davey_cakes @scottjenson Agreed. I don't think anyone has anything against journalists being here, but they can't expect much more than disinterest if they only ever broadcast one-way toots.
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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 have been feeling a lot like this. i think theres 2 phenomena here:
1. people here don't seem to be able to distinguish between "capitalism" and the vague and general concept of "AI" - i sense most people are libs/centrists
2. mastodon is 80% programmers. programmers as a class have spent the last 3 decades taking everyone elses job. now its come for theirs they are perhaps unsuprisingly a bit touchy about it (see point 1)
its logical fallacies everywhere rn tho
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@scottjenson @carnage4life i have been feeling a lot like this. i think theres 2 phenomena here:
1. people here don't seem to be able to distinguish between "capitalism" and the vague and general concept of "AI" - i sense most people are libs/centrists
2. mastodon is 80% programmers. programmers as a class have spent the last 3 decades taking everyone elses job. now its come for theirs they are perhaps unsuprisingly a bit touchy about it (see point 1)
its logical fallacies everywhere rn tho
@scottjenson @carnage4life but yeah as a disabled trans woman maintaining 2 communtiy platforms and a tech nonprofit, claude has been pretty transformative for me in terms of being able to keep on top of workloads, get bids in, advance our codebases, and so on. and im very very tired of coming on here every day to read people think im scum for using it. some of the people who replied to this thread i am extremely dissapointed by and it makes me judge them poorly as people.
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@scottjenson I'm not sure this is the best example of Mastodon gatekeeping. I suspect the person you cite (I won't tag him, to not bother him. I follow him. He doesn't follow me) has a different definition of 'engagement' than many on Mastodon. He has 19,000 followers. He follows just over 200. He never ever engages with anyone. He posts one-way toots. He never uses Alt Text. The Fediverse is a chatty place full of engagement, if you choose to take part yourself, to chat, to boost, to reply.
@CiaraNi @scottjenson yeah this nails it for me. Folks like this want a broadcast medium - that’s not what I’m here for. I could subscribe to an RSS feed if I wanted that.
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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.
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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.
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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 Hot take : "gen A.I. is a fascist tool" /me 2026 #fascism #antifa #TaxTheRich #SaveThePlanet #noai #AI
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@FeloniousPunk @scottjenson @Gargron Adopting an attitude of persecution as primarily white dude tech bros akin to the abusive experience of Black Twitter on Fedi is...a choice.
Crying that no one wants to play with you because the entire industry is abusive AF and literally nobody in the wider fediverse wants it forced on us is HILARIOUS.
Go away, weirdo.
@TheJen @FeloniousPunk @scottjenson @Gargron
The entire AI industry is built on:
*stolen art
*stolen literature (also a form of art)
*trying to get the benefits of labor without any obligation to labor.
*wallstreet techbro bullshit.The Fediverse is INHERENTLY a space started by decentralized tech people, queer people, trans people, BIPOC people, disabled people - it has a lot, a LOT of marginalized people, a lot of artists, a lot of 'hey I am gay and marginalized in like 20 different ways' people.
Asking why we don't like AI is like going into the NAACP and asking why they don't welcome the clan. Or going into an Autism Self Advocacy Network meeting and asking why they don't like Autism Speaks. Or going to a 'No Kings' rally with a trump hat on.
THE AI BROS ARE THE ENEMY. They are indifferent to the suffering they cause at best and benefit from it at worst.
There can literally be no room for pop culture tolerance of AI anything. Give it an inch and it will literally destroy the world. (literally: AI has completely reversed all of our progress on global warming and because of what its done to the trendlines, we are on progress towards a hothouse earth at current.)
Probably not the response you wanted, but hey, AI isn't what we wanted, either.
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@FeloniousPunk There ought to be an AI instance which all the bros and boosters can go to, and then I can block it in one go. That would be ultra-efficient.
Unfortunately the real fedi is a lot more messy. -
@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
Asking who benefits, who's harmed, what recourse do the harmed have isn't a purity test it's a valid question to ask someone pushing to colonize spaces that haven't embraced a billion dollar propaganda project.Also, you didn't answer the question.
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@Mabande @corbden @isagalaev @scottjenson @devlord @carnage4life
Welp, carnage has taken their personal experience in a network where everybody curates their own experience, found it wanting, and instead of doing what it takes to get what you want, has decided to whine about it. And now we are talking about it.
Like, go follow people and hashtags you goof, get a grip
@TeflonTrout @Mabande @corbden @isagalaev @scottjenson @devlord. I’m not whining or complaining about engagement on Mastodon, I’m sharing the difference in what various social media communities care about in my personal experience.
Mastodon is full of anti-AI techies and BlueSky is full of anti-Trump leftists & liberals is essentially the observation.
Funny enough, I don’t even think most people on Mastodon would disagree so seeing rude responses like this is just weird.
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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.
@FeloniousPunk @scottjenson@social.coop @Gargron Scott's cognitive dissonance is on display. A photo at a "No Kings" rally while demanding we all kowtow to the same people creating that whole situation via donations and technology
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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 What the heck is "AI journalists" or "AI people" to begin with?
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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 fail to see the relationship between being welcoming to diversity and being welcoming to IA apologists.
The Fediverse is proving to be a good place for niche interests. Maybe that I'd a way for expansion: fit more niches, not more mainstream
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@Mabande @corbden @isagalaev @scottjenson @devlord @carnage4life
Welp, carnage has taken their personal experience in a network where everybody curates their own experience, found it wanting, and instead of doing what it takes to get what you want, has decided to whine about it. And now we are talking about it.
Like, go follow people and hashtags you goof, get a grip
@TeflonTrout @Mabande @corbden @isagalaev @scottjenson @devlord @carnage4life Is this the post I saw you subtooting about? I’ve seen people making the “echo chamber” argument before and they basically want to spew bigotry without consequences. I thought that was what you were subtooting about. But this isn’t that. I feel like one of us has misunderstood something and decided to get really mad over it.
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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 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...
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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 The assumption that we care if journalists are here or not is quite a large one. I couldn't care less if journalists are on here as a group - if someone is interesting, not an arsehole, and a journalist then sure, I'm happy to follow them and happy they're here.
The ones who don't match that description, I'll mute anyway and reconsider the follow that saw them in my feed
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@toddsundsted @dgodon Too many people thought I was *defending* the entire AI industry and worse, comparing it directly to Black Twitter. Hey it's social media, posts are short, it's easy to connect the dots the wrong way.
My poor writing skills aside, my point was what I think you both are saying: it's a slippery slope. It's no secret that black twitter was not made welcome here (it's a very complex topic but there is some truth to it).
My point wasn't that techbros needed support or coddling but the idea that we "allow" people to be here based on some type of ideological purity test is guaranteed to bite us in the ass. Too many people here get holier than thou and feel morally obligated to harass people. It's short sighted.
@scottjenson the most disappointing thing about the entire first layer of responses to the post was that so many people saw two letters ("AI") and ignored everything else about the poster the post and its content. they assumed a lot about the poster and their motivations, as well.
> the idea that we "allow" people to be here based on some type of ideological purity test is guaranteed to bite us in the ass
i very much agree with this. and, in fact, it is biting us. the concern i have is that a smaller, less inclusive, more ideologically constrained community is what many people actively want—thus their behavior.
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