Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?

@mormund And you have every right to do that. But do that with filtering/blocking/hashtags. Don't do it by chasing away people that want to be part of the community. "Gatekeeping" is not a good look for an "open social" network.

@scottjenson Sure: I use the 'deck' view of mastodon. I have a home column, a local timeline column, and a notifications column.

I do not have a simple + button on the right side of these columns to then add more columns such as timelines from other servers. I know there is another gamedev server out there, and I would like to read their posts too. And I would like for them to read mine. But there is no way for either of us to easily do that, so we just stay blind and confined.

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 alternative is a "number mean NOTHING" metric...

@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 @carnage4life Errr. I don’t see a problem with this at all, frankly.

No. I don’t particularly want them here. I don’t mind if they are, but I won’t see them. This isn’t a space where I want the typical stuff that I can see anywhere and everywhere else. I like here for precisely what *isnt* here. No chasing clout, no engagement farming, no monetary driven agenda. But nothing is stopping such people from being here except *it doesn’t work well here*. And that’s good. IMO.

@scottjenson Similarly, if I do find someone on a different server who I would like to follow, this is sometimes easy and I can just hit 'follow'. Other times, it immediately asks me to write out my full mastodon server account, which I do not even know what it is, because when I am logged in all I see is '@RYStorm', not 'mastodon.gamedev.place/@rystorm', if that is even what I need to type out

So the technical ability of the federation is neat, the UX to make it not an echo chamber is missing

@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 seems like now you're shifting the goalpost. are we talking about "people don't like / fave / reply as much" (engagement) or "people actively tells me they don't want my content here" (and again, on which server are they? that's always an important aspect too)

@mattwilcox but our numbers are steadily going down. We are NOT in a steady state. You won't be able to have this place if we just keep going the way we are.

I"m a bit surprised that asking for "big tent mentality" is considered a bad thing! I thought we wanted diversity? I thought this was meant to be the place where we all could come? This gatekeeping is not a good look (or a healthy one)

@scottjenson Just thinking out loud here, so this may be incorrect:

I think the 'federated' part is technically very neat, and resolve the potential issue of yet another social media service dying out, which Mastodon cannot do as it is FOSS. As long as someone wants it to exist, it will exist.

But, I think federation was incorrectly used as part of the user experience, rather than the technical lifeline it should have stayed. Thus creating echo chambers by default, and rough onboarding UX

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 A potential solution (with a probably huge cost that makes it impossible to achieve), is to essentially have the data of each user saved to the federated server they are on, but have extremely easy to use connections and timelines that folks can set up between them.

For example, so that while there are 2 major game development servers, we both subscribe to the same 'timeline', on which we then all see our posts, and share our posts. But our account data is saved to separate servers

@patrick_h_lauke Good point, I didn't mean to shift the goal posts! Part of my goal here is to understand the problem better. The original post was superficially about engagement but it was really about how a journalist isn't welcome here on Mastodon. (and people seem to be quite happy about that!)

So yeah, my argument is likely shifting with the replies I'm getting. But I can't believe that asking for 'a big tent' is considered a bad thing.

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 We want opportunity to have those things. But if they don’t come here… oh well.

It’s not gate keeping if some sorts of content simply don’t work well with the ecosystem.

Why are you wanting to chase growth? Why do you feel *this* is the issue, for example, and not the long storied history of neglecting Black voices in this space? As an example.

@ben But that's the very definition of a mono-culture. A vibrant community allows all of these topics, encourages them even. Then, with filters, who you follow, hashtags, and blocking you get the feed you want.

To get the culture you want by cutting off the supply is counter productive.

@scottjenson But I get pushed US politics all day by the main stream media & I'm not even in the US & current politics (here & there) is heavily slanted towards manufactured wedge issues.

AI is a similar, for me the moral and environmental arguments against are plenty before we get into the rest, yet as I work in software it's impossible to get away from.

So I come to a place where I can choose not to engage with it, I block/mute very little, I mainly ignore it if it ends up in my feed.

@scottjenson But I get pushed US politics all day by the main stream media & I'm not even in the US & current politics (here & there) is heavily slanted towards manufactured wedge issues.

AI is a similar, for me the moral and environmental arguments against are plenty before we get into the rest, yet as I work in software it's impossible to get away from.

So I come to a place where I can choose not to engage with it, I block/mute very little, I mainly ignore it if it ends up in my feed.

@scottjenson But also I think that it's not a valid comparison those other sites all have algorithms that deliberately push stuff into people's feeds because "engagement/outrage" drives ad revenue.