Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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@scottjenson kicking AI sloppers off servers is absolutely the correct stance in the fediverse.
@OtterMatic that's not what I'm asking for!
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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"
@scottjenson @vfrmedia @mattwilcox It is my opinion that ALL AI is inherently evil. It is built on stolen material, using massive amounts of energy, increasing energy costs, worsening climate change, and 90% of its usecases are harmful to humanity.
And MANY people share this opinion. That is why AI is not offered, but FORCED into everything. You won't get that here. Do your thing on *your own* timeline, but you don't have any right to *my* timeline.
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@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)
> they are just a lightning rod for
> the "people I don't personally
> want around" problem.It would sure stir less controversy but I would find it helpful (in terms of "how could mastodon improve") to find out why a lot of people are not here that probably no one would oppose being here: Most of my humanities and social sciences community is at bluesky; only a few illustrators and artists are here. And neither community is very pro big tech or AI.
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@patrick_h_lauke The metrics are clear, people are leaving mastodon, our daily actives are going down. I agree that pursing follower count is not what Mastodon should be about, we likely agree on many points here. I'm just trying to say 'being more welcoming of other points of view' shouldn't be controvertial. Yet so many replies have been "we don't want them here!" which feels very head-in-the-sand to me.
@scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke metrics don't apply to real life conversations, how are you measuring daily active users? there's no tracking keystrokes or any of that shit here so how? Guessing? Fedi keeps growing, year after year, and still people babble about people leaving, lol. It's a self-curated timeline.
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@AAKL no
@scottjenson Glad to hear that. Thank you for the response.
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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 AI is shit and so too are people that worship these plagiarism machines. You can thrive in your little echo chamber of thieving hacks but don't expect the creatives and programmers your "work" is nonconsentually mooching off to be your friend.
Unlike most people in this thread I refuse to be polite about this. I'm glad this platform doesn't feel welcoming to people that are pro or even neutral to this garbage tech.
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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 In the same sense that truth.social exists and is a Mastodon fork? Sure. But we can (arguably should) defederate with 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!
@scottjenson @carnage4life oh no wonder you're worried about this, your CV reads like that of a digital Thomas Midgley Jr.
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Thank you for sharing your authentic experience. My snarky side says "Were they that circumspect in the early days of Twitter? I bet not."
But you point to a very valid issue for journalists that I believe also extends to nonprofits. It's not the whole answer, but we who want journalists and nonprofits may need to actively hit the like button a lot more.
@JMMaok @spiegelmama tbh it does not seem tooo hard to me to measure "engagement" atleast for the number a link is clicked (which could be used as a measure on how much "traffic" a presence on masto brings you).
You can do analytics like this in a very unintrusive way not even much needed.
A german publication and NGO that fights fake news uses a simple UTM parameter in the links they share here by attaching "utm_source=mstdn" which could give you a hint on where visitors are coming from when they click a link. Should not be to intrusive tbh. And analytics software can track this.
> by measuring traffic that mastodon drove to our site. Because this is a respectful space, there was no real way to track clicks, so I couldn't justify it
So tbh this seems more like a skill issue more than "there is no way to track this stuff". using a simple parameter is not intrusing privacy all that much tbh and may be deamed acceptable.
Obviously a discussion with the community of where the account posts if this is fine. -
@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)
that argument doesn't hold water when the key functionality is that "a huge number of people can federate their own instance for little cost"
demand comes and goes. doesn't matter, because we aren't a market, and your infatuation with growth is a cancerous byproduct of your corporate history.
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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
Fuck AI and its evangelists -
@corbden @isagalaev @scottjenson @devlord A part of the sample bias is the self selection of the interactions: on fedi the are quite a few who do not boost/repost images without alt text _as part of their political stance_, and from what I've seen @carnage4life pretty much never use alt even when others provide it for him.
So it's a path of anti-interaction that could easily be changed to get more engagement.@scottjenson As a side note re. the Alt text I just took a look at the one you provided to the screenshot and I think you've kinda misunderstood what he's saying?
It's not that his engagement is _falling_ on masto, it's just that he gets the lowest engagement here. Which is kinda expected since very few things go viral ("no algorithmic engagement" yada yada).
On the other hand I've seen posts by science communicators claiming the exact opposite: more engagement on mastodon than on BS or threads. -
@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 think you’ll find a more welcoming community on Twitter. -
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.
Mastodon is as inclusive as you want it to be. All you need to do is to set up an instance, and leave the doors open to the sloperators and bot-lickers. You'll be drowning in "content" in no time.
Nobody owes their eyeballs or attention, and there's no algorithm anyone can abuse to force us to give either of those things.
It's funny, it seems like anytime "market forces" cut the other way, they're suddenly a bad thing and we need to "fix" them.
No. We don't. It's fine.
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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 don’t think “AI journalists” are unwelcome. I do think AI boosters are unwelcome, whether or not they call themselves journalists.
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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 we'd rather know your favourite moth, how you're improving your garden (nearby green space) with hyper-local plants and what variety of tomato you're growing tbh
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@evan @cratermoon Exactly, even asking that question "What value do they bring" is kind of scary.
It's a fine line, I get it. We draw the line at nazis and scammers but let's not cross the line into "intellectual purity" tests
@scottjenson @evan @cratermoon For a lot of people, the category of "scammers" encompasses most of the AI industry, so drawing the line at one is drawing the line at the other. Many of the people you see as demanding "intellectual purity" see themselves as working to protect themselves and their communities from exploitation, and you're not likely to talk them out of that position if you can't bring yourself to see those concerns from their POV.
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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 have you tried crying more? I hear that's the most effective way to affect change.
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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 have absolutely 0 problems with bullying the absolute hell out of AI people.
I don't want their shit to be normalized. They're burning down half the planet to do what they do and left everyone in the biggest hardware crisis ever.
They are not the victims. And them constantly acting like they are is just more salt in the wound.
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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 I do not want mastodon to become more amicable to right wing ideas. The more hostile this place is to Nazis and AI and the manosphere etc the safer it is for people like me. See the parable of the Nazi bar etc. This is an inherent concept to queer spaces. You cannot make a space safe that welcomes both sheep and wolves. Keeping the wolves out is a feature not a flaw
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