Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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@trisweb @cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron AI adult content creators at the chick rendering plant.
@rubinjoni Using AI to produce adult content could be termed "Chick rendering" since it's already insulting to women, and it's literally rendering images of them...
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OK, this is going even MORE sideways so I need to make a few things clear:
1. I took a complex point and made it poorly
2. My goal was to ask for more inclusiveness
3. I am sickened by what happend to BlackTwitter and I don't want it recur
4. But I can't speak for BlackTwitter nor should I
5. I apologize to black mastodon users for making such a poor comparison
6. I'm not endorsing "AI Slop" they were a foil to make my point
7. I'm certainly NOT trying to compare AI bros to Black twitter (but, as I said, I can see how people made that connection. I'm trying to correct that here)@scottjenson yeah I had a pretty kneejerk reaction when I saw that comparison because it read like it was borderline racist to me.
I think that the fediverse should absolutely be better to minorities, especially Black communities, because we have had a pretty terrible track record in that regard. at the same time, a lot of people on here (and bluesky too!) are very tech-skeptic so of course posts about AI would be met with a negative response. I think there's some merit in trying to balance out supporting different and unique cultures but also understanding which topics might be considered taboo on here.
and then again, a lot of people have become very militant about the things that they don't like and should be a lot more accepting instead of immediately bringing out the pitchforks! I'll admit that I'm guilty of that too. everything is a huge delicate balance that I feel might be a good conversation if AI wasn't involved.
I'm just rambling at this point though
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@scottjenson @Gargron “AI people” are not a protected class. It seems much more important that we focus on being a welcoming and inclusive platform for protected classes, particularly actual marginalized communities.
@dgodon@mastodon.online @scottjenson@social.coop @Gargron@mastodon.social I would suggest against using "protected class" in general community discussion. I understand you mean it as a shorthand for various marginalised communities, but "protected class" is a legal term and makes your concerns sound more legalistic and dry than they should.
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@ben @scottjenson So, a little context from a former journalist: I asked my boss if I could start and manage a mastodon account for my publication, and she advised that we would have to conduct a study to justify the use of my time - a company asset - 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 and I ended up deleting the account I had already started. It's often not a matter of the journalist's lack of imagination or excess of ego, but their need to meet metrics.
@spiegelmama if numbers of other journalistic outlets work for you, you could ask @netzpolitik_feed for theirs, as for them mastodon works quite well
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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 "communities" for nearly everything on the #Fediverse. It is a strange misconception that a server software like Mastodon was something like a centralized #server #instance that was required to "allow" for anything, or could "prohibit" it, for everybody.
On the Fediverse, your server instance can allow or prohibit anything, just like any other instance. When your topic is hated on most other instances, there might be good reasons for that, though.
Still you can even run your very own instance fully dedicated to ShittyTopic
. It's just that nobody is obliged to listen to you, or to say friendly things about it, or to never block your instance. -
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 get loads more engagement on here with less than 900 followers than we do on Facebook with over 1,800, or than we did on Twitter with over 20,000 (before it became X).
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OK, this is going even MORE sideways so I need to make a few things clear:
1. I took a complex point and made it poorly
2. My goal was to ask for more inclusiveness
3. I am sickened by what happend to BlackTwitter and I don't want it recur
4. But I can't speak for BlackTwitter nor should I
5. I apologize to black mastodon users for making such a poor comparison
6. I'm not endorsing "AI Slop" they were a foil to make my point
7. I'm certainly NOT trying to compare AI bros to Black twitter (but, as I said, I can see how people made that connection. I'm trying to correct that here)@scottjenson idk, I think AI boosters can go fuck themselves all the way back to Bluesky, where they're welcome to hang out with the rest of the AI venture capital echo chamber. Simple as.
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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 What does "allow" mean in this context?
If you want to have a community that's *provably* the intellectual and moral equivalent of "pro-ana" forums (https://c3.unu.edu/blog/the-echo-chamber-in-your-pocket), then go right ahead. No-one else is obligated to help or indeed pay any attention whatsoever.
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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 honestly looking over what shit @carnage4life has posted over the past couple of days, it's all un-CW'd tech, AI, and politics shit. no wonder there's no engagement: I'm not going to boost this shit
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@scottjenson Or maybe this is all already possible, and I just have never heard, seen, or been told about it ever! With big enough software, you never know.
@RYStorm @scottjenson I think what you are describing is an ActivityPub relay. They do already exist.
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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 Mute words and terms and block.
Everything is not for everybody and no one deserves an audience.
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@scottjenson Mute words and terms and block.
Everything is not for everybody and no one deserves an audience.
@CStamp my point exactly
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OK, this is going even MORE sideways so I need to make a few things clear:
1. I took a complex point and made it poorly
2. My goal was to ask for more inclusiveness
3. I am sickened by what happend to BlackTwitter and I don't want it recur
4. But I can't speak for BlackTwitter nor should I
5. I apologize to black mastodon users for making such a poor comparison
6. I'm not endorsing "AI Slop" they were a foil to make my point
7. I'm certainly NOT trying to compare AI bros to Black twitter (but, as I said, I can see how people made that connection. I'm trying to correct that here) -
@awfulwoman But my point wasn't *specifically* about journalists, it was just an example of one person that a) wasn't getting traction and b) the 1% of the deplorables wanted to chase them away.
My point way much more broad, about using this as a wedge example of allowing a much wider array of people into Mastodon. Just because you don't like self promoting morons (I don't either of course) doesn't mean we should be actively chasing them away. Not because I want them! But for a much simpler reason: It's very hard to objectively define what a "promoting moron" is. More importantly, they might do it AND be a really valuable person to the community.
There is so much simplistic black and white thinking about who someone is and so many are willing to say "Begone!" for the flimsiest of reasons.
@scottjenson @awfulwoman I find it mindblowing that you think Obasanjo "isn't getting traction" when he's one of the most followed people on the network. If I were looking for examples of gatekeeping journalists off of the fediverse, he's one of the last accounts I'd think to cite. Which makes it seem like the part of his post that really led you down this path was "hates AI." And it may be true that the fediverse is more hostile toward AI than Threads or Bluesky, but that clearly hasn't led our network to ostracize Obasanjo. So what actually is the complaint here?
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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 Ugh. Muted. Thank fuck that's an option that actually works, here in the Fedi.
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@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?
@laurenshof To whom was that reply directed? I thought it was to Scott.
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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 when I post about tech, I get the most engagement in Mastodon. And I write in Spanish, go figure. Much much more than in Bluesky, where you seem you can only talk about politics. But you have to know what to say and the kind of people in here. People in here seems to have more deep tech and programming expertise, are more open source savvy and won,t give all their data to the big tech "a la mode" in a given time. And we (I myself included) are quite skeptic about AI.
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@SharpCheddarGoblin @scottjenson @mattwilcox Hi, I may disagree with Scott on this but he’s a coworker of mine, I know he means well, probably not getting his point across in writing in quite the right way, and I would ask you to please remain civil. Thank you!
@Gargron As a general observation, I think asking for "civility" is often the equivalent of a "code smell":
Sure, there are cases where it may be appropriate in the current context. However, I suspect that more often than not, it's a sign that one is brushing aside some oppression-related complaint (often from a position of relative power in the situation).
I think it's a good idea to always pause before writing about "civility", and let the matter bounce around in one's head for a while.
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@scottjenson as a fellow white person, I caution you against conflating the fediverse losing AI marketers with the fediverse losing most of the Black community. Black folks are beautiful living humans. Do not compare them to the latest app on your mobile phone.
@JillsJoy @scottjenson it's also just factually wrong to say "same reason." The mechanism by which fedi drove away black people was having a very white techie culture and having poor safety features (still not fixed). AI boosters not feeling welcome here is totally unrelated to that. Neonazis don't track down AI boosters and subject them to harassment campaigns.
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@laurenshof To whom was that reply directed? I thought it was to Scott.
@sennoma @laurenshof @mattwilcox Well I didn't say that so no, not directed at me.
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