Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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@lienrag @scottjenson @Gargron This is extremely amusing to me. The speck of DAIR in the TESCREAL dish has a clear ring around it that is suggestive of something more complex happening. As though everyone following TG/DAIR is somehow psychologically inoculated against AI derangement.
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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 As others have said, nothing to stop the "AI community" from spinning up a server. But they're not entitled to my attention.
Why is this difficult for AI evangelists to understand?
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Have you read the replies to my post? People are actively, joyfully stating that AI should not be here. That is my cultural point, that instead of using the tools of federation to get the feed you want, people are actively chasing away people they don't like.
To be very clear. I"M NOT ENDORSING AI. I just used it as an example of how sensitive people are and how willing they are to go after people they don't agree with.
Why is asking for 'a bigger tent' seen as such a negative thing?
@scottjenson @leadore I think it's possible to keep your points in context though.
That dude specifically went from a dude I'd see around and go "oh, he's got some ok points but not worth following" to "that dude just fell down an AI rabbit hole. That's embarrassing for him."
Your post is using the specific anecdotal experience of a person who is the poster child of a person who is losing all of their clout because they are toxified by an ideological alignment to a single technology.
If he'd starting mostly posting about his support for democrats, republicans, tanks, smelling farts, or F-35 planes there's a good chance he'd have lost a lot of his engagement. His network wasn't interested in the topic, and found it uncomfortable/unpleasant, and most importantly, annoying.
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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 It is. As is always the case, literally nothing is stopping anyone from standing up an instance that is explicitly friendly to the topic of AI and AI discussion.
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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 meanwhile, over on Bluesky, a bunch of large accounts are mocking Mastodon for the presence of content warnings, autistic people, and Germans (not exaggerating even a little bit)
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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 don't have anything nice to say about an "AI community" other than they're welcome to start their own instance that others can block.
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@scottjenson
Personally I see quite a lot of pro-AI posts in my feed because I see a lot of tech posts in it, based on the fact that a few people I follow are in tech, and a hashtag I follow happens to also get used by a lot of tech-oriented people.And of course, I also see a ton of anti-AI posts for the same reasons--who and what hashtags I follow. If you want to see more pro-AI stuff, follow the hashtags and people who post it. You make your own algorithm here.
And if you want to get replies from pro-AI people, use hashtags in your post that will get more of them to see it.
All that said, you didn't answer the questions I asked--are the other two platforms also monocultures based on that guy's statements about them? And do you think his metrics are the way to form a conclusion about it?
@leadore People are actively telling me to leave mastodon. They are making ad hominem attacks. I'm living the point I was trying to make.
My point wasn't to compare the other platforms and I certainly didn't intend to endorse AI (or that particular account).
My point, which has been proven by the reply I got to my post, is that a small group of people here are seen as "cultural enforcers" and actively attack people they disagree with. To the point of CREATING a disagreement in order to be angry (for example calling me rascist)
Now to be very clear. My original post was very poorly worded and I made a mistake. I've owned that and apologized. There is just so little room in here for grace.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life Or maybe we all come here to get away from the politics and the AI BS
@ben "we all" will always be a completely wrong statement when referring to Mastodon userbase. There is no homogenous userbase, there are lots of different communities and users who all use it differently. @scottjenson @carnage4life
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@Gargron @scottjenson the idea that things need to be "equally represented" is exactly how Twitter became a site where it's just Elon's AI shoving incels and fascism onto your timeline 24/7
@cmdr_nova @Gargron @scottjenson I don't think I have the technical capacity to boost this as much as it deserves.
And importantly: they demonstrated they had no functional scruples. I left Twitter when they responded to America electing a Twitter troll President by changing the definition of troll to make a carve-out for him.
Their game and their rules and none of us had to play it. And on Mastodon, all you need to play by your own rules is enough savvy to stand up one publicly-visible server and one domain name.
If those rules include "fuck AI," nobody can tell you otherwise and that's a feature not a bug.
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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 @mattwilcox @Gargron Are you really comparing the treatment black people get to the treatment AI bros get? I don't know any other way to parse your arguments here. These are not equal.
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@scottjenson @mattwilcox @Gargron Are you really comparing the treatment black people get to the treatment AI bros get? I don't know any other way to parse your arguments here. These are not equal.
@kevin
No I'm not, read the thread, I've clarified and apologized. -
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!
AI zealots have the right to be here, spewing their nonsense, and I have the right to ignore them. If that makes them sad, that's their problem. I don't owe them my time.
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How many of these responses are asking for defederation of instances which don’t ban posts about AI? I’m sure some instances might have such a policy but defederation only seems to happen at a large scale for instances that support Nazis, racists, csam, have no effective moderation, or have open unchecked signups (spam vector).
The existing tools work ok for avoiding folks with strong opinions you don’t want to hear.
There have been some serious architectural serious issues that enable harassment which also hides the harassment from others.
The details are important but I can only give a flavor (will look for a post that explains it well).
Goes something like this:
User0 (person about to be harassed) posts.
User1 posts racist reply and sets visibility to “followers only”. That actually means followers only plus User0.
1/n
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@scottjenson @Gargron I don't have anything nice to say about an "AI community" other than they're welcome to start their own instance that others can block.
@kevin and that completely misses my point. It's not about 'having an instance" it's about actively going after people you disagree with. Just read the replies I've been getting. I'm being told to leave the fediverse, I'm being called racist, people are making ad hominum attacks, etc.
THAT turns out to be what I'm actually talking about (I didn't realize when I stated but I became the point I was trying to address). We have a culture here that actively attacks others. No about of "making your own instance" protects you from that.
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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 Sounds like a waste of server space and bandwidth. That doesn't even factor the environmental implications of running the slop. @Gargron
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@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
@danirabbit @scottjenson Amen Danielle. I'm generally a people-pleaser, let's-all-get-along person in real life - to my own detriment.
AI boosters and propagandists? I have zero patience for it and block. If that's mean, too bad I guess. They'll never know.
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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.
NO ONE IS STOPPING "AI PEOPLE" FROM JOINING.
Jesus Christ. I'm an old white guy but my god can old white guys over-dramatize not getting what they want.
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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 for me, it's folks putting themselves as the first to repost a news thing someone else did like they're a fancy RSS aggregator that I find very unwelcoming.
Sure, have opinions and let's discuss it with humans. If you're just just another news feed, perhaps consider your audience and expectations around it... that different from normal humans seeking to converse with a few others.
I think carnage4life isn't a typical example and isn't what most people I know want.
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There have been some serious architectural serious issues that enable harassment which also hides the harassment from others.
The details are important but I can only give a flavor (will look for a post that explains it well).
Goes something like this:
User0 (person about to be harassed) posts.
User1 posts racist reply and sets visibility to “followers only”. That actually means followers only plus User0.
1/n
User2 follows User0 and engages in new threads. Because User2 isn’t a racist and doesn’t follow racists they don’t even see the reply from User1 and have a hard time understanding why User0 is upset unless they go to the work of sharing a screen shot of the harassing reply.
I think this is a much bigger problem than managing lots of folks with strong opinions who I don’t want to hear from.
2/n
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@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.
@awfulwoman @scottjenson "I could subscribe to an RSS feed if I wanted that" - that sums it up nicely.
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