Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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@scottjenson @pmdj Old white guys like... checks notes... the one who's here scolding everyone that we need to be more welcoming of assholes.
@dalias
He's gonna burn a hole in the projector somebody stop him!!! -
@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 Mastodon is the first and only social medium where users themselves, and nobody else, determine what they want to be shown. If Bluesky and Threads seem to show more interest in matters AI, there's no way of knowing whether that interest is real or a result of algorithms force-feeding timelines. Echo chamber? More like the real world. I don't like to eat excrement and would block people who'd advocate that. That may be an echo chamber in your book, but it really isn't.
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@scottjenson @pmdj You are speaking as a "Product Strategy Advisor to Mastodon Core team". You don't have to be up in someone's mentions for what you're saying to be relevant to us to speak out against. You're up in the ears of the people making decisions for the software that runs our platform.
Are you saying that asking for Mastodon to somehow be more open to new ideas and to foster a community that is more tolerant some type of evil plot?
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No raindrop ever wants to be guilty of the flood, yes.
Tell me an "argument" in this vein that I haven't heard before. This one wasn't it.
No, really, I do want to hear your answer.
Why does some rando talking about their vibecoded app need to hear what you personally think about AI? What are you trying to achieve? How effective is it?
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@evan @carnage4life @scottjenson @MozillaAI
It is unfortunately very easy to convince yourself that abuse and harrassment are OK as long as they're in service of a morally just cause.
@shauna @evan @carnage4life @scottjenson @MozillaAI It's also very easy to convince yourself that strongly opposing harmful things is the same as abuse and harassment if you are defending a morally unjust system.
Tech bros promoting harmful technology are not victims just because they are being challenged.
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@scottjenson publishers this drives revenue. I know German tech publisher @heiseonline did this analysis very early on and found Mastodon to exceed other platforms on number of clicks through to their articles (they are a tech publisher)
@scottjenson All of that aside: Mastodon does draw people hosting their own instance. There are AI players putting infrastructure elsewhere under serious pressure:
It seems understandable that the intention to try and get the attention of those players causes people to worry.
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@shauna @evan @carnage4life @scottjenson @MozillaAI It's also very easy to convince yourself that strongly opposing harmful things is the same as abuse and harassment if you are defending a morally unjust system.
Tech bros promoting harmful technology are not victims just because they are being challenged.
THIS. The harassment comes from a position of moral authority. They are doing it for the good of the system. If they are aware enough to know it's harassment, "it's worth it"
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@scottjenson @pmdj It's not an "evil plot" it's just irresponsible growth hacking that capitalist social media platforms are infamous for. People with shitty opinions drive rage engagement, so encourage them to come! 🤮
As I said when I first engaged with this thead, yes "more open to new ideas" and "more tolerant" are BAD THINGS without further qualification. "Diversity of opinion" is NOT a value. It's freeze-peach bro shit.
Yes we should strive to be as inclusive as possible towards people born different from us who have not had the same experiences, privilegs, etc. as us and whose needs, concerns, ways of communicating, etc. might be very different from our own.
This does not imply we should also be inclusive towards people who want to kiss tech industy ass.
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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 I didn't see what preceded this, I tuned in slightly after glimpsing some confusing toots by @johnzajac
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@bogosian @scottjenson I’m not head of Mastodon! Have a good day.
@Gargron @bogosian @scottjenson I'm head of Mastodon and I think puppies are an abomination.
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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 if youre actually given the time of day by the mastodon core team than yeah mastodon may just be in serious trouble.
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@mastodonmigration Of course. And there are valid reasons to not federate with platforms, too.
I am most concerned about why someone would keep 3 different accounts on 3 different services. We technically have federation between all those platforms, and more, but @carnage4life finds it better for some reason to spread out his presence across different accounts.
I can't make someone not do that, but I'd love to make federation interfaces smoother so if they don't want to, they don't have to.
Well, as far as Threads is concerned, their implementation of federation has been intentionally hobbled from the start. Early they attributed this to development concerns, but those rationales have long since been proven to be nonsense.
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@scottjenson @shauna @evan I think you misread me. Your take was wildly incorrect and your lack of learning from it has been interesting. AI is incredibly harmful objectively, with virtually no benefits in the way it is being marketed. Mozilla is using their enormous financial position to promote this harm, and people are complaining that the community is attempting to hold them to account.
It's not harassment, it's legitimate feedback, even if at times angry.
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Well, as far as Threads is concerned, their implementation of federation has been intentionally hobbled from the start. Early they attributed this to development concerns, but those rationales have long since been proven to be nonsense.
@mastodonmigration I agree, both the Threads federation interface and the BridgyFed interface need to be smoother and more transparent. That's part of my job; to make it easier to follow people using ActivityPub, wherever they are.
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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
1. There is no "AI", only LLMs.
2. LLMs are not people.
3. People promoting LLMs are goodlife* meat puppet scam artists.
4. NO. Fuck off & die in a fire.
5. Equating excluding grifters to racism is so sick & fucked up only a machine would've written it.* (Go read Fred Saberhagen's Berserker stories. That's what you're promoting.)
#butlerianJihad -
@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.
@octothorpe
Came here to say this. There's not one Mastodon. It's a loose collection of various communities. Anyone is welcome to try and "promote" AI, just have to face the reality around them.
@trisweb @cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron -
@scottjenson @shauna @evan I think you misread me. Your take was wildly incorrect and your lack of learning from it has been interesting. AI is incredibly harmful objectively, with virtually no benefits in the way it is being marketed. Mozilla is using their enormous financial position to promote this harm, and people are complaining that the community is attempting to hold them to account.
It's not harassment, it's legitimate feedback, even if at times angry.
My point was NEVER to support or endorse AI. I was using it as an example of how 'different topics' are met with hostility here.
People feel VERY strongly about AI. There are clearly horrible things being done. That discussion should happen and I'm not opposed to it.
I just wanted us to be be a *little* more tolerant of *some* ideas but this has clearly spiraled into something far too big for there to be a meaningful conversation at this point.
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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 no alt text is a red flag for me. I don't have a visual impairment and I hugely appreciate people's alt text descriptions. If you don't include alt text you are either deliberately excluding part of the community or maybe the pics you post aren't very interesting to you, so why should I be interested?
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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 am I misunderstanding or are you actually comparing AI “journalists” to Black Twitter?
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@scottjenson am I misunderstanding or are you actually comparing AI “journalists” to Black Twitter?
@Bronwyn I am NOT doing that!
https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116358195717244835
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