Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?

@scottjenson

Thanks for this.

To engage with your original point: I'm struck by a contrast, and I have some curiosity about it.

When I look at @carnage4life's original post on its own, my reaction is something like
"oh, interesting to have the 3-way comparison from someone experiencing all 3 places firsthand", and then "yeah that makes sense".

I'm not surprised that "tech topics" were "getting the most replies and likes" here, because there are loads of techie people here. Many of @carnage4life's followers on Fedi probably clicked "follow" primarily for the tech commentary in the first place.

I was a little surprised to see the Fedi described as "lukewarm to politics", because I follow a fair number of people giving political analysis - but I realise the post was a kind of holistic impression, not a comment on every single person here.

I'm also not surprised that someone posting similarly on all three might have fewer followers here than on Bluesky or Threads, as an absolute number, because iirc Fedi has fewer people _overall_ than the other two. But 18k is still a chonky number!

So when you say "has me questioning our community" and that journalists "aren't coming with examples like this"... I'm like oh, that's very different from how I parsed the same info!

What is it about the original description that, for you, means journalists wouldn't come?

@pjakobs @scottjenson @Gargron I’m suddenly reminded of a work dinner I attended once. Usually I have trouble with conversation topics, as most things coworkers want to talk about are not my areas of interest.

For once, though, the conversation turned to music and I was having a great time listening and sharing; one guy, though, kept trying to turn the conversation to sports. He looked like he was going to cry, literally, because he couldn’t steer the conversation away from music. He had literally no awareness of how often sports dominates the conversations…

There’s so many places that AI peeps are drowning out all the other conversations. Tech forums, LI, etc. I’m not at all sorry if one place on the internet is disinterested or even hostile to the hype invading here too.

@unchartedworlds Thanks for that thoughtful reply. It was a bit of a knee jerk reaction to be honest. I've been talking to LOTS of folks, trying to figure out how to get more people to join the Fediverse and journalists are fairly reluctant to join. If you follow some of the replies to my post there is a healthy "yeah, and we don't WANT you!" feeling.

I'm all for people not wanting to have journalists here but there is a surprising vitriol to let them in at all. I keep hearing over (and over (AND OVER)) that anyone can spin up a server but that's completely missing the point. If people don't want you here, having your own server accomplishes nothing.

My point isn't that anyone should want anything. I'm just surprised people don't want to, you know, let journalists at least TRY to do something here?

My BIG mistake was picking someone in AI, that just set everyone off on the wrong path. I did not want to "push" AI on anyone.

@scottjenson "we'd like journalists to be here right?"

Depends what they're posting.

Since you mentioned @carnage4life@mas.to I grabbed https://bsky.app/profile/carnage4life.bsky.social/post/3mitaox3nts2s as an example. It's the kind of low-effort "look at the line go up" post that's essentially stenography instead of journalism and the sort of thing that made me block him here in the first place.

Compare with the work Ed Zitron is doing: https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3miemnwkypc24

@nikclayton So you're saying people can only post here if YOU think they're ok?

It's so shocking to me that 'asking for journalists' to be on Mastodon has someone been equated to "letting in fascists"

I keep hearing over and over "You can spin up your own server, anyone can join" but that doesn't at all match with what you just said.

I'm not asking to let ANYONE in, I'm just saying let's let them, you know try. If you want block, deferate, whatever, more power to you! Isn't that how federation is supposed to work?

@scottjenson sigh this is the reason we can’t have nice things. Sending hugs

@CptSuperlative @RealGene

@kcarruthers

@CptSuperlative @RealGene

Thank you both. But lets be clear, I didn't do a good job setting up my argument, it was confusing and unclear. I have to own that. My frustration was that I tried to correct the record and just continued to get yelled at.

@maniandthenonos There's no ALT text, I'm not allowed to read this

@scottjenson You know what's "scary"? THE IDEA THAT YOU HAVE ANY KIND OF JOB WITH RESPONSIBILITY, AT MASTODON OR ANYWHERE ELSE.

@scottjenson There you go, fixed it for you, Scott.

@neoluddite @deFractal
> Why should we tolerate that?

Because once you’ve driven away all the generative AI users (e.g. the great majority of today’s students) you won’t even be part of that discussion.

This has pretty much already happened on my feed. Constructive discussion on that topic is nearly impossible.

@evan@cosocial.ca
Bluesky doesn't use ActivityPub at all and is not connected to the fediverse.
Threads account only connect to fediverse when the account owner turns this feature on explicitly (and you can guess how many of them even know there's a knob there).

@Axomamma You sound calm, reasonable, and someone I'd like to have a beer with.

@scottjenson I'm not arguing with any of that.

To go back to your first post, @carnage4life@mas.to is complaining about the lower engagement on the Fediverse.

Maybe that lower engagement is because his posts are low effort and the Fediverse self-selects for people who don't generally interact with that?

If you want a practical recommendation, partner with high-effort journalists on the platform for 12 months. I mentioned Ed Zitron - he was here ~ 8 years ago, and left. A lot changed since then.

@scottjenson I definitely would not be interested in having a beer with you. What would there be to talk about? How gullible you are? That wouldn't take long.

@scottjenson "product strategy advisor" should read "complete fucking wanker"

@scottjenson @Gargron@mastodon.social I'm one of the authors in the Antrhopic settlement. Your AI community, and the technology and business methodology it's based on, are not welcome.

@nikclayton Actually you said "It depends on what they're posting". My point is that, outside of anything that violates server rules, it shouldn't MATTER what they are posting. Let them post and be ignored.

My point was that this person was getting traction on these other platforms and not on mastodon. That was interesting to me. People yelling at me that "engagement doesn't matter" is moralizing. Either you believe in the fediverse or you don't.

I've been told countless times, spin up your own server. But people sure don't act like that's a good idea.

All I'm saying is you shouldn't care what they post. But again, because people like to throw "nazi" around, I'm not saying anything goes. But, if your server HATES AI and will defenderate anything with AI, I'm saying that's cool! Do it! That's how the fediverse should work

I'm surprised people don't actually believe in the letting the fediverse do it's thing.

@Gargron @scottjenson Thank you and the above comment equating AI users with marginalized users is one hell of a stretch if you ask me. I don’t understand this desire to have contact with AI journalists or AI people for that matter. Then again, anybody that uses echo chamber on ironically really doesn’t understand the understanding why some of us are frankly tired and we don’t want everybody to have access to talk to us on social media. There’s a reason why I never even entertained the notion of comments on my blog. The Internet has proven time and time again that it will harm marginalized users and if marginalized users can carve out a safe space online, then why can’t people work on neighborly relationships rather than wanting everybody to be clustered into one social media room? I don’t understand why everyone wants everyone else to be clustered into one social media room when there’s more than one way to keep in contact and follow marginalized users outside of social media. Lastly, how come it’s extremely confusing for others to understand that I don’t want to follow everybody

@scottjenson

> It's so shocking to me that 'asking for journalists' to be on Mastodon has someone been equated to "letting in fascists"

Please see the attached screenshot from journalist Megan McArdle in the Washington Post arguing that the debate about fascism in the US should be dropped.

Assuming that you really are shocked, and that wasn't a rhetorical device, this might be worth some introspection with a view to getting outside your current media bubble.