Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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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 examples like what? It just says mastodon has the least engagement which is normal, because it has the least active users.
And I think more official protocol standards and less mastodon defined de facto standards to make it easier for other server and client softwares would benefit not only the fediverse but also mastodon as flagship of the fediverse. -
@cutesobri @scottjenson @pmdj There already are models that do this, and reactions are complicated. On the one hand, it may provide some accessibility where post authors refuse to. On the other hand, it's subjecting users who need ALT text to very dubious-quality, possibly wildly inaccurate description, that often miss what was important about the image even if they're not technically inaccurate. On top of that, these models often impart harmful biases from their training corpora into the descriptions, for example misgendering or misclassifying people's roles in an image based on gendered or racialized assumptions about who belongs in what roles.
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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 think I see most of your point, but you're making it by equating two very different things:
- racism
- objection to AI
It's apples and orangutans.
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@devlord don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say that. I'm asking for more inclusivity. I assume you don't think that is horrible do you?
@scottjenson @devlord "Inclusivity" isn't a fix-everything word. It's like "discrimination", which usually meabs unfair discrimination; after all, if you don't want to be friends with active, unrepentant child molesters and refuse to share their posts or go to their parties, you are discriminating; just not (arguably) unfairly.
"Inclusivity" is similar. It has implicit targets/subjects that communities explicitly or implicitly shape and agree on (or not). Not everyone and not everything should be included in every community, even the super-friendly "inclusive" ones. For example, someone might argue that the Jostens corporation (they make class rights, yearbooks, etc.) should be "included" in my kid's middle school and high school community by allowing them to send kids and their parents weekly marketing emails. I deeply disagree.
Throwing "inclusivity" around as if it were an absolute value with no limits is getting you some challenging and even angry responses here.
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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
Wait, someone who has 18,000 followers is being "shooed away"??!? -
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 Let's see how this holds up for something else:
"This journalist reporting on the popularity and markets for red MAGA hats gets lots of engagement for their content on X and Threads, less on Bluesky, and very little on Mastodon. This is The Fediverse 'gatekeeping.' This shows the fediverse is an echo chamber. This is anti-inclusion; don't you people value inclusion? This MAGA Hat Journalist is being blocked from the fediverse. It's the same thing that happened with Black Twitter."
Note: careful reading will show that I am not accusing the person in the screenshot of having any MAGA sympathies. Some points I hope this illustrates (at least a little):
- Even if you're a journalist of some kind, nobody has a moral obligation to follow you or engage with your content, and you are not owed a certain number of followers in one domain if you have them elsewhere
- Lack of popularity is not evidence of discrimination, anti-inclusiveness, or gatekeeping
- Discrimination based on preferences for what one wants to read is not the same as discrimination based on identity-linked characteristics like race (god, I hope not; I have muted or blocked several porn accounts specializing in kink that does not appeal to me)
- This is not a real discussion about inclusivity or gatekeeping
Hm. Maybe this is a clever engagement gambit; ragebait tailored to the fediverse.
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@cutesobri @scottjenson @pmdj Those aren't really problems you can solve with "better models". Debiasing text is tractable by removing markers that could be proxies for characteristics that shouldn't be used is tractable, but for images it really isn't. And no model can gather *intent* information from the author that isn't recorded anywhere.
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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 Personally I don't think “hates AI, lukewarm about politics” is a problem that needs fixing. We're the most decentralized platform, of course we hate big tech.
But, I still think there's a conversation to be had—
Mastodon has strong opinions on some topics. I agree on most of those, but it can feel like we're fostering a culture where blocks and defederation are necessary tools against users who do not align with my worldview.
It can feel like we're assuming the worst in others.
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@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
I dunno...I have a nuanced and not entirely negative view of AI, and I don't have a bad time here.
Having my ideas challenged isn't "a bad time"...and if I really wanted to, I could find people who did feel differently. There's over a million people on here, not all of them feel the same way.
That said, I have never seen the harassment you speak of, and certainly I cannot imagine that someone would be harassed for "normal" actions and opinions.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
@danbrotherston @pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke fwiw earlier today I muted somebody who was explicitly calling to bully "AI bros," which: define "AI bro" bc as you said one can have nuance on genAI. but there are definitely rabid tribal AI haters here and I don't blame them too much.
it might also be worth considering that fedi - even The Mastodon Network
which is a subset - has neighborhoods, boroughs, cities, and even continents (eg non-Latin charsets), so what exactly are we discussing? -
@scottjenson after sleeping on it, I am choosing to respond because I cannot let your narrative go unchallenged, since you speak as a "Product Strategy Advisor to Mastodon Core team". Your intentions are probably good, but the words you chose to publish read a lot like unexamined privilege and a deep misunderstanding of lived reality of many people in this federation:
equating the experience of mass harassment on minorities to "journalists not getting engagement" is a slap in the face to both the victims of harassment and the volunteers (operators, moderators and developers) who keep this federation running. This reads extremely tone deaf and patronizing, and you antagonized a lot of people with that comparison
engagement dynamics being different than on mainstream parasocial platforms is not a bug, it is the main feature! Many (most?) people are here seeking a refuge from the exploitative attention economy and prioritize mutual connections above the parasocial one-way audience management that most journalists have been trained to seek out. I would not say that journalists are not welcome per se, but their usual methods definitely are
your example of "AI journalism" was very poorly chosen and contributed to the polarization. GenAI is NOT a neutral technology: it is the technological arm of an anti-social, parasitic and regressive societal project. This societal project is built on "values" that are the polar opposite of those that most instances in this federation uphold and is destroying countless lives, including those of people who are the rockbed of the Fediverse. Your replies minimizing this harm "because they're not nazis" read at lot like unexamined privilege
"big tent" attitudes are a red flag to many of us, because they usually end with marginalized people being pushed away while "the good gents" look away from the violence. Tolerance is a social contract, and people who promote anti-social views don't benefit from that social contract
The Fediverse is the opposite of an echo chamber! I picked up sewing and tried crochet, learned about insects and wild birds. I learned about the lives of people with chronic pain, several forms of neurodivergence and am following several blind authors. I read 10 thousands pages last year thanks to many book recommendations. It is one of the very few places that still feels human, and you are rubbing against people who fight to defend that.
I recommend you seek out feedback about this thread from several women and think about how you can come back to the conversation with a less antagonistic and tone-deaf attitude. We need people like you, but we don't need the "big tent" attitude you exhibited on this thread.
@xavier @scottjenson Thank you for pointing out the poor choice of comment. I was struggling with figuring out whether the problem the OP was trying to highlight was "Hostile to AI. Lukewarm to politics." or "Least engagement", and it took me a while to figure out that part of my problem with the post was the choice of example comment.
I see "people posting on multiple platforms are making comments like this"
and I look at the comment and think
"Yes, you are seeing these because this kind of comment is tuned to get traction with algorithms, not to engage the reader more deeply."A post focusing on establishing a two-way dialogue (actual engagement rather than measuring audience size) wouldn't read so much like it ought to be captioned "I did an experiment to compare Mastodon with Threads and BlueSky - 3 things I discovered!"
That kind of post doesn't reach me very often here, and that's part of what makes Mastodon appealing.
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@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
As for Fedi being unfriendly to "normies" ... I've seen conversations here explicitly discussing how to be welcoming to new people from other platforms.
But there is an inherent complexity to a distributed network that simply doesn't exist for a centralised corporatised network.
I do think that people will find a difference here between the intentionally algorithmically addictive feed from Twitter vs. the chronological feed here, just as any addictive experience is different from a neutral one.
@danbrotherston @pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke people who are too addicted to the crack-like fix of engagement-farming algorithmic feeds will either detox or self-select out, and *that's fine.*
this reminds me of Automattic's current crusade to make line go up with tumblr metrics which is chipping away at the core UX which makes tumblr tumblr and makes its core userbase so loyal.
growth doesn't need to be an end goal.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life on the topic of AI, I find the abusive conversations on the Fediverse pretty dispiriting. People I like and respect have worked themselves into the position that use of AI is an inexcusable sin, and that anyone who uses AI merits harassment and abuse. Given that 85% of developers use or plan to use AI (Stack Overflow poll), that means a huge number of tech people getting brigaded by our anti-AI squad.
@evan@cosocial.ca @scottjenson@social.coop @carnage4life@mas.to I suppose that is actually just 85% of developers who interact with Stack Overflow.
The sort of people who aren't put off by Stack Overflow having prominent “AI” features, and haven't already left. Its peak is something like 10 years ago. -
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 If you want people here, start an instance. It’s a free network.
As a free network, you may find other network operators choose not to federate with your instance. This has happened in the past. This is not an exclusion of the instance, it is simply a failure of that instance to find its audience.
In brief: The people here will include you when you bring something that they want to have in their community. Some people here have found journalists (on journa.host or elsewhere) to be something they want in their community. but that’s per-instance and per-user. "Mastodon" the network (inasmuch as there is such a thing) doesn’t have a mechanism to grant what you’re asking.
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@mormund And you have every right to do that. But do that with filtering/blocking/hashtags. Don't do it by chasing away people that want to be part of the community. "Gatekeeping" is not a good look for an "open social" network.
@scottjenson @mormund for your consideration: I have a set of politics filters with over 400 terms, which I laboriously keep in sync, by hand, across multiple Mastodon accounts - most of which I'll permanently migrate to other ActivityPub software in the next couple months.
these filters allow me to engage with the omnipresent flood of (mostly US) politics #onhere when & how I want.
maybe Mastodon needs better filtering beyond just whole-word + substring, and a way to easily share filter sets.
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That's the point. Unmoderated servers see a completely different view, while the mainstream is heavily policed - and the majority of the still active seem to like it that way.
@scottjenson@osma @scottjenson yeah, I made a point to seek out fediblock-minimal Mastodon servers for my alts & projects over the years and I was just saying yesterday to a journalist who feels this place is shrinking that I don't perceive much if any slowdown. the opposite really.
there is definitely something of a hivemind among users in the Imperial Core which is very perceptible to me in the Outer Rim, but I mute & filter when it gets too insufferable and that tends to keep it semi in check.
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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.
Are they leaving the #fediverse completely? Or just using other #ActivityPub servers?
I was on a #mastodon instance for a while, hosted by a tech Youtuber. When that instance shut down, I moved to another independently hosted mastodon instance, then decided to self-host a Pleroma (alternative to mastodon) server and have been on that ever since (a couple years).
#selfhost -
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 Got here from a boost, seems like you have a lot of replies, so I hope it’s all right to add my 2 cents.
One thing that strikes me about this post is the assumption that Mastodon needs to be “big”, needs to have as many people as possible, needs to be this universal medium in which all participate. I cannot understand this.
My thesis here is that:
- Like in real life, local cultures form
- Local culture is not a bug
- Having a culture means having norms and, yes, that means conflict among and between groups
- Conflict is not abuse
- Exchange between cultures is good
- Evil people do exist, we can describe them, and we don’t have to give them time or space
- I think I can speak for everyone in saying that “we” want as much freedom as possible, except the freedom to conquer, oppress, and enslave, for example. That is, we can generalize our inclusion, but only up to a point.Just to give you an example, I don’t like AI and I don’t like people who use it, and I especially don’t like people who develop it. I think it’s an antisocial device that turns social topology into a star shape, pointing to one thing controlled by amoral billionaires who don’t care about our wellbeing. Therefore, I don’t welcome people who are involved in that.
Same goes for fascists, monarchists, authoritarian types, greedy people, racists, amoral software developer types, and the like. The reason is because those kinds of people destroy trust at every turn. They actively make life worse. They take agency away. They don’t care about learning, or empathy, curiosity, or progress. They push. They conquer. They take. That’s it. It’s way different and on a completely different scale from having “different ideas”. Those people don’t belong in modern, civilized societies.
I believe people gravitate here because they’re aware of that and there is nowhere else to go that isn’t drowning in chaos and sucking every last bit of value out of everything we do and say. Hell, I’m not even sure why I’m on here, except out of a sense of desperation to find my people.
If you want a completely universal, neutral communication medium, sorry, but this is not it. I don’t even think it makes sense to presuppose that such a thing exists. Mastodon isn’t even a true pub/sub system because it allows boosts, quotes, global feeds, replies etc. It’s also not a real social medium because it doesn’t foster real mutual concern. I mean, can you imagine putting a sign out front, quoting a neighbor’s bad take and then adding your own thoughts to it, for people driving by to just passively observe? Truly insane shit. But hey, I’ve seen weirder things in the last five years.
If someone wants to shape this local culture in a positive and _proportionate_ way, I say go for it! Expect conflict. Not to presume you would want any of those above people in here, but if you or anyone else did, I would want them to leave, and I would want them to take it personally.
I really hope for your mental health that you stop wanting Mastodon to “win” or “gain support” and focus instead on who specifically you want to be here, why you want them here, how they can contribute, and bring them in. Simply adding more people is not going to help anything.
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@scottjenson @dalias @pmdj tbf I see a lot of floofy foxgirls + rainbow-haired warrior theydies + abstract entities with nary a facepic to be seen doing plenty to purge the timeline of heretics.
similarly, if an Instagram influencer showed up on tumblr and acted like they were still on Instagram, they would be pilloried until they chose to simmer down and learn the local folkways or leave.
here, people who show up need to not act like they're still on Twitter or Bluesky.
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@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.
@marshray @neoluddite @deFractal fwiw I've had some more nuanced discussions on genAI lately but I'm on an Outer Rim system where it's almost certainly easier to do that, and even so there are endless Takes about genAI floating by every single day, mostly from people who really dislike it. which, to the point of this subthread, is fine, and I don't blame them, but it gets just about as tiresome as a Take on US politics after the 947th one.
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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 Threads is Mastodon, so...
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