Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?

@scottjenson Respectfully, Mastodon is less of an echo chamber than any social media on earth presently. That's exactly why people bounce off of it. There is absolutely nothing built into the system to shepherd you into a "good" experience. It's just humans. Love 'em or leave 'em, but if you stay it's on you to curate your experience. A lotta people don't like that, and that's OK. All Mastodon users ever asked for was the option to exist in a space they owned. Not for Threads, Bluesky, and Twitter to all shut down and everyone to be on Mastodon.

@stefanie @scottjenson @vfrmedia @mattwilcox yes, I went with a strong assumption as to what you meant. But then one shouldn’t state ‘all AI’.

The debate around generative AI is admittedly the more interesting one and probably worthy of a separate thread.

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!

@tael Respectfully, we're looking at very different feeds. I assume you've heard of the reply guys getting in peoples mentions telling people off for not doing alt text, or content warnings? THAT is why good people are bouncing and that is exactly why it *is* an echo chamber. If you don't conform to these rules, instead of, you know, just not following them, or blocking them, or hell, defederating their server (all of which I would be fine with) people feel so privileged that they get in these new comers face and tell them "you're doing it wrong".

We should be encouraging communities that we don't agree with. This isn't "the nazi bar" story. There ISNT a single bar! It's the "you can't come into MY bar" story. That's what federation was built for. Why is that so hard for people to live with?

@scottjenson I don't think you're going to be persuaded away from this view. However, the reply guys exposing you to a paradigm different from your own, holding you to expectations you're unfamiliar with, are exactly what makes it not an echo chamber. If nobody ever bothered you or came into your notifs to disagree with you, you'd be in an echo chamber. Which it seems is what you're used to.

In most social media, there might be Nazis and communists on the same website. The algorithm constructs separate "bars" for them by simply not showing them each others' posts, heavily auto-moderating what language you can use in your posts, and recommending you people to follow that you like to interact with because you agree with them.

That is what builds social media platform retention. Mastodon has none of that. Instead, you defederate the Nazi bar and only talk to the bars that don't allow Nazis. Most people don't "get" that because it's always been done for them. And that's OK.

@tael and you're not going to be persuaded that people are leaving because reply guys are demoralizing to new arrivals.

@scottjenson You're looking at a tidal wave of criticism crashing into you and calling it an echo chamber. The echo chamber is when you are never exposed to exactly that. In an echo chamber, you don't realize you're in one; the only viewpoints you're hearing are your own.

The argument we're having isn't over whether people leave because they get criticized too much. That's obviously a real phenomenon. It's over whether that constitutes an "echo chamber." Those people leave because they are used to echo chambers.

@evan @cratermoon Exactly, even asking that question "What value do they bring" is kind of scary.

It's a fine line, I get it. We draw the line at nazis and scammers but let's not cross the line into "intellectual purity" tests

@tael Whatever, I don't care what we call it, I'm just saying it needs to stop. I'm not hearing you say that.

@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?

@scottjenson That's correct, you haven't heard me say that. I don't want Mastodon to become an echo chamber.

@tael then you clearly don't want new people to feel comfortable here either.

@Helenisenough @CiaraNi @scottjenson If somebody doesn't include Alt text, they are basically telling me that if somebody is blind, they are not as imnportant as everybody else.

@dalias @octothorpe @trisweb @cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron Yeah, I don't know what Fedi everyone else has been hanging out on, but there seem to be plenty of "AI" believers on here. I used to follow quite a number of them prior to their going off the LLM deep end. I have to maintain an extensive filter list to avoid having that stuff constantly surfacing in my feed.
This whole thing is just another variant of the tired old "free speech means you have to listen to my crap" argument.

@pmdj @dalias

That is the exact opposite of what I said. I'm saying the fediverse gives you the tools to follow/block/filter/ to your hearts content to create the space you want.

What is corrosive is people ACTIVELY going after people they don't agree with. Just look at the replies to my post to get small sample.

My point was, I thought, very simple, and very reasonable: we should be more welcoming of more opinions. If you don't like them, then don't follow them. That should be the fedi-way. To be clear, I'm NOT endorsing AI, it just used it as an example.

Instead I'm living the very point I was trying to make. I've been told to leave, called a racist, and had ad hominem attacks leveled at me.

Now to be fair, my original post was poorly worded. I've owned that
https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116358195717244835

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 2022

Yes, 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.

@RealGene

So, what they’re looking for is evidence of being seen? Evidence of positive reactions? And without this evidence they’re unlikely to invest their time?

On my first reading of op I thought the primary point was about being less critical of “ai”-philes as a community. Now I’m not sure it was.

@scottjenson

If you had to pick, is your point about a cultural dynamic here around “AI” or about engagement metrics?

@scottjenson Respectfully, Mastodon is less of an echo chamber than any social media on earth presently. That's exactly why people bounce off of it. There is absolutely nothing built into the system to shepherd you into a "good" experience. It's just humans. Love 'em or leave 'em, but if you stay it's on you to curate your experience. A lotta people don't like that, and that's OK. All Mastodon users ever asked for was the option to exist in a space they owned. Not for Threads, Bluesky, and Twitter to all shut down and everyone to be on Mastodon.