Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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RE: https://social.growyourown.services/@FediFollows/116274521264107379
Besides, there's no attitude against journalists here. There may be against PR shills, but some of my earliest follows from October 2022 are active and doing well. Fedi isn't their exclusive channel, but for many it is the insurance strategy. Hat tip to @molly0xfff on documenting that path and @mike and all of @Flipboard on holding the flag high. The journalists are too many to list here but @FediFollows has a "starter pack" for any niche.
@jdp23 @scottjenson @unchartedworldsThere are also lots, lots more news accounts listed on my website at https://fedi.directory/news-media/
For anyone unfamiliar with the site, you can follow a listed account by copy-pasting its Fediverse address into the search box in Mastodon etc. This will bring up its profile on your server, where you can click follow.
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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"What is corrosive is people ACTIVELY going after people they don't agree with."
This is why we all left twitter. The fascists went after us. Look what twitter is now.
This is why fascistoid ideologies find themselves shunned and blocked here. We don't want a Nazi bar here.
Look at who funds the AI craze, and you'll understand why people put fascism and AI in the same basket.
Call it echo chamber all you want. We just want a space to hang out without Nazis.
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@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
Not using AT's and CW's is “using it wrong”, if you know what those are for.Newcomers don't have that knowledge and it's not always a part of the written rules, as if every newcomer had read them.
I'm kind of baffled that you, as an advisor on Mastodon's product strategy, are fazed by people correcting this, instead of advocating on how to alleviate that.
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@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 Do you mean that commercial social media don’t have all that behaviors criticized by @scottjenson and you don’t see people nagging you there because big tech outsourced the work of nagging to the algorithm and that way they invisibly create echo chambers, in a way that looks comfortably “welcoming” for everyone but that’s just an illusion
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@dzwiedziu Try reading the thread again very closely.
I don’t think any two posts in this conversation are using the same definition for the out-group. Vague notions of “AI people” who probably have LLM-induced psychosis.
@marshray
> Try reading the thread again very closely.I very much do not like condescending appeals to literacy.
If you want to point to a perceived flaw in my understanding, then do it in a precise manner.
The latter part of your toot does not help with that.
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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 I dont know who you are, so I have no particular feelings towards you.
I just want to say that I don't want AI (for a myriad of reasons).
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@ahltorp @scottjenson @carnage4life the amount of nonstop politics is oppressive, and I'm an American so I have direct context to understand 90% of it. IMO it's a miracle we haven't driven away all non-US English speakers completely.
note that I'm not saying politics aren't important. I'm saying Mastodon Network
users NEVER shut the fuck up about it EVER. I have a filter set for politics, so I can engage or not as I'm able & willing. it contains over 400 terms and it gets a daily workout.@deutrino Unfortunately, the politics in large parts of the world is so bad right now that it affects our lives extremely negatively, so it isn’t that surprising. I understand not wanting to be subjected to politics posts all the time, but most of us can’t really choose to not be subjected to the effects of politics.
Most of the political posts I saw were about basic human rights being violated in one form or another, so very pressing matters. Again, I understand that you want to choose when.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life Mastodon is 100% an echo chamber in my experience.
Some topics are taboo, and there is very little tolerance for everything that is not the accepted opinion.
I think Mastodon is the platform where I’ve seen the smallest diversity of opinions on any non-technical topic.
Yet I want the fediverse to succeed as a platform to liberate the general public from monopolistic and toxic platforms.
@thibaultamartin @scottjenson @carnage4life to me the original post doesn't even make sense.
What is Mastodon? Its the software.
Everyone is free to create their own servers.
If you don't like the policies of one server, join another or create your own
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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@scottjenson @pmdj @dalias disclaimer: not a tech professional
You know all this already, but:
The fediverse is a different kind of social media.
A “like” or star in the fediverse doesn’t have the same value as it does in an algorithmically based social media network, where it causes the algorithm to boost the content into similar users’ feeds.
A boost is given thoughtfully. You want your mutuals to see things you think will interest them. 1/2 -
@CptSuperlative
Let's start with a discussion of "how federation is supposed to work". Who is allowed in, when are they banned and when is their server defederated.Then ask "does this cover most of the bases?" If so, Can we then allow, say journalists in and if they are saying things you don't like, you can just ignore them, let server ban them, etc.
Great, so if we can agree that federation tools to kick out bad people, can we just open the door a TINY amount and let others in and NOT freak out?
@scottjenson @CptSuperlative @kcarruthers @RealGene
Black people, trans people, marginalized groups have been saying for ages: no, the tooling doesn't cover the bases, using individual/server-based ignore/mute/kick/ban is still a priviledged action that is enforcing marginalization by putting the work on the victim rather than perpetrators or would-be allies.
No one cares about people with dissenting opinions when they open their own instances. It's the reach they have by default (they can say anything to anyone) and the manual, sisyphean efforts to reduce it that is problematic.
I fear this is the crux of the problem: we want to believe that humans are good by default and only a thin margin is problematic, can be handled individually. In practice the inverse is truer for most people: racist, sexist, ableist subtext is the norm, and the abundance of messages with this subtext is sickening. Where do marginalized communities thrive ? In (semi-)closed communities, with self-made tools and rules, because marginalized people realize that non-marginalized people who hold power and don't question their own bias ultimately don't really care about anyone that doesn't look like them. However good people in power think they are.
The signal you get from people you want to see is engagement: it's a bad signal in itself (people engage with what they want, not because they have to be nice) but let's set that aside for a minute. There are a ton of people who just can't exist on a platform that is so blind to their lives it doesn't know how harmful it is to them. Start with the engagement people have between each other in here already. If black people feel safer on other platforms, it's not because they don't see engagement on the fediverse. -
@iris I agree with everything you're saying. This conversation has become far bigger than I intended. All I wanted was to say "it would be nice if we had a bigger tent"
The people that reply "you can just spin up your own instance" are missing a key point: people actively hunt down and harass people they don't like. I *can't* just spin up an instance if I'm getting harassed.
And to be clear, his has NOTHING to do with AI. But 'asking people to be nicer' is somehow seen as, I don't know, promoting pedaphila (I was *just* accused of this)
It's this toxic misunderstanding, and the need to chase people away that I'm taking issue with. Not your more reasonable "people vs ideas" point (which I agree with)
@scottjenson @iris yes, you *can* spin up an instance while being harassed. a lot of people with far less privilege than you have weathered far worse and are still here to tell the tale.
(you misspelled "pedophilia")
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@scottjenson @pmdj @dalias disclaimer: not a tech professional
You know all this already, but:
The fediverse is a different kind of social media.
A “like” or star in the fediverse doesn’t have the same value as it does in an algorithmically based social media network, where it causes the algorithm to boost the content into similar users’ feeds.
A boost is given thoughtfully. You want your mutuals to see things you think will interest them. 1/2Accounts that don’t interact with their followers will eventually die unless marked as bots.
Because there is no algorithm, it’s hard, but rewarding, to find people with mutual interests, especially if those interests are niche, like pro-AI.
Influencers must take all this stuff into account to build a following. Often, writers just come expecting an audience. We’re outcasts, loners, weirdos. You gotta work hard to get us! 2/2
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@progressivecat @Helenisenough @CiaraNi That is entirely correct! I totally agree with you. Where we differ is what we do about it.
Me? I just ignore them, block them, don't boost them, etc. What I don't do is get into their face and tell them "Hey, you're doing it wrong". That is a large amount of privilege to think a) they want advice or b) I'm the hero that needs to correct it.
@scottjenson @progressivecat @CiaraNi cont'd...I sought out that advice. Similar advice is widely available on Mastodon.
I'm not sure why your response assumes anyone here is offering unwanted advice.
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@scottjenson
Not using AT's and CW's is “using it wrong”, if you know what those are for.Newcomers don't have that knowledge and it's not always a part of the written rules, as if every newcomer had read them.
I'm kind of baffled that you, as an advisor on Mastodon's product strategy, are fazed by people correcting this, instead of advocating on how to alleviate that.
In fact, here's some free ideas that could decrease this friction:
1. Include explanation of *what signal missing alt text sends* in UI warning about missing alt text. "Many people can't access this post without alt text. Posting without alt text signals a lack of respect to those communities. Use #/alt4me to ask for help with alt text." This would decrease posts which lack alt text out of ignorance, and fit those who persist it explains ahead of time why they get people reminding them about the issue.
2. (More technically challenging) For posts without alt text, maintain a counter per-user and display (in the alt text slot) "this is this user's Nth post without alt text" capping out at 1000 or something. Make sure to subtract when alt text gets edited in. This helps those who would reply with a reminder understand whether it's someone new who just doesn't know/understand, or whether it's someone who doesn't care. For those who don't care, you'd see much less falloff.Harder to do similar with CW as it's not possible to know automatically when one was warranted. Then again I've very rarely seen direct CW-nagging.
By the way, do you know who I *do* see on the fediverse? Blind users and people dealing with various traumas. If you had a button that would instantly silence CW and alt-text nagging, guess who would leave? I half-understand that @scottjenson is unconsciously trolling at this point, fixed in his opinions and unwilling to listen to any of the criticism here so he's trying to form arguments that defend his own ego, but every change-to-others'-social-behaviors that he's asking for here is one that would directly make some portion of fedi users less comfortable, and he hasn't been willing to face the racism issue head-on, which is almost certainly a *much* bigger reason for leaving than anything he's mentioned.
The counter-point about echo chambers is spot-on here.
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@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 JESUS "reply guys" doesn't mean "folks asking for alt text and content warnings" which are, you may not be aware, accessibility features that let disabled people interact with mastodon. Where's "inclusivity" in that?
Bro. Bro. Bro, quit your job, people below you must be losing their hair cleaning up after you here.
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@nikclayton Again, we are in agreement. I think we actually agree on quite a bit. But this "countering" argument is used a bit too broadly, basically implying ALL journalists need to be countered.
My point is that some here want it both ways: 1) Anyone can spin up a server and 2) They really don't want to allow everyone in. I think people need to choose.
BTW, I appreciate your good faith effort to discuss this. My only goal was to have this discussion and learn (I've clearly made some mistakes in this whole post)
> BTW, I appreciate your good faith effort to discuss this.
Oh no.
That suggests you think some of the replies to you have been made in bad faith, and can be ignored.
So I've gone back and re-read the entire thread, starting with https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116352522288234148 (obviously, I have no visibility in to private messages you may have received, etc).
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> BTW, I appreciate your good faith effort to discuss this.
Oh no.
That suggests you think some of the replies to you have been made in bad faith, and can be ignored.
So I've gone back and re-read the entire thread, starting with https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116352522288234148 (obviously, I have no visibility in to private messages you may have received, etc).
@scottjenson I cannot find a single instance of someone arguing with you in bad faith over this (just to be very clear, arguing in bad faith is when someone argues a position they personally do not believe in).
I can find many people disagreeing with you. There are plenty of examples of people being angry. Using language you might not agree with. Wondering about your motives for this discussion. But I can't find an example of anyone arguing a position I don't think they believe in.
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@scottjenson I cannot find a single instance of someone arguing with you in bad faith over this (just to be very clear, arguing in bad faith is when someone argues a position they personally do not believe in).
I can find many people disagreeing with you. There are plenty of examples of people being angry. Using language you might not agree with. Wondering about your motives for this discussion. But I can't find an example of anyone arguing a position I don't think they believe in.
@scottjenson So I am concerned that you are using "bad faith" instead of "said mean things to me and my feelings are hurt, so I'm going to ignore their points".
You characterised this as "Half the people were mad at me for "pushing AI slop", the other half saying that calling for more tolerance was "letting in fascists". (https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116359910629013334).
But that's just not an accurate characterisation.
On the specific topic of engagement I want to highlight a couple of points made by others:
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@scottjenson So I am concerned that you are using "bad faith" instead of "said mean things to me and my feelings are hurt, so I'm going to ignore their points".
You characterised this as "Half the people were mad at me for "pushing AI slop", the other half saying that calling for more tolerance was "letting in fascists". (https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116359910629013334).
But that's just not an accurate characterisation.
On the specific topic of engagement I want to highlight a couple of points made by others:
@scottjenson @RealGene in https://hachyderm.io/@RealGene/116361309008239258.
> It's not the AI fluffing, it's the attention-seeking that really pisses off people here, where there are tools to *actually* mute them, *and* defederate their Nazi Bars. If it were a couple of years ago, it would have been cryptocurrency or Bored Apes.
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> Everywhere else, the algorithm keeps them visible. -
@scottjenson @RealGene in https://hachyderm.io/@RealGene/116361309008239258.
> It's not the AI fluffing, it's the attention-seeking that really pisses off people here, where there are tools to *actually* mute them, *and* defederate their Nazi Bars. If it were a couple of years ago, it would have been cryptocurrency or Bored Apes.
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> Everywhere else, the algorithm keeps them visible.@scottjenson @christoff in https://yem.bouncingaroundtheroom.online/@christoff/116358553109467946
> I want journalists. I don't want yet another RSS feed aggregation account.
(i.e., a journalist account that does nothing but post links to their own articles is not, in and of itself, engaging, or deserving of engagement, similar sentiments expressed by e.g., @CiaraNi in https://mastodon.green/@CiaraNi/116356896502329823).
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