Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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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 Who are you to tell me that I should be more interested in any topic? Who are you to tell me that I'm not supposed to mute, block or defederate from any topic?
It seems that you are deeply misunderstanding the federated nature of the Fediverse and Mastodon.
There's thousands of instances, each with its own moderation and federation policy, and millions of accounts who chose their instance because of those policies, and now individually curating their feeds based on their very personal preferences.
Who is the we in "we let more in"? Where is the gate to gate keep?
I've already told you that comparing "AI people" to marginalized people is vile. There's something very fundamental about human dignity that you are not getting here.
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@evan Not sure if you are against food and water for humans or just think AI does good things for the environment?
"AI" as promoted by the big tech companies comes with a boost in energy usage for datacenters. They build new gas turbines...
One of the biggest tasks for the future of humanity is, to keep the planet in a livable condition... which means: Stop using fossil fuels. Reduce energy usage of unneccessary tech.
Datacenters are not endangering life on earth. That is an irresponsible exaggeration that detracts from the real threats to the environment.
AI (~0.1% of emissions today) is not an important cause of climate change. Fossil fuel use for transportation (15%), as well as beef (10%), cement production (5%), and rice cultivation (3%) are major contributors.
You can read about actual causes of climate change and their solutions: https://drawdown.org/
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@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
Your AI community is not welcome on the fediverse. Go back on Linkedin, or even better: quit AI. Blocked.
@Gargron -
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 who is stopping "AI people" (whatever they are) from joining? Isn't Mastodon free software?
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Hey, me and Muttley are proud of our checkered pasts, but time for a new leaf...
For maybe a day or two anyway....
Well he has a clean sheet now.
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@scottjenson @Gargron I'd have to ask, what value would an an AI Booster community bring to the FediVerse?
@cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron
No value at all. Or infinite value. Does it even matter? Nobody has questioned the need for otaku communities, NSFW images, or birdwatching groups. I don't know — I just don't share that kind of utilitarianism. -
@dzwiedziu You made a specific claim: That I was “conflating ‘AI’ boosters with ‘AI’ users”.
But this distinction is not observed by the posts up-thread thread. There is little or no consistent use of terminology at all.
I think probably you could see this if you were to re-read the thread above carefully, just as I took the time to do before suggesting it.
I’m not trying to be rude here, but you specifically asked for “precise”. Most people are not used to direct discussion and often interpret it as “condescending”.
@marshray
Apologies if I triggered something, yet I'm *very* allergic to appeals to literacy (as I might have stated earlier).My thought was that the conflation was on your part, less the rest of the thread.
So apologies again, as this might be me reading your post wrong.
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@scottjenson @Gargron There is nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping anyone from creating and cultivating an AI community on Mastodon. Start a server. Knock yourself out.
But expecting to *farm acceptance* from a group of people, one which most members vastly dislike AI, is quite the hubris.
But sure, the community at large is the problem.
Clean up your kitchen and maybe folks will join you for a meal.
@FeloniousPunk @scottjenson I left mastodon.social because of the HOA attitude and the number of people who watch the local feed looking for someone to pick a fight with.
I found a small application-only server that focused on an topic I cared about and enjoyed, asked nicely for an account, and I could not be happier in and with this community. I have plenty of visibility and interaction with the wider community sane as I had on mastodon.social, just without the pinchy-faced HOA ankle-biters taking out their aggressions on the public feed.
If you want that inclusive accepting community, spin up a server and build it. It's not trivial but it's also not impossible. Any group can find someone to assist with the tech part then they're left with moderation, hosting bills, and community building. None of these barriers are insurmountable, none of them are unique to a group, and none require more than effort and enough cash to keep the servers running.
If your group wants a community, a place for interpersonal and group communication, they're set. If your group wants publicity, an audience, and public approval, that's a different problem and one that Mastodon was not built to address. Now you're in the realm of PR and reputation management. Given the serious problems surrounding both AI and journalism, that's the kitchen cleaning part.
If people want community, they can build it - the cost and effort barriers are the same for everyone. If people want a large receptive audience, they need to make themselves worth listening to and that's not anyone else's problem to fix.
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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 you might be missing the point there because it seems like none of the platforms really want to hear about AI
Maybe people don't want to hear about AI
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@scottjenson
While I took issue with some of what you said or perhaps just the way you said it, I didn’t mean to attack you if it came across that way at all. I really appreciate your presence here especially as it relates to improving Mastodon!
@flesh @Gargron @adriano@dgodon
Thank you! I agree with you that how I communicated that could have been better. But I do think a lot of good discussions came from that exchange.Of course I did get death threats so there is that....
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@skyfaller @evan @panos
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are ethically trained models (apertus from the goverment of Switzerland comes to mind) as well as many open source small language models that run locally and do not burn down the planet.I'm with you, the large foundational models are a crime and horrible and shouldn't be used. But that doesn't mean we can't discuss local, open, and ethical models.
Thanks @scottjenson for the props. Just a quick correction: #Apertus was trained by a research consortium on publicly funded infrastructure, but is not government-run.
Let me know if you're interested in knowing more about that 'bathwater'.
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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 @carnage4life This thread has been going on a while now and - I'm still not sure what the problem is supposed to be. I see that the audiences on the three platforms have different preferences. Mastodon's numbers are lower than Threads and Bluesky, but we knew that. People have fixed on the "hates AI" part, but why would that make journalists want to stay away? Does "Much less on tech topics" mean Threads is an echo chamber?
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@sloanlance @scottjenson @AccordingtoWouter is that because "lived experience" isn't something Jews have access to? Or because you ancestral memory includes pogroms and expulsions, in additions to judenschweinen and blood libels?
@bp @scottjenson @AccordingtoWouter
No, it's none of those. I suspect you're wrong because you didn't do a quantitative survey of Mastodon users and, therefore, you cannot decisively say what the average user thinks. -
@xavier pinging @andypiper to take a gander at this thread, as @scottjenson 's self-described (implied?) authority on Mastodon direction might not sit well with - er - Mastodon core.
Hey, thanks for reaching out to us. Scott's comments do not reflect the opinions of the Mastodon organisation. We're addressing this internally
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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 @carnage4life why would we want billionaire funded psyops here
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@bp @scottjenson @sloanlance With all due respect, I don’t understand what Jews have to do with a discussion about AI tech journalists.
@AccordingtoWouter @bp @scottjenson
You responded to a post from a person, then that person disagrees with you. They want to argue with you, but they're not good at arguing. Instead, they see the German flag in your display name and they have an Israeli flag in their display name, so they make gross generalizations about you, then bring race, ethnicity, & religion into an argument where it doesn't belong. -
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 it's because @carnage4life is confusing "engagement" with worth
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@scottjenson the most disappointing thing about the entire first layer of responses to the post was that so many people saw two letters ("AI") and ignored everything else about the poster the post and its content. they assumed a lot about the poster and their motivations, as well.
> the idea that we "allow" people to be here based on some type of ideological purity test is guaranteed to bite us in the ass
i very much agree with this. and, in fact, it is biting us. the concern i have is that a smaller, less inclusive, more ideologically constrained community is what many people actively want—thus their behavior.
@toddsundsted @scottjenson
so is this a discussion about AI(/openness to it) or not? If yes: then these two letters are very much relevant, the core even; if not: why bring it up, and what *is* it about? -
@alper The collapse is a lot easier to handle when we can place others into tidy little boxes and just put them away, isn’t it.
@marshray not all beaches have to become resorts.
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@mattwilcox @scottjenson in case it matters, I used to work at NVIDIA, now am CEO of a tech startup, and of course I “do AI”. I haven’t felt unsafe here but I also am not looking for the boosts. My goal is to engage whenever I actually do have the time to post here. In fact it is the only platform I actually do personally post to. I want to have real conversations (and not just about what I do). All this to say, I feel I can express my opinions safely, and am happy to be here. And a disagreement with my choice of career or work does not make it unsafe for me.
Now if someone threatened me or my family just because I am who I am—would be very different. So would like to understand what we’re actually talking about here; people being in danger because of their affiliation with AI or just words being exchanged?
@sfabel The conversation links two different but related issues: the historical problem with Black people's safety needs not being valued enough to be worked on at Mastodon HQ, and Scott feeling that "AI people" face a stigmatisation here that could be solved with the same tooling Black people asked for years ago.
IMO Mastodon needs moderation tooling like shared block lists. Mastodon is tech, not a shared "town square".
Scott though seems to want to change people's behaviour.
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