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 I'm absolutely comfortable with 99% of AI 'journalists' staying away from here.
How weird to conflate that with the debacle around Black Twitter and the racism people of colour called out on the Fedi, as if not being interested in LLMs is the same as racism.
And everyone talks about AI all the time on Masto, predominantly critically
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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.
@scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke “The metrics are clear, people are leaving mastodon, our daily actives are going down.”
This is exactly the kind of stupid meltdown that shows exactly how you are still brainwashed by monolithic social media dumpster fire driven by engagement, profit and a fake notion of inclusivity. You are still trying to mimic Twitter and you don’t belong on Mastodon, senile old man. -
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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:
@nikclayton @scottjenson I'm not sure if you had some pent up anger and anxiety that we just caught a stray, or what. But these characterizations are unfair based on OPs questions. And I say that as the Fediverse's number 1 critic.
I can guarantee you if you would've answered "I don't know," you wouldn't have received the pushback you're clearly anticipating.
I'm listening to your podcast as I type this, and hearing how you all want to leave corporate social media, but you're here treating this place like corporate social media.
This isn't a place where everyone's goal is centered on themselves. People here care about the collective, because otherwise why would anyone be here? There's no algorithm to game.
No one expects you to have all the answers because no one here has all the answers. But people do expect you to participate in the greater community.
That starts with dropping the smug attitude, man. You have no idea what the average Mastodonian is like. You only know what the tech elite say about us. And most of that is wildly unfair characterizations.
This is one of the only places on the Internet fighting the corporatization of the web.
We have trust and safety folks working their ass off for little to no pay. Server admins paying out of pocket so we can have something better than Facebook. Developers submitting bugs and building infrastructure so you can come here and conduct your experiment.
Those people deserve more than a knee jerk reaction. So recalibrate.
What you're doing here has a potential to be something really cool. But it won't work if you're gonna isolate yourself from the people you need. And trust me, you will need them.
You will soon learn how hard it is to keep this place afloat. And that's before considering how many in the corporate web don't want us here. -
@tiotasram @dzwiedziu @scottjenson @tael
An image analyzing LLM that provides alt-text would be imminently useful all across the internet.
Is #LLM still bad when its used for #disability and #assistivetechnology?
@crankylinuxuser
An LLM can't analyse an image by itself.This is computer vision and neural networks.
LLM's might be then used then to rewrite the CV/NN output. -
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 Would've been an echo chamber if you had something tipping the scales, be it some algorithm or human moderators, but in this case people simply chose not to follow certain topics. This is simply the Court of Public Opinion at work, and AI has been deemed unwanted by the jury. -
@scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke What do you understand of being welcome of other people's points of view?
Do we have to agree?
Do we have to like?
Do we have to share?
Is it hostile if we don't do those things?Should we be forced to engage with topics we don't care about (no matter what they are)?
Being hostile and not engaging is not the same, and this is the first toot in this thread I see you making that it somehow clear.
@DiogoConstantino @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke the last time somebody said you need to listen to alternative points of view they went on to tell me that Jews were running in the world. Quite frankly there are a lot of opinions and views that I'm glad I don't get the pleasure of having algorithmically jammed down my throat...

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@dzwiedziu No worries man.
I’m not familiar with “appeal to literary”. I’m always on the lookout for new fallacies.
Or did you mean that you didn’t like people implying you couldn’t read for yourself (which is of course understandable).
@marshray
ThanksIt is something I've coined based on my experience on SM. The term just lately materialised, so treat it as an prototype at best.
Usually it's an argument that one can't read/understand or did not read/understood a text correctly.
First case is just a “ad hominem” in too many words.
Both can be rejecting a different interpretation of a text than the original author intended, instead of interrogating (probably a named fallacy also, but I can't recall which). -
@gavin57 and I'm still salty about Framework. I was 100% going to get one of their computers in the next couple of years and now I am 100% not going to, and there's no good substitute, and why can't we have nice things??
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It's an open hardware company. They have some @NGIZero funding for their next project. The mnt reform next.
MNT Research GmbH
MNT Research makes open source hardware laptops, mobile devices and keyboards that are modular and repairable. Designed and assembled in Berlin, EU.
(mntre.com)
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It's an open hardware company. They have some @NGIZero funding for their next project. The mnt reform next.
MNT Research GmbH
MNT Research makes open source hardware laptops, mobile devices and keyboards that are modular and repairable. Designed and assembled in Berlin, EU.
(mntre.com)
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