Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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@scottjenson @Gargron I just came back to my Mastodon account and one of the first things I see is people who have an interest in something being compared to puppy-killers by the "head" of Mastodon.
<turns it back off again>
@bogosian @scottjenson I’m not head of Mastodon! Have a good day.
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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@social.coop @carnage4life@mas.to
From my experience, it's a phenomenon far from just Mastodon.
As a bit of context, I mostly interact (or at least used to until a few weeks ago) with other Fediverse platforms such as those comprising the threadiverse (e.g. Lemmy, Piefed, MBin, etc.) as well as Mastodon and others, having been settled on a Sharkey/Calckey instance as my Fediverse daily driver. I got accounts across a few different platforms such as PixelFed (where I mostly post my own arts) and Mastodon (which I mostly use to federate my posts from both platforms).
I'm also quite eccentric, I don't really have a "tribe" or circle because I don't really fit labels. If I were to label myself, I'd be a rebellious, solitary Lilith-centered occultist because that's exactly who I've been lately (since roughly 2 yrs ago). This context is important bc what I'm recounting about my online experience may be biased due to this eccentricity of mine.
This said, the part of the Fediverse I've been slightly "successful" in interacting with is the threadiverse. By "successful", I mean threadiverse is where I tend (it's far from a certainty) to afford the most conversations (albeit extremely limited to the scope of the thread).
Outside the threadiverse, my experience is a complete vacuum.
My PixelFed posts, for example, got absolutely no replies whatsoever. At best, "numeric reactions" (upvotes and reposts), which feels hollow for someone whose (artistic and/or ritualistic) content tries to actually talk to people (you can quite notice that on this very reply I'm writing, in all of its length and verbosity), hoping to find those who hold similar beliefs (because the religious/esoteric aspect of my existence have been extremely meaningful to me).
Mastodon used to have a global feed where I got to see and to be seen from outside my "solipsistic bubble"... until mastodon.social suddenly decided to turn it off. To illustrate its importance, your post, for example, reached me through global feed (Calckey's). So it's not a bad thing as I hear people saying about the global feed sometimes.
A year ago, I used to have a Bluesky, too. Something similar used to happen: few (if any) textual interactions, higher numeric reactions, something that led me to delete my Bluesky account. Other social platforms I (used to) use (were/)have been even more devoid of the "social" aspect.
In the end it feels like the entire Web is turning into some kind of "Dark forest" from the "Dark forest hypothesis", the one that states that we don't see extraterrestrial civilizations because they're hiding themselves amidst the cosmic darkness and silence, out of fear that other civilizations would be hostile. Perhaps there are still humans on the Web, but they're too afraid of what they'd find at the other side of the online connection, so they end up retreating: that's Earth, that's us, the Pale Blue Dot fading into radio silence amidst the loud screech of our machines. -
@scottjenson @carnage4life I've been privately sharing this link to a post by @MozillaAI , an Open Source non-profit announcing an Open Source AI project to make development with AI safer, more efficient, and less costly. They got brigaded in a pretty threatening way, and people I know and respect jumped in to join the dogpile.
@evan Fwiw, examples like that are one of the main reasons why I'm pretty quiet on this platform. I love the idea of ambiently sharing things with friends and peers, but I'm just not ready to deal with something like that.
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@scottjenson
wowowo please don't turn things around. AI people are _not_ marginalized, it's the exact opposite. AI people are rich, white, male tech people who see the increase in personal comfort as more important than others' actual life. Those are the people who are _anti-black_. By letting AI people in you are not learning the lessons of the past. You are specifically repeating the mistake, letting racists, sexists, ableists in, pushing away the people who made activitypub what it is today.
Please think better about what "marginalized" actually means@rakoo oh FFS put your pitchfork down. You're creating a strawman and claiming it's me. I'm not equating the two! I'm saying "intellectual purity" tests cut both ways. If you're willing to slam all "AI people" as techbros influencers and want to kick them out, that can slide into any other topic or group.
My goal was to say inclusivity is hard, *especially* when it concerns groups that aren't marginalized. But not caring about these people makes it even easier to then affect marginalized peope.
I'm bringing this topic up BECAUSE black twitter was chased off this platform in 2022 and I'm really pissed that we haven't learned our lesson, we're still chasing people off (even if they aren't marginalized)
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@skyfaller if flying is more harmful, and one still flies, then there is no convincing argument that a behaviour less harmful by orders or magnitude is absolutely unacceptable.
@evan @panos @carnage4life @scottjenson I do not concede that LLMs are "orders of magnitude" less harmful than flying. Also I do not fly.
Anyone dismissing LLM harms doesn't understand the scale of the climate crisis or of LLMs. Sadly, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” I can't force this understanding onto anyone in a few toots, they would have to want to understand, when the industry requires LLMs if you want to eat.
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@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
@scottjenson @evan @cratermoon
For my instance, for my feed, AI boosters bring nothing of value.
They own the government, mainstream media, and the stock market.
It's just a strange group to call out as needing a signal boost.
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@scottjenson
wowowo please don't turn things around. AI people are _not_ marginalized, it's the exact opposite. AI people are rich, white, male tech people who see the increase in personal comfort as more important than others' actual life. Those are the people who are _anti-black_. By letting AI people in you are not learning the lessons of the past. You are specifically repeating the mistake, letting racists, sexists, ableists in, pushing away the people who made activitypub what it is today.
Please think better about what "marginalized" actually means@scottjenson
You want a big tent with everyone, that's a nice sentiment. Can we build a tent with racists and black people ? With sexists and women ? You need to really explore wheter the people you want create a welcome atmosphere or not, because the way it looks you don't want a big tent you want a standard white western colonialism-brained tent. We want to see your energy for bringing in marginalized people, non-european and non-USian people -
@evan @panos @carnage4life @scottjenson I do not concede that LLMs are "orders of magnitude" less harmful than flying. Also I do not fly.
Anyone dismissing LLM harms doesn't understand the scale of the climate crisis or of LLMs. Sadly, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” I can't force this understanding onto anyone in a few toots, they would have to want to understand, when the industry requires LLMs if you want to eat.
@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.
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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 @scottjenson @carnage4life I agree. I would rather talk about how we can improve LLMs and their applications than post anti-AI memes and shame people who use LLMs.
For example, let's use more voluntary training data, let's make smaller, more efficient models, let's do more quality control with the output, let's protect authors and artists from having their work stolen, let's not over-rely on LLMs or use them for things they are bad at. These are actionable steps we can take to improve the world with LLMs in it.
I do not believe that the "LLMs are categorically evil" approach is going to have any good results. The genie is out of the bottle, people find this technology very useful in certain ways. We might as well try to reduce the harms and improve the outcomes of using LLMs rather than chase after a cultural or legal prohibition which will never really be effective.
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@stairjoke @thibaultamartin I'm happy to get comments like this. It's bit frustrating that there do appear to be two camps here, although I'm not surprised.
Part of the reason I "bait" these conversations is to at least bring this discussion into the open. We must realize that our culture *is* the driving force behind our success (or failure)
@scottjenson @thibaultamartin I have to admit, I’m quite tired of social media. I made an account when MySpace was popular ca. 2005? I’ve been online in one way or another ever since.
The most valuable things online for me were YouTube starting in 2006 and early day Podcasts, which I downloaded to my iPod starting in 2004. On third place, and with considerable margin are blogs (I wrote one 2006 – 2010, I’m back at it since 2022).
No medium moving faster than blogs has truly benefited me much.
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@scottjenson @carnage4life @evan I think step 1 is not calling all of it AI, an extremely broad vague term makes it very hard to have a nuanced discussion. If Mozilla uses a local ML model to detect which field on the page is which type to autofill better, that's very different from a remote LLM chat bot.
@Aurimas One part is not different: knowing how and from which data were these model trained. Claiming "it's fine it's a local ML model" is far from making the solution an ethical one.
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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 think it's a bigger problem than most people realize (or care). i joined in 2017. at that time it felt like everyone was excited when one more person came on board. i feel the vibe now is for walls to keep people out. (to be clear, i'm not talking about mastodon specifically—i'm talking about the fediverse more generally.) my feeling about networks is you grow if you accept diversity and are willing to support multiple communities, or you shrink down to a monoculture.
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@evan Fwiw, examples like that are one of the main reasons why I'm pretty quiet on this platform. I love the idea of ambiently sharing things with friends and peers, but I'm just not ready to deal with something like that.
@wlach I'm sorry to hear that.
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@scottjenson @thibaultamartin I have to admit, I’m quite tired of social media. I made an account when MySpace was popular ca. 2005? I’ve been online in one way or another ever since.
The most valuable things online for me were YouTube starting in 2006 and early day Podcasts, which I downloaded to my iPod starting in 2004. On third place, and with considerable margin are blogs (I wrote one 2006 – 2010, I’m back at it since 2022).
No medium moving faster than blogs has truly benefited me much.
@scottjenson @thibaultamartin I often feel like the time I spent on social media is wasted, because it doesn’t lead to anything.
Worse, actually, instead of building something lasting, I spend time on socials. It’s extremely hard to resist, but I’m working on a blog system easier to post to than to socials.
What really irks me is that here in Germany, basically all events, from protests to breakfast with friends, is organised via Instagram or WhatsApp.
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@evan @panos @carnage4life @scottjenson I do not concede that LLMs are "orders of magnitude" less harmful than flying. Also I do not fly.
Anyone dismissing LLM harms doesn't understand the scale of the climate crisis or of LLMs. Sadly, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” I can't force this understanding onto anyone in a few toots, they would have to want to understand, when the industry requires LLMs if you want to eat.
@skyfaller@jawns.club I believe that (further) ecological descruction is sadly unavoidable under capitalism. No matter how more ecologically some of us try to live, those who profit from this will only see any climate gains from our behavior as a chance to do even more damage on their own. I don't mean that this means that everything is acceptable, I also do what I can from other aspects, I just don't believe that I am responsible for the climate crisis and that I/we could avert it, sorry, you can't guilt trip me into this, that's victim blaming and thanks but no. @evan@cosocial.ca @carnage4life@mas.to @scottjenson@social.coop
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@rakoo oh FFS put your pitchfork down. You're creating a strawman and claiming it's me. I'm not equating the two! I'm saying "intellectual purity" tests cut both ways. If you're willing to slam all "AI people" as techbros influencers and want to kick them out, that can slide into any other topic or group.
My goal was to say inclusivity is hard, *especially* when it concerns groups that aren't marginalized. But not caring about these people makes it even easier to then affect marginalized peope.
I'm bringing this topic up BECAUSE black twitter was chased off this platform in 2022 and I'm really pissed that we haven't learned our lesson, we're still chasing people off (even if they aren't marginalized)
@scottjenson The reasons black people were rejected are _not_ the same reasons techbros are being rejected. You need to learn about what racism is: it's not a lack of inclusivity or being closed to different opinions, it's the structure we are all swimming in that is racist and needs to be worked on. It's the black people saying "please don't make it hard for us" and not listening to them. The women saying "replyguys are annoying" and not giving them an infrastructure that works for them by default. The work is on acknowledging the structure we're in, the actions we do that keep it in motion.
You're approaching this as a simple intellectual dissensus, a divergence in opinions, when it just isn't.
Groups that aren't marginalized don't matter. Society gives them all the tools, comfort and mindspace to take care of what they want to do. Focusing on them only enforces the marginalization of others. Instead, focusing on the marginalized and their needs help reduce disparities for everyone instead.
Non-marginalized people didn't leave because they were suffering yet again the same marginalization they endure everywhere else; they leave because they don't find what they want. Which is fine. -
@Aurimas One part is not different: knowing how and from which data were these model trained. Claiming "it's fine it's a local ML model" is far from making the solution an ethical one.
@fabrice hence the need for precise terms
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@scottjenson The reasons black people were rejected are _not_ the same reasons techbros are being rejected. You need to learn about what racism is: it's not a lack of inclusivity or being closed to different opinions, it's the structure we are all swimming in that is racist and needs to be worked on. It's the black people saying "please don't make it hard for us" and not listening to them. The women saying "replyguys are annoying" and not giving them an infrastructure that works for them by default. The work is on acknowledging the structure we're in, the actions we do that keep it in motion.
You're approaching this as a simple intellectual dissensus, a divergence in opinions, when it just isn't.
Groups that aren't marginalized don't matter. Society gives them all the tools, comfort and mindspace to take care of what they want to do. Focusing on them only enforces the marginalization of others. Instead, focusing on the marginalized and their needs help reduce disparities for everyone instead.
Non-marginalized people didn't leave because they were suffering yet again the same marginalization they endure everywhere else; they leave because they don't find what they want. Which is fine.@rakoo That was an amazing answer. Thank you.
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@evan @scottjenson @carnage4life I agree. I would rather talk about how we can improve LLMs and their applications than post anti-AI memes and shame people who use LLMs.
For example, let's use more voluntary training data, let's make smaller, more efficient models, let's do more quality control with the output, let's protect authors and artists from having their work stolen, let's not over-rely on LLMs or use them for things they are bad at. These are actionable steps we can take to improve the world with LLMs in it.
I do not believe that the "LLMs are categorically evil" approach is going to have any good results. The genie is out of the bottle, people find this technology very useful in certain ways. We might as well try to reduce the harms and improve the outcomes of using LLMs rather than chase after a cultural or legal prohibition which will never really be effective.
@earth_walker @scottjenson @carnage4life
One thing we don't talk about, when we talk about AI, is that, for hackers, AI-assisted software development threatens our livelihoods and lifestyle. It undermines the special position that we hold in the social and economic order.
No amount of lowering power consumption, careful training data provenance, or decentralised deployment will help with that.
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@earth_walker @scottjenson @carnage4life
One thing we don't talk about, when we talk about AI, is that, for hackers, AI-assisted software development threatens our livelihoods and lifestyle. It undermines the special position that we hold in the social and economic order.
No amount of lowering power consumption, careful training data provenance, or decentralised deployment will help with that.
@earth_walker @scottjenson @carnage4life
It would be interesting to have the discussion of how, if we don't manage to abolish all LLM-assisted software development entirely, we can maintain hacker culture and a positive influence on the world's use of technology.
