Is #mastodon becoming an echo chamber?
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@scottjenson @vfrmedia I don’t agree with the assertion people are being shooed away. Away from who? This isn’t one space.
But if Mastodon feel thy are, then make the tooling to solve that. And yeah; it’s the same tooling as black people wanted and it’s damning it takes rich white guys complaining to be considered as a problem worth fretting over and maybe tackling now.
Mastodon isn’t a monoculture. Mastodon is a tech stack.
not getting "sufficient engagement" on toots isn't the same as being "shooed away".
I wouldn't consider the person being quoted as a grifter and TBH I agree with a lot of what he is saying, but until recently I thought he was some kind of marketing person who never really replied here and was just looking for a "one way platform" (like many who want to go viral/popular and promote a "personal brand").
Also what might seem "lukewarm" about politics can also be simply because everyone broadly agrees with you, and many don't want the "battlefield of ideas" culture that is prevalent on many other social networks..
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@scottjenson @evan @cratermoon
I feel like missing context. Let's layout it first:
- Mastodon is a technology for federated instances
- Admins make descisions about what is and is not on their instances. By virtue of control, admins can also enforce their own rules, on their own realms.
- It is federated, without central dictatum from whoever/whatever.What is the issue?
Are you talking about Mastodon org's policies?
Are you talking about some tech features that shift control?@scottjenson @evan @cratermoon
On a human side:
- Media that doesn't kill my attention span will always be slower.
- Worthy ideas, take time to absorb.
- Look for pools with high signal to noise ratio. Especially for signals that stand the test of time.vs
Someone's engagement numbers are lower.
There is no floods of messages that ain't properly read. -
@evan @scottjenson @MozillaAI Mastodon as a community is quite hostile to AI and anything that isn’t a criticism of AI is viewed with skepticism at best and typically with hostility as the default.
It’s unfortunate because, as in your Mozilla example, there is still time to shape how AI is used in our industry. It’s better to engage and try to influence it versus stick your head in the sand and have the change thrusted upon you.
@carnage4life@mas.to @evan@cosocial.ca @scottjenson@social.coop @MozillaAI@mastodon.social I mean, Mozilla is doing exactly the same as other corpos, except in their case they just privacy-wash it
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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 There ought to be an AI instance which all the bros and boosters can go to, and then I can block it in one go. That would be ultra-efficient.
Unfortunately the real fedi is a lot more messy. -
@scottjenson @carnage4life so, what can we do about it? One thing is just being brave enough to talk honestly about how AI affects your life and your work.
Another is calling out bad behaviour. If someone you know is yelling at a stranger to die in a fire because they used Claude Code, maybe give them some private feedback that it's not cool.
@evan @scottjenson @carnage4life sure, let’s take steps to prevent abuse and make this a more welcoming and inclusive space, but let’s stop pretending that “AI users” are a marginalized community. It’s like arguing that cops or Republicans are a protected class. Center actual marginalized groups in these discussions! If they feel welcome then there’s a better chance non-hype AI users will too
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@octothorpe i agree they are not exactly the same. But "inclusivity" is *always* a complicated topic and never an easy one to solve. Mastodon has always tried to be a safe haven for marginalized people (although it has been a bumpy road and could be better!)
My point is that many of the replies to my post were basically "AI bad, they shouldn't be here" and while I respect anyone's right to think that, it's something else to say we should actively chase them away. They are not nazis and they are not scammers (well, most of them aren't)
I'm just saying the kicking people out for their ideas is a slippery slope and one which we should discuss more and be very careful with.
@scottjenson I think it comes down to a few things… I see a lot of civil AI talk with folk who use the tech, so that does exist, and will presumably remain.
But there’s the notion of The Influencer, which is an impedance mismatch for the fediverse. You literally can’t be a professional influencer in the same way here. This is technical (no algo, federation, etc) but also social. No one is guaranteed an audience here. It’s opt in. That’s de facto anti-influencer. I don’t think that’s bad.
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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 @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>
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@panos @evan @carnage4life @scottjenson This is what I'm talking about. You're both minimizing/denying harms and saying they don't matter. This is one of the biggest problems with LLMs, they turn people into apologists for the fossil fuel industry because they don't want to think they're helping destroy the world.
*If* flying is more harmful, that's no excuse. There's always something more harmful until you reach the top, and then the excuse will be it's too important or too difficult to stop.
@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.
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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.
