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 threads and bluesky are single monolithic platforms. masto federated. so would likely depend on which masto server someone's posting on i'd guess as a starter...
also, purely anecdotally/for my own part, there's less of a culture of boosting/liking/trying to make things go viral for the algorithm. lack of apparent engagement may not signal lack of people actually reading posts/following links/etc.
@patrick_h_lauke So is the only alternative "number go DOWN" metrics? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm trying to find a way to have both be possible: how can we keep our soul but still have a diverse community.
My concern is that your comment uses the "we don't want a number go up mentality" argument to hide the fact that our community is a mono culture.
@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.
"people are leaving mastodon, our daily actives are going down"
Same thing has been happening to Bluesky over the past year.
https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth
From some of the anecdotes I've seen, it sounds like at least part of this is the same reason people don't stick around here: not enough activity and/or diversity (you might know Bluesky is very US-centric).
@scottjenson But of course, the fediverse does have some unique challenges, such as the federated bits poking out too much, confusing people, and, well, random people enforcing unwritten, sometimes contradictory rules across different communities.
The only way I see out of that is to stop gatekeeping the fediverse, and focusing on communities. Anyone should be able to join the fediverse, just like anyone can go on the internet.
I don't care that Meta is part of the fediverse through Threads, we can all just block them and move on.
Or if Truth Social decided to turn federation back on. Them federating means nothing. We'll block them, and move on.
My two bits:
Calls for homogenity are pretty distasteful even on company platforms with detailed rules based on US legal and social agreements.
It's even more so in a multinational platform, where an impactful number of people are non-North Americans, or otherwise part of some "misunderstood minority".
Ofc there are some stuff that falls under "basic dignity", but in general it should be possible to live with different POVs without having to start flame wars.
Having never interacted with none of the people in this thread outside of it, that seems like a dick way of putting things.
Even if someone has ideas that you don't agree with (and which will never get approval of majority), just talking why the experience/opinion exists may lead to other improvements.
[This of course barring stuff that can be seen as a threat to safety. Fascists and the like.]
@patrick_h_lauke Good point, I didn't mean to shift the goal posts! Part of my goal here is to understand the problem better. The original post was superficially about engagement but it was really about how a journalist isn't welcome here on Mastodon. (and people seem to be quite happy about that!)
So yeah, my argument is likely shifting with the replies I'm getting. But I can't believe that asking for 'a big tent' is considered a bad thing.
@scottjenson "(and people seem to be quite happy about that!)" there's always assholes everywhere?
who's saying that a "big tent" is a bad thing? fedi is so varied, there's lots of tents for every possible idea, and with the federation they can spread to other tents.
i'm not sure what you're proposing here other than "people shouldn't be unwelcoming" (fair, but again, assholes everywhere, of different shapes and sizes across the various instances) and "please clap/like/subscribe/engage!"
The short answer seems very strongly to be "it's irrelevant because that's not what people here want"
Mastodon and fedi in general are very much countercultural. Most people who come to these platforms do so to get away from other platforms, many of which are more inclusive of mainstream voices.
So by its very nature, mastodon has a selection bias for people who do not want inclusivity.
@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
This take...makes no sense. "Countercultural" is almost never anti-inclusive. Counter-culture knows what it's like to be excluded.
The idea that "mainstream" voices are being "excluded" is ridiculous...mainstream voices are never excluded...it's actually a decent definition of "mainstream".
But the original thread is not better...the idea that "number go down" is not something I've seen supported (but neither have I seen it opposed) but the idea that more interaction = more diversity is just weird.
I dunno...earlier in the thread there's a suggestion "oh there's less people feeding the algorithm" and I'm not sure OP even knows how Mastodon/Fediverse works.
@danbrotherston @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
> Counter-culture knows what it's like to be excluded.
Sure. It does not follow that counter-culture is not also exclusive, that makes no sense.
> The idea that "mainstream" voices are being "excluded" is ridiculous...mainstream voices are never excluded...it's actually a decent definition of "mainstream".
Yes, they're not excluded _from mainstream spaces_; people come here _to avoid those spaces_ and thus as a direct rejection of the people _who are in them_. This argument also makes no sense.
Fedi can reasonably be defined by what it is _not_. It is absolutely hostile towards corporate actors, engagement farming, and much of "normal" / "mainstream" culture.
Twitter remains a much more mainstream space; many people are here specifically to avoid it _and the people on it_. Which continues to be, well, most of them.
@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
Oh no....we're hostile to engagement farming and corporate PR departments.
No, you're right...we're inclusive of people...ONLY people.
People in "mainstream" places are not excluded here, neither are mainstream viewpoints and opinions nor mainstream ideas.
The only thing that is being excluded then is financialization and corporate capture.
I call that "inclusive".
It's the equivalent of the paradox of tolerance. Being tolerant of intolerance is intolerant. Being inclusive of grifts and PR is exclusive.
I am not here to avoid the PEOPLE on twitter...I'm here to avoid the grifts, bots, and nazis--ooh...woops, you're right...we are not inclusive of Nazi's either. I guess you have a point.... 🙄
Honestly, I find this take bizarre...this place has it's problems, but it's vastly more inclusive than Twitter or Bluesky.
@danbrotherston @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
Fedi is very inclusive of traditionally excluded people, and very _unfriendly_ to normies, even if it's not actively hostile.
There's also a very, very obvious political bias, which is just as extreme (but in different directions) than mainstream platforms, and one which is not particularly welcoming of normie opinions either.
@danbrotherston @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
Example: I have very strong negative opinions about AI. I also know that _almost everyone_ I've encountered IRL has at least found it _cool_. At least one friend has said they only avoid AI because they know _I_ don't like it.
Anyone talking about AI in anything resembling a positive light is probably going to have a bad time here. That's a _lot_ of normal people right now.
There's a lot of things that are normal that probably shouldn't be that people here do not like. This does not change that they are normal.
Normal people coming here and talking normally _will_ receive harassment because of it.
@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
I dunno...I have a nuanced and not entirely negative view of AI, and I don't have a bad time here.
Having my ideas challenged isn't "a bad time"...and if I really wanted to, I could find people who did feel differently. There's over a million people on here, not all of them feel the same way.
That said, I have never seen the harassment you speak of, and certainly I cannot imagine that someone would be harassed for "normal" actions and opinions.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
As for Fedi being unfriendly to "normies" ... I've seen conversations here explicitly discussing how to be welcoming to new people from other platforms.
But there is an inherent complexity to a distributed network that simply doesn't exist for a centralised corporatised network.
I do think that people will find a difference here between the intentionally algorithmically addictive feed from Twitter vs. the chronological feed here, just as any addictive experience is different from a neutral one.
@danbrotherston @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
> how to be welcoming
Yeah there's a lot of desire and moralizing about being welcoming, until it actually happens and a lot of the people are Wrong about Some Important Thing
@scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
When Twitter went full Nazi Bar, a lot of writers and journalists I followed there came to Mastodon, where I duly followed them.
Within a month, virtually all of them went silent here, but post regularly on Bluesky, where I maintain an account primarily to stake my username.
Since posting on two or more sites is a cut&paste exercise, I don't understand their behavior at all.
When broadcast media was invented, the only way to know if people were listening, then watching, was by sampling surveys.
Now, it's follower counts, or god forbid, boosts and likes. I do *read* print columnists whose opinions I don't like, and I often skip reading ones I do like if the topic holds no interest for me.
Accordingly, I follow a lot of people here, but get more from the posts *they* boost, from people I don't follow.
So there's really no metric feedback for hundreds of posts I read every week, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be publishing here.
I do often boost items I like, but receive virtually no feedback from my small population of followers, whose change in numbers I don't track, but assume if they're still following me, they appreciate, or at least don't hate what I boost. My own posts are mostly whispers into the void (per the feedback), but that doesn't stop me from making them, and I assume they're glanced at the same as I do with what scrolls through my home feed.
So, what they’re looking for is evidence of being seen? Evidence of positive reactions? And without this evidence they’re unlikely to invest their time?
On my first reading of op I thought the primary point was about mastodenizens being less critical of “ai”-philes. Now I’m not sure it was.
If you had to pick, is your point about a cultural dynamic here around “AI” or about engagement metrics?
I was trying to make a point about "any group that doesn't feel welcome" here on mastodon, which you think would be a welcome topic. There are many and it's been widely discussed how a small number of people "tone police" chase off new users. (Spinning up your own instance is a tired and meaningless reply)
Foolishly, I picked an AI journalist as an example which just set off fires. Half the people were mad at me for "pushing AI slop", the other half saying that calling for more tolerance was "letting in fascists". There is no debate to be had with that framing.
I've been told a dozen times to "read the room" which is a pretty ominous warning. It basically admits the problem: there is "a room" of people that 'holds the line' on the right thing to say and believe.
Thanks for the reply. It all makes more sense to me as a commentary on gatekeeping.
@patrick_h_lauke @scottjenson @carnage4life
I feel that the comparison between Mastodon/other is currently a bit like linux/other. As one game developer put it: only 1% of their users were on linux, but that 1% created 90% of bug reports, of which 90% were applicable to other platforms.
You're not going to get similar numbers of likes on Fedi, and not just due to lack of algorithm: the platform rewards conversations more, which means longer engagement per post (instead of skimming & liking).
@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.
@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.
@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.
@thibaultamartin @scottjenson @carnage4life My own experience w Mastodon has been great but I avoid expressing certain opinions (which are not really controversial but who knows) because I don’t feel like dealing with disagreements.
I do however, love the fact that this is not an outrage-driven platform. It’s a bit of a safe space for many, even if it’s an echo chamber-adjacent
@ben But that's the very definition of a mono-culture. A vibrant community allows all of these topics, encourages them even. Then, with filters, who you follow, hashtags, and blocking you get the feed you want.
To get the culture you want by cutting off the supply is counter productive.
@scottjenson @ben I think that is in parts what happens. I noticed that my timeline, thanks to blocks and mutes has become quite monotone.
To get out of that, I recently went to some instances outside my bubble and follow (more or less) random people.
As a thought bite: I think in the earlier days the federated timeline countered this experience better, but AFAIK as part of UX improvements for instances like mastodon.social that has moved more out of focus.
@scottjenson But I get pushed US politics all day by the main stream media & I'm not even in the US & current politics (here & there) is heavily slanted towards manufactured wedge issues.
AI is a similar, for me the moral and environmental arguments against are plenty before we get into the rest, yet as I work in software it's impossible to get away from.
So I come to a place where I can choose not to engage with it, I block/mute very little, I mainly ignore it if it ends up in my feed.
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