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 so, I find this discussion disappointing for a few reasons.
The biggest one is this: all three platforms that @carnage4life calls out are connected via ActivityPub. They are on one inter-network.
In theory, he should not need three different accounts, with three different follower groups. He should have one account, and all 103k followers (minus duplicates!) could be part of the same conversation, on whatever server platform they use.
In practice, few people do this today.
As technologists we need to do more to smooth those junctures and make them less of a barrier. I hope in a few years when @carnage4life looks at his network, it feels more integrated and less separated.
@scottjenson @carnage4life I've tried to mitigate that a bit by sharing my own experience with AI as a development tool. I know there are other people on the Fediverse who talk about how and when they use AI, with or without misgivings.
I use Claude and Thaura for search in my daily life. I use Claude as a rubber duck for coding. I also let it review my code for errors or make recommendations. On occasion, I'll let CoPilot or Claude add a few lines of code directly. I don't "vibe code". I enjoy both uses. I don't feel guilty about either.
@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 @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.
@evan @carnage4life @scottjenson @MozillaAI
It is unfortunately very easy to convince yourself that abuse and harrassment are OK as long as they're in service of a morally just cause.
@shauna @evan @carnage4life @scottjenson @MozillaAI It's also very easy to convince yourself that strongly opposing harmful things is the same as abuse and harassment if you are defending a morally unjust system.
Tech bros promoting harmful technology are not victims just because they are being challenged.
@scottjenson @shauna @evan I think you misread me. Your take was wildly incorrect and your lack of learning from it has been interesting. AI is incredibly harmful objectively, with virtually no benefits in the way it is being marketed. Mozilla is using their enormous financial position to promote this harm, and people are complaining that the community is attempting to hold them to account.
It's not harassment, it's legitimate feedback, even if at times angry.
My point was NEVER to support or endorse AI. I was using it as an example of how 'different topics' are met with hostility here.
People feel VERY strongly about AI. There are clearly horrible things being done. That discussion should happen and I'm not opposed to it.
I just wanted us to be be a *little* more tolerant of *some* ideas but this has clearly spiraled into something far too big for there to be a meaningful conversation at this point.
@scottjenson @shauna @evan The problem AI promoters are having here is that the old tactic of not addressing the legitimate problems and simply repeating that something is inevitable while recruiting 'trusted authorities' like Evan here is not working on the one social media network that is not driven by manipulative algorithms.
Rather than recognize that the concerns are legitimate, they are categorizing them as harassment in an attempt to bypass the brick wall they hit.
@scottjenson I think nobody has to love any tech, and expecting that is expecting to jump over an impossible bar. That being said, nobody should be disrespectful towards another, and that's just basic decency.
@carnage4life @evan @scottjenson @MozillaAI I’d probably be less hostile toward a harmful technology if it weren’t costing me and my friends so much of what we built, just so those who have disproportionately benefitted from our labor could take more short-term profits.
Nobody should be expected to apologize for standing up for themselves, their friends and colleagues, and what they’ve built together that is being poisoned.
@carnage4life @evan @scottjenson @MozillaAI
.... as a community, ....
Can we pause for a second. Why do we automatically lump people with different thoughts, perspectives into one group?
When you talk to AI-one-shotted person, check if they are also more suseptible to this shortcutting simplification human bias. It may be one of the factors.
There are tons of different not-pleasant-to-AI-fanatics perspectives in this federated space. "Community" brush stroke erases nuances. Please, don't.
@carnage4life Hi! I hope you don't feel discouraged by assholes.
Loving, hating AI and everything in between is ok. Even caring and not caring about AI.
About engaging with AI. Being AI something great, or whatever, keep in mind that AI is being shoved into people's throats, both on their loved tech, and on every f*in public conversation regardless of what they think or feel about it. So harsh reactions are to be expected, and some will also be unacceptable.
I understand and agree that some content is unacceptable.
We can and should cut off racist, homophobic, misogynistic and transphobic harassers and abusers.
I just don't think using CoPilot tab completion falls into that same bucket of unacceptable behaviour.
We have access to platforms through open APIs that have no gatekeepers. We could have MCP or RAG interfaces to servers that we own and operate. We could use them to ask questions like, which of my friends need some support today? Who have I had good conversations with in the past, that I should keep up with better? Who should I follow to help with my career? What volunteer opportunities in my area align with my values?
@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.
Lastly, and carefully, maybe we should put some technological speed bumps in the way of random abuse of strangers. Mastodon experimented with an AYS pop-up when replying to a stranger. I don't know what the results of that experiment were, or if any others are planned.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/11/improving-the-quality-of-conversations-on-mastodon/
@toddsundsted @dgodon This is not a coherent argument. I'm white and I'm trans. My being trans does not impart being marginalised on all while people.
AI users are not a marginalised community. That some members of that community may also be of marginalised groups does not change that.
@aura i don't understand where being white factors in.
to be completely clear about the point i'm making, the group of "AI users" as of April 2026 is broad and currently includes people of color, disadvantaged, and other traditionally marginalized people. i know this because i work with them.
in the context of this thread, what i'm wondering is whether the people who would exclude "AI users" from their community here mean that to include these groups, as well.
you are trans. i am interested in your point of view on this.
@evan @panos @scottjenson @carnage4life Two things can be true at the same time:
- Using LLMs is unacceptable
- We should not abuse individuals for using LLMs, both because that is ineffective at stopping LLM use, and because everyone does harmful things to survive capitalism
The real problem is when people deny the harms, or decide to ignore the harms because of "inevitability" etc. It's understandable that you want the thing you're doing to not be harmful, but wishing won't make it so.
@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.
@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.
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'.
is there a conceptual analysis of factors behind energy costs for developing LLM's. E.g., as function of "size" (working assumption that this a relevant metric of "usability" 🤣 )
I am curious to what degree there is a measurable impact from "urgency" to iterate fast, capture markets, IPO or whatever, versus slower (and lower energy?) hardware options.
this is whataboutism
Air travel is a relatively mature industry, but putting "graphics" cards in data centers, and not just graphics cards but the highest end ones that use approximately All The World's RAM is quite new in comparison & whose growth is being flogged at the highest levels.
so, that 0.3% is an addition to our carbon use. I doubt airline carbon use has grown anything like that in a similar time frame.
there is a tremendous difference between "replace things we have used for millenia" (3 of the 4) and "slow down or even stop this thing we all did quite well without in very recent memory"
I mean, @skyfaller already told you he doesn't fly and you come back with this bit about accepting it being a lie?
your tone policing about "abuse" on the topic rings ever more hollow
@emittingstate @evan Not that this should matter, but:
* My family is car free, and I refuse to get in cars except in life-threatening emergencies (complicated by my recent baby for whom anything can be life-threatening)
* I have been a vegetarian my whole life (second generation)
* I buy dryland rice exclusively now (shame there aren't more suppliers, but I do my part)
* I... haven't poured concrete? Not sure I get points for not doing construction
I dunno, I care about all these issues.
@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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