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.
@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.
Scott Jenson
Evan Prodromou
Dare Obasanjo
manchicken