Scott Jenson3d ago

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!

Show threadScott Jenson3d ago

As this conversation is spiraling a bit I want to make a few things clear:
1. I'd like Mastodon to be MORE inclusive and bring in more voices
2. Some people don't seem to want that
3. This is core problem to solve: How do we let more in, but not "pollute" your feed?
4. The solution is NOT "gatekeeping", revelling in the fact that AI journalists aren't welcome
5. This is the same reason we lost "Black Twitter" when it came over in 2022

Yes, a lot of you don't want AI posts in your feed (or pick any other topic) but the solution isn't to keep "AI People" from joining Mastodon, any more than it is keeping marginalized communities off of Mastodon.

Show threadEugen Rochko3d ago
@scottjenson I’m not interested in following any “AI people”. That doesn’t make it an echo chamber. We don’t need equal amounts of people who love puppies and want to kill puppies, not everything needs to be equally represented.
Show threadScott Jenson3d ago

@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.

Show threadDemian3d ago
@scottjenson @Gargron “AI people” are not a protected class. It seems much more important that we focus on being a welcoming and inclusive platform for protected classes, particularly actual marginalized communities.
Show threadDemian3d ago
@scottjenson @Gargron it may be that “AI people” are sometimes not treated nicely or fairly. And we shouldn’t tolerate abuse. But I also really value that we rarely see AI hype which is often misinformation and disinformation that pollutes other platforms. That’s not just a personal preference but super important for a healthy media environment.
Show threadDemian
@scottjenson @Gargron Of course AI is a pretty vague concept and it’s not all hype and BS and I think your point holds for this. That said imploring people to be nice rarely works. It’s like driver safety education campaigns rarely do anything to improve safety. Systematic improvements for making this better for marginalized groups will also help non-hype AI people
Apr 5 at 5:07pmWeb