"Is Mastodon becoming an echo chamber?"
I dunno. What even is 'Mastodon' in this conversation?
I'm on dice.camp because I like their moderation & federation decisions. If you're on a different instance, how "echo-y" your "echo chamber" is may vary.
But if you don't like it when people are picky about who they associate with & how, just go hang out on mastodon.social or whatever.
It's interesting how important it is to some people that you supposedly shouldn't be choosey about who you associate with.
The person I saw talking about this framed the "problem" of AI-shills being "unwelcome" on Fedi (not sure I buy that either—they seem to have their own corners of Fedi) as the same thing as Black users being harassed/unsafe/not included, which is just absurd.
It's very "blue lives matter" coded, ya know? Like, being a techbro is not an inherent part of who you are.
They have to frame it as a diversity issue because they want to distract from the fact that it is a *consent* issue!
Not wanting to associate with Black people is bigotry, but not wanting to associate with AI-shills is just protecting your peace. These are not the goddamn same, & it's really sinister asking people to pretend they are.
It is weird to insist people should HAVE to interact with you, regardless of your behavior. It shows a lack of respect for people's agency & choice.
In the year 2026, it is the height of bad faith to argue that moderating online community & maintaining spaces that are free & honest & not controlled by techno-fascists is somehow regressive.
We are living with the results of their online takeover. How are you going to act like people are overreacting when they say they want to choose carefully which types of interactions belong in the spaces they are in?
How are you going to pretend it doesn't matter? Online manipulation helped give us the global rise of fascism.
Insisting that we may not exercise our own discretion in our association with others online is insisting people expose themselves to potential harm & surrender to the outcomes desired by bad actors.
It is just too goddamn late for this show of naivety to be convincing.
Bad actors will always try to hijack "diversity" to force us to accept actual enemies into our camp.
"AI", as it exists now, is a tool of our enemies: they use it to enshrine bias into employment processes so it no longer requires a bigoted human in the loop. They use AI to devalue the work of writers, researchers, coders, artists & more. They use AI to automate decisions of who should be bombed, who should starve, & who should be erased/ignored/& excluded.
But seriously, I am pretty sure there are corners of Fedi where AI boosters are totally welcome.
That's the thing about Fedi.
But it's possible instances where AI boosting is welcome & encouraged may find themselves defederated from instances that don't promote AI slop & blocked by users who don't want to see that shit in their timeline.
And that's what they are complaining about. They are complaining that they don't get to insist on being in your timeline & in your mentions.
If you're complaining that the kind of behavior that is widely seen as extremely antisocial is unwelcome in many people's "social media" experience, maybe Fedi isn't for you.
I don't think you want a social media platform that is constructed around choice, because I see you out here really upset that people are making the choice that they don't want AI in their lives.
@artemis I would argue that "AI" is a fundamentally anti-human technology.
They stole literally every piece of text and audio and video on the internet that *people* created, without consent or compensation, and used it to create machine that replace humans.
And therefore, I do not have *any* respect for people promoting or using it. Not even the basic respect that every human deserves, because they are actively promoting the replacement of humans with machines.
They are enemies of mankind.
@galacticstone @stefanie @artemis
Mastodon utilise l'IA pour les traductions. On me dit que c'est différent, mais ce n'est pas le cas, car les gens aiment utiliser Mastodon. Avant, les traductions étaient faites par des humains, mais on me dit que ça crée du lien entre les gens, alors c'est acceptable que ce soit aussi basé sur le même vol et la même suppression d'emplois. Les gens vont se passionner pour la défense de leur choix de continuer à utiliser Mastodon malgré cette technologie ; ils l'utiliseront ailleurs.
J'adore ça parce que deux messages plus haut, il est question de ne même plus accorder aux gens le respect humain élémentaire à cause de l'IA. Le simple fait de l'utiliser signifie que vous n'êtes pas humain (je suis étonné que ce soit un message public - désolé pour les aveugles). Genre, on pourrait les tuer et commettre des crimes de guerre, je suppose – c'est normal, à cause de l'IA. Personne n'a jamais défendu de telles choses auparavant, ça ne tourne jamais mal quand on commence à supprimer les droits humains fondamentaux. Ne vous inquiétez pas – c'est une réaction saine.
[On va me dire que je défends l'IA, ce qui est absurde, car ce n'est pas le cas – j'étais simplement terrifiée de lire des gens discuter de la suppression des droits de l'homme parce que quelqu'un a utilisé un lecteur d'écran]
@JoeHenzi @galacticstone @artemis Oh, so that is why I only get a [503 - service unavailable] when I click the translate button?
Thanks for warning me, I will never engage with this feature ever again.
Is there an option to remove the button?
@stefanie @[email protected] @artemis Maybe I am wrong, but the ethically-problematic and planet-killing "AI" technology mostly refers to GenAI and LLM models (and their associated services).
The term "artificial intelligence" has become a catch-all, but for the purposes of the modern AI debate, most opponents such as myself are not talking about older technologies that existed many years before the 2020-2021 AI boom, ChatGPT, mega datacenters, and fascist oligarch owners....
"And therefore, I do not have *any* respect for people promoting or using it. Not even the basic respect that every human deserves"
Would agree with your toot but not these cc'ed sentences, which I'd rephrase to sth like this:
"I do not have *any* respect for the *persons* promoting or using it and have deep contempt for them. I only respect them as human beings in the sense I won't actively physically harm them."
@proscience @artemis I understand your disagreement on this point.
And I'm fine to agree to disagree in that part.
But with all the damage I have seen already, I see people using and promoting AI on the same level as an alien invasion force trying to enslave or erase mankind.
They are destroying not only the environment, but eroding our very sense of reality itself. We have already reached the point where you can't believe anything anymore. The very foundation of society has been destroyed
Although I grant them a tad more human rights, I entirely subscribe to the many drastically negative consequences you listed. I'd further distinguish the originators like Thiel, Karp and their fascistic ilk, the many fascistic donors of their pursuit and the many fascistic politicians eager to deliver for them from those many customers who're too naive (and/or ignorant) to see through.
we are just applying Poppers Paradox....
Call me old school, but IMO *nobody* is obliged to interact with someone, or has to justify if they don't. It's an individual's *free* choice.
(And I for one block anyone who's spreading AI propaganda.)
Abuse culture.
Boundaries and consent must be poo-pooed-- this, from the same people who gave us buttons that say "Yes" vs "Remind me later" as if there's no such fucking thing as NO.
@artemis online community moderation arose (truly, for real) out of feminist praxis and the pushback against it is similarly situated
the fundamental claims- that consent matters, that we owe one another something, that you may not just cause harm and wander away- are the antithesis of grabby, aggressive, scarcity-based individualism
and some people, mostly men, act like their very lives are at stake in finding themselves expected to share responsibility for norms and upkeep and impacts
THIS. 1000%.
In 2020, I found myself isolated in a small rural town. I asked a town official if we had a listserv for community conversations. He thought it was a great idea & asked me to create one.
So I did. Every post is moderated. Because I've see what happens when communities become free-for-all. Voices get silenced. People leave. The only ones left are the aggressors.
A tech bro tried to convince me the *only* way to get full participation was to have it unmoderated.
1/
I was a part of online communities he had created (where I used to live) & watched that winnowing away happen in real time. I was one of the participants who walked away when this tech bro wouldn't act to reign in hate speech.
If that is full participation, I'll eat my laptop.
2/2
@artemis It's telling, to me, that these people view someone not wanting to interact with them as a consequence of their behaviour the same as not wanting to interact with someone due to skin tone.
To my cynical and generally people-hating brain it strikes me as the mindset of someone who thinks skin tone is somehow related to morality/rightness.
(idk maybe I'm reaching, and I'm not explaining it well, but my brain sees the line from AI-shills bitching about tolerance to white supremacy)
@artemis it's funny, i never saw the original posts by the slop peddlers in question because i blocked them, long ago because they are well known bad faith actors in slop boosterism
i blocked them the same way i blocked simonw for the same behavior, but this time it's different somehow
Please check out https://stopgenai.com
I'm no expert on any of this but I'm thinking about
1. What's the difference between a real-life cafe that doesn't welcome brown people, marxists, women, muslim people .... and a mastodon instance that doesn't?
Is an instance more like someone's home, and so they have control over who can enter?
2. Are instances "public spaces" or "public squares" with the associated rights that we have and don't have eg privacy, as well as obligations not to hurt others?
@artemis I hope this isn't about me, but on the hunch that it is, it means I was not conveying at all what I meant. I don't think they're remotely the same, and if that's what came across, I'm pretty horrified.
Your point about consent is much better. I need to work on not accepting the framing I'm handed.
Agreed. Perhaps I could amplify that point for any bystanders who aren't yet convinced?
If I'm Black, or disabled, or a woman, or neurodivergent, or gay, or trans, or any of a hundred other things, then that's a fundamental part of my identity. I didn't choose it. I can't change it. Anyone who refuses to talk to me because of that characteristic is intolerant. Allowing me to participate as an equal in Fedi makes the place more diverse.
Conversely, if I argue in favour of AI, that's not an immutable part of my identity: it's something I choose to do at present. I can always change my mind later, or just talk about something else. And it's perfectly legitimate for people not to want to engage with me on that subject, just as I choose not to engage with people who talk a lot about sports, because the subject bores me.
One of these things is intolerance; the other is just curating one's Fedi feed. It's deeply misleading for people to blur the difference between the two.
@CppGuy @artemis And that is exactly why the fediverse is generally the better social network choice these days because it allows for that choice to curate your circle of folks however big or small you want to make it.
I constantly debate with folks who think a social network needs to have every human on the planet FB, X, Bsky, etc. It is entirely too much and there's zero need for everyone to be connected to everyone else.
Choose your circle and enjoy life with them, right?
@dasgrueneblatt @CppGuy @artemis
I agree - just as with in-person communication, you choose your conversations.
However, if you go further, intimidating people or actively calling for accounts to be banned because they disagree with you, it should be for a good reason, such as hatred or racism.
Otherwise, if everyone you meet agrees with you, what's the point of posting at all? You won't learn anything. I'd rather be gardening.
@Anne_Delong
Obviously, yes. In my experience of the Fediverse, that's where the instances, their policies, admins and moderators come in. There's accounts and instances I will never see, but I'm fine with that. There's lots of stuff in real life I don't need to experience first hand either.
On the other hand, if I see any intimidation, racism or the like, I try to always respond immediately and call it out, and I report stuff to the moderation, because it is in violation of the instances' policies.
I've been thinking about your last point. Isn't there more that just agreeing/disagreeing? I've had or read some very nuanced, interesting, fruitful discussions full of strong disagreements here. I guess there's aspects like shared interests (with opposing opinions), or shared values (with opposing opinions), and probably more.
@dasgrueneblatt @CppGuy @artemis
Yes, the most interesting discussions are sometimes those in which the participants explore a topic, not mainly to sway others to their point of view, but also to develop further their own knowledge, thoughts and feelings.
It wasn't on my bio when you wrote this, so you couldn't reasonably have known, but I'm #ActuallyAutistic . I'm not angry, and I don't want to derail the conversation for this, but many autistic people find the notion of a "cure" for autism to be ableist and as offensive as a "cure" for homosexuality or black skin.
Your question is complicated because many (not all!) conditions that people think of as disabilities are also superpowers. Stephen Fry has said that, if there were a button to cure his bipolar condition, he wouldn't push it because he wouldn't want to lose what his manic phases give him. As for me, I couldn't have achieved what I did in my career without the easy access to the flow state and the fascination with technical subjects that I get from #autism. Yes, it's caused problems, too: I've sometimes caused offence without meaning to, and I've sometimes become so hyperfocused that I've worked myself into ill health. But many of the strongest software developers I've worked with have shown clear signs of autism, and any engineering company that discriminates against autistic people, directly or otherwise, is shooting itself in the foot.
I think I'd want to see all the effects of a purported cure for disability before commenting further on the degree to which the disabled person and society should be expected to adapt.
Absolutely not! So-called #ConversionTherapy is an abomination, and so is #ABA, which is based on the same practices and applied to vulnerable #autistic children.
But a remedy that reduced sensory overload when I walked through a supermarket, or which made me more comfortable in a crowded room, would be appealling as long as it didn't rob me of all the things that are good about being autistic, such as hyperfocus. #CBD, in fact, goes some way to doing that, and I've taken it since it became legal here. I'd encourage other autistic people to try it if they can.
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