"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.
I thought a big part of the value of Fedi is how much choice we have over who we associate with.
Why is it a bad thing that people who are choosey about their online experience don't want to listen to AI-shills?
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?
@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
JNL
LJ