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!
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.
@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.
There's "communities" for nearly everything on the #Fediverse. It is a strange misconception that a server software like Mastodon was something like a centralized #server #instance that was required to "allow" for anything, or could "prohibit" it, for everybody.
On the Fediverse, your server instance can allow or prohibit anything, just like any other instance. When your topic is hated on most other instances, there might be good reasons for that, though.
Still you can even run your very own instance fully dedicated to ShittyTopic™. It's just that nobody is obliged to listen to you, or to say friendly things about it, or to never block your instance.
"It's just that nobody is obliged to listen to you"
I think it would be great if we could all agree on this.
Don't like someone? Block them. Don't like a community? Block their server.
It's when people try to actively police members of other communities they don't belong to when things turn nasty.
I think this is something moderators need to clamp down on.
I'm afraid we can't agree on the single item only that you are cherrypicking here.
If you feel "policed", your own argument applies: block them, or block their server.
>If you feel "policed", your own argument applies: block them, or block their server.
Yeah, we definitely seem to disagree. Mind you, I have not encountered this problem directly, but being constantly told how to post by complete strangers on servers I haven't even heard of doesn't sound like a fun experience.
Yeah, maybe I will block one or two people, but I can see how that can get tiring, and people just end up leaving.
I just don't think everything requires a response. People might just think a bit too highly about their opinions on here.
I believe you have nailed it:
»Yeah, maybe I will block one or two people, but I can see how that can get tiring, and people just end up leaving.«
That's precisely why your "you can block them" is useless "advice". It is a pity that you only realized that once your own advice was mirrored back to you.
We have to agree to disagree here, I agree.
You are equating two different things.
Scenario 1: I don't want to see person A, I will block them. They will never know I exist. I will likewise block person B, person C, heck, let me block this whole server.
But I don't have to even block anyone, I can just mind my own business.
Scenario 2: I am being told I am not posting the right way by person A. I will block them. Now by person B. I can block them too. Why are all these strangers talking to me? Why can't they mind their own business? I guess I'll just leave.
@katzenberger Or to put it differently, nobody is actively driving you away if they post about topics you are not interested in and/or in ways you don't agree with.
But by jumping into a complete stranger's mentions, you are, in fact, showing the toxic side of the fediverse and actively driving people away. Some cheer on this as a good thing. That's gatekeeping.
@stefan @katzenberger @Gargron
This is the curse of the fediverse but hey, "You can always spin up your own instance if you don't like it!" ;-P
"You can always spin up your own instance"
But that doesn't solve the problem, because people in your mentions criticizing you don't care about the rules of your community, they will either try to enforce rules of their own community, or what they see as rules governing all of the fediverse.
The only solution I can think of that I mentioned earlier is that non-moderators should not moderate non-members of their community. They can report, block, move on.
Scott Jenson
Eugen Rochko
katzenberger
Stefan Bohacek