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.
@cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron This is a very rich ethics question hidden in a specific example.
Would you permit or allow any community with which you disagree to participate on a platform, even if you’re not forced to participate?
A shortlist of thought experiments, to broaden the perspective, some of which are already here, some not…
- The oil & gas community
- Forestry workers (logging)
- The cryptocurrency community
- Workers at a chick rendering plant
- The finance industry
- Adult content creators
- Religious communities
Is there a litmus test for topics that you can or can’t discuss on the fediverse? Specific servers sure, but the whole fediverse?
Does that align with the values put forth by mastodon or the fediverse in general?
I don’t have the answers.
@trisweb @cratermoon @scottjenson @Gargron by definition, no. Literally anyone can spin up a server and talk about anything/try to get more folk to listen…
But other folk have to want to listen to whatever they are saying. Servers and individuals can just decide not to. No one is guaranteed an audience, just the ability to speak.
That is the exact opposite of what I said. I'm saying the fediverse gives you the tools to follow/block/filter/ to your hearts content to create the space you want.
What is corrosive is people ACTIVELY going after people they don't agree with. Just look at the replies to my post to get small sample.
My point was, I thought, very simple, and very reasonable: we should be more welcoming of more opinions. If you don't like them, then don't follow them. That should be the fedi-way. To be clear, I'm NOT endorsing AI, it just used it as an example.
Instead I'm living the very point I was trying to make. I've been told to leave, called a racist, and had ad hominem attacks leveled at me.
Now to be fair, my original post was poorly worded. I've owned that
https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116358195717244835
@scottjenson @pmdj No, we absolutely should NOT be "welcoming more opinions". "Diversity of thought" is NOT a value. Some opinions are wrong. They may have a right to exist, as long as they're not nazi opinions (those have no right to even exist), but that doesn't mean we have to welcome them. It's perfectly fine to tell people off for having bad opinions, to shun them, to let them share those bad opinions only with whoever is willing to listen to them and not in our circles.
If that causes them to leave fedi, that's not a bad thing.
I'm making a post on my timeline that you can ignore. There is a BIG difference to getting in someone's mentions and correcting them.
This is my whole point. We are each on the fediverse and we say what we want. You can like, ignore, whatever.
I'm NOT getting in anyone's mentions, I'm not scolding, I'm ASKING that we are more inclusive because it's the more humane and helpful thing to do, but hey, you can disagree, that's cool.
@scottjenson @pmdj It's not an "evil plot" it's just irresponsible growth hacking that capitalist social media platforms are infamous for. People with shitty opinions drive rage engagement, so encourage them to come! 🤮
As I said when I first engaged with this thead, yes "more open to new ideas" and "more tolerant" are BAD THINGS without further qualification. "Diversity of opinion" is NOT a value. It's freeze-peach bro shit.
Yes we should strive to be as inclusive as possible towards people born different from us who have not had the same experiences, privilegs, etc. as us and whose needs, concerns, ways of communicating, etc. might be very different from our own.
This does not imply we should also be inclusive towards people who want to kiss tech industy ass.
@scottjenson @dalias @pmdj You might need to go refresh your memory on the paradox of tolerance?
AI, for example, is currently wrecking the economy, along with pretty much everybody's livelihoods, is undoing a bunch of work on climate change as companies reopen gas plants, poisoning whole communities, consolidates power into the hands of some of the worst people in the world, has driven the price of RAM and GPUs through the roof, encouraged widespread theft, massively reduced the quality of things to the point of being dangerous (AI mushroom foraging books!), is driving people into psychosis and causing cognitive decline.
Why should we tolerate that?
In my experience people on Mastodon think a lot more clearly about these kinds of issues than most, and will challenge people thoughtlessly dragging in mainstream assumptions. That can be confronting, but it's not intolerant.
And there's a certain irony in claiming that we're intolerant towards minorities, but the examples of intolerance are all things like being asked to include a content warning for people with trauma, or alt text images for people who are blind, or think for two seconds before huffing AI in public. Everyone wants their problems fixed first, I guess...
@neoluddite @deFractal
> Why should we tolerate that?
Because once you’ve driven away all the generative AI users (e.g. the great majority of today’s students) you won’t even be part of that discussion.
This has pretty much already happened on my feed. Constructive discussion on that topic is nearly impossible.
@neoluddite @deFractal In 2016, I blocked a lot of people over politics. In retrospect, that turned out to have been entirely justified.
But when 2020 and 2022 came around I began facilitating discussions about important events. I had to unblock a bunch of people to do this. I decided it was better to be able engage with the people I didn’t agree with than to not.
(Yes, I recognize this is a form of privilege and not everyone can or should look it that way.)
In the long run, people getting divided over deeply held principled beliefs only helps those who have no principles at all.
@marshray
You're conflating “AI” boosters into “AI” users.
It's the boosters that are not welcome.
A user might generate themselves i.e. a legal document to save their ass.
@dzwiedziu Try reading the thread again very closely.
I don’t think any two posts in this conversation are using the same definition for the out-group. Vague notions of “AI people” who probably have LLM-induced psychosis.
@marshray
> Try reading the thread again very closely.
I very much do not like condescending appeals to literacy.
If you want to point to a perceived flaw in my understanding, then do it in a precise manner.
The latter part of your toot does not help with that.
@dzwiedziu You made a specific claim: That I was “conflating ‘AI’ boosters with ‘AI’ users”.
But this distinction is not observed by the posts up-thread thread. There is little or no consistent use of terminology at all.
I think probably you could see this if you were to re-read the thread above carefully, just as I took the time to do before suggesting it.
I’m not trying to be rude here, but you specifically asked for “precise”. Most people are not used to direct discussion and often interpret it as “condescending”.
You are not asking people on here to be more generally tolerant. You are asking them to entertain a specific viewpoint so as not to be stuck in echo chambers. Then, when they listen and tell you what they think, you ask for them to ignore you instead, i.e., you ASK to be put in an echo chamber.
That's goofy, man.
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