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!
@scottjenson @carnage4life threads and bluesky are single monolithic platforms. masto federated. so would likely depend on which masto server someone's posting on i'd guess as a starter...
also, purely anecdotally/for my own part, there's less of a culture of boosting/liking/trying to make things go viral for the algorithm. lack of apparent engagement may not signal lack of people actually reading posts/following links/etc.
@patrick_h_lauke So is the only alternative "number go DOWN" metrics? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm trying to find a way to have both be possible: how can we keep our soul but still have a diverse community.
My concern is that your comment uses the "we don't want a number go up mentality" argument to hide the fact that our community is a mono culture.
The short answer seems very strongly to be "it's irrelevant because that's not what people here want"
Mastodon and fedi in general are very much countercultural. Most people who come to these platforms do so to get away from other platforms, many of which are more inclusive of mainstream voices.
So by its very nature, mastodon has a selection bias for people who do not want inclusivity.
@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
This take...makes no sense. "Countercultural" is almost never anti-inclusive. Counter-culture knows what it's like to be excluded.
The idea that "mainstream" voices are being "excluded" is ridiculous...mainstream voices are never excluded...it's actually a decent definition of "mainstream".
But the original thread is not better...the idea that "number go down" is not something I've seen supported (but neither have I seen it opposed) but the idea that more interaction = more diversity is just weird.
I dunno...earlier in the thread there's a suggestion "oh there's less people feeding the algorithm" and I'm not sure OP even knows how Mastodon/Fediverse works.
@danbrotherston @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
> Counter-culture knows what it's like to be excluded.
Sure. It does not follow that counter-culture is not also exclusive, that makes no sense.
> The idea that "mainstream" voices are being "excluded" is ridiculous...mainstream voices are never excluded...it's actually a decent definition of "mainstream".
Yes, they're not excluded _from mainstream spaces_; people come here _to avoid those spaces_ and thus as a direct rejection of the people _who are in them_. This argument also makes no sense.
Fedi can reasonably be defined by what it is _not_. It is absolutely hostile towards corporate actors, engagement farming, and much of "normal" / "mainstream" culture.
Twitter remains a much more mainstream space; many people are here specifically to avoid it _and the people on it_. Which continues to be, well, most of them.
@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
Oh no....we're hostile to engagement farming and corporate PR departments.
No, you're right...we're inclusive of people...ONLY people.
People in "mainstream" places are not excluded here, neither are mainstream viewpoints and opinions nor mainstream ideas.
The only thing that is being excluded then is financialization and corporate capture.
I call that "inclusive".
It's the equivalent of the paradox of tolerance. Being tolerant of intolerance is intolerant. Being inclusive of grifts and PR is exclusive.
I am not here to avoid the PEOPLE on twitter...I'm here to avoid the grifts, bots, and nazis--ooh...woops, you're right...we are not inclusive of Nazi's either. I guess you have a point.... 🙄
Honestly, I find this take bizarre...this place has it's problems, but it's vastly more inclusive than Twitter or Bluesky.
@danbrotherston @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
Fedi is very inclusive of traditionally excluded people, and very _unfriendly_ to normies, even if it's not actively hostile.
There's also a very, very obvious political bias, which is just as extreme (but in different directions) than mainstream platforms, and one which is not particularly welcoming of normie opinions either.
@danbrotherston @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
Example: I have very strong negative opinions about AI. I also know that _almost everyone_ I've encountered IRL has at least found it _cool_. At least one friend has said they only avoid AI because they know _I_ don't like it.
Anyone talking about AI in anything resembling a positive light is probably going to have a bad time here. That's a _lot_ of normal people right now.
There's a lot of things that are normal that probably shouldn't be that people here do not like. This does not change that they are normal.
Normal people coming here and talking normally _will_ receive harassment because of it.
@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
I dunno...I have a nuanced and not entirely negative view of AI, and I don't have a bad time here.
Having my ideas challenged isn't "a bad time"...and if I really wanted to, I could find people who did feel differently. There's over a million people on here, not all of them feel the same way.
That said, I have never seen the harassment you speak of, and certainly I cannot imagine that someone would be harassed for "normal" actions and opinions.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
@pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
As for Fedi being unfriendly to "normies" ... I've seen conversations here explicitly discussing how to be welcoming to new people from other platforms.
But there is an inherent complexity to a distributed network that simply doesn't exist for a centralised corporatised network.
I do think that people will find a difference here between the intentionally algorithmically addictive feed from Twitter vs. the chronological feed here, just as any addictive experience is different from a neutral one.
@danbrotherston @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke
> how to be welcoming
Yeah there's a lot of desire and moralizing about being welcoming, until it actually happens and a lot of the people are Wrong about Some Important Thing
@danbrotherston @pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke people who are too addicted to the crack-like fix of engagement-farming algorithmic feeds will either detox or self-select out, and *that's fine.*
this reminds me of Automattic's current crusade to make line go up with tumblr metrics which is chipping away at the core UX which makes tumblr tumblr and makes its core userbase so loyal.
growth doesn't need to be an end goal.
@danbrotherston @pixx @scottjenson @patrick_h_lauke fwiw earlier today I muted somebody who was explicitly calling to bully "AI bros," which: define "AI bro" bc as you said one can have nuance on genAI. but there are definitely rabid tribal AI haters here and I don't blame them too much.
it might also be worth considering that fedi - even The Mastodon Networkâ„¢ which is a subset - has neighborhoods, boroughs, cities, and even continents (eg non-Latin charsets), so what exactly are we discussing?
Scott Jenson
Patrick H. Lauke
pixx
Daniel Brotherston
deutrino