Mastodawn

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!

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Scott Jenson 5d ago

OK, this is going even MORE sideways so I need to make a few things clear:
1. I took a complex point and made it poorly
2. My goal was to ask for more inclusiveness
3. I am sickened by what happend to BlackTwitter and I don't want it recur
4. But I can't speak for BlackTwitter nor should I
5. I apologize to black mastodon users for making such a poor comparison
6. I'm not endorsing "AI Slop" they were a foil to make my point
7. I'm certainly NOT trying to compare AI bros to Black twitter (but, as I said, I can see how people made that connection. I'm trying to correct that here)

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Jennifer Moore 😷4d ago

@scottjenson

Thanks for this.

To engage with your original point: I'm struck by a contrast, and I have some curiosity about it.

When I look at @carnage4life's original post on its own, my reaction is something like
"oh, interesting to have the 3-way comparison from someone experiencing all 3 places firsthand", and then "yeah that makes sense".

I'm not surprised that "tech topics" were "getting the most replies and likes" here, because there are loads of techie people here. Many of @carnage4life's followers on Fedi probably clicked "follow" primarily for the tech commentary in the first place.

I was a little surprised to see the Fedi described as "lukewarm to politics", because I follow a fair number of people giving political analysis - but I realise the post was a kind of holistic impression, not a comment on every single person here.

I'm also not surprised that someone posting similarly on all three might have fewer followers here than on Bluesky or Threads, as an absolute number, because iirc Fedi has fewer people _overall_ than the other two. But 18k is still a chonky number!

So when you say "has me questioning our community" and that journalists "aren't coming with examples like this"... I'm like oh, that's very different from how I parsed the same info!

What is it about the original description that, for you, means journalists wouldn't come?

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Scott Jenson 4d ago

@unchartedworlds Thanks for that thoughtful reply. It was a bit of a knee jerk reaction to be honest. I've been talking to LOTS of folks, trying to figure out how to get more people to join the Fediverse and journalists are fairly reluctant to join. If you follow some of the replies to my post there is a healthy "yeah, and we don't WANT you!" feeling.

I'm all for people not wanting to have journalists here but there is a surprising vitriol to let them in at all. I keep hearing over (and over (AND OVER)) that anyone can spin up a server but that's completely missing the point. If people don't want you here, having your own server accomplishes nothing.

My point isn't that anyone should want anything. I'm just surprised people don't want to, you know, let journalists at least TRY to do something here?

My BIG mistake was picking someone in AI, that just set everyone off on the wrong path. I did not want to "push" AI on anyone.

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Jon 4d ago

@scottjenson my reaction is similar to @unchartedworlds' ... in fact I'm puzzled by your framing of this whole discussion. Dare isn't a journalist, so what does his experience have to do with whether or not journalists are welcome here? And yes of course somebody like Dare -- a US-based product manager who is well-known for his work at Meta (and before that Microsoft) -- is going to get more engagement on Threads and Bluesky than on Mastodon. What does that have to do with Mastodon being an echo chamber?

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OldCoder

I gather that I've stumbled into a Mastodon internal discussion that happens to be public. I trust it's all right to comment that, though Mastodon is an important part of the picture, large enough to warrant the name, some of these points are about the Fediverse as a whole and not solely about Mastodon.

Delurk: I've been here for 7 years this year. I switched from Mastodon to Pleroma early on simply to get the lighter footprint. I run Pleroma git-current as BE and a Soapbox fork of my own as FE. [I have nothing to do with Alex Gleason's politics. I'm considered a leftist and lost one of my closest associates last month due to my criticism of MAGA.]

About tech types: If the Fediverse used to have a slight lean towards tech types, it's decreased. I follow musicians, webcomic creators, people who like wordplay, novelists, cat lovers, and more. FOSS projects as well, of course.

About journalists: There are genuine and serious journalists here. 30 years ago, for example, I used to read Dan Gillmor in the San Jose Mercury News. And here he is still doing what's possible: @dangillmor

About politics: Politics are a daily staple here. It's usually calmer, though, than on the madness site that you know I'm referring to. The protocols don't encourage dogpiles and that's a good thing. There is no issue here with too much politics or too little. The balance is up to the user.

About echo chamber: All viewpoints are represented in the Fediverse, but the ones that dominate Twitter are frustrated because they're not able to bully and shout their way to the top here. That isn't echo chamber.

About so-called "AI": I'd like to see less of a frenzied piranha-like response to mentions in the Fediverse of so-called "AI". However, it is, to be clear, the stupidest mania that I've seen in a lifetime and in a career that goes back about 50 years.

People need to be permitted to post about the subject, but -- to be clear -- under no circumstances can "AI" agents be allowed through the gate. That isn't being closed-minded. It's existential.

The question of whether or not people should post "AI" output is open to discussion. The fact of the use of "AI" does need to be disclosed.

I only post "AI" output myself infrequently. I did post an "AI" portrait of Hypatia of Alexandria tonight and an "AI" scene depicting the Disney Dopey battling Thanos a few days ago. I stand by the decisions to do so.

For what it's worth, my own essay on so-called "AI" is located at:
https://tinyurl.com/ai-is-fake

Adding @Gargron and @unchartedworlds

AI is Fake For Goodness Sake

This is a broad overview of problems with AI. One unusual part is that the writer asked AIs to comment on the article.