Tael @ AC26

"And we shall do it if we really want to."
- I.V. Dzhugashvili, The Tasks of Business Executives

Website: https://taelspinner.com

Last Notes

2026-04-07 02:49:06 UTC

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That's correct, you haven't heard me say that. I don't want Mastodon to become an echo chamber.

2026-04-07 02:37:54 UTC

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You're looking at a tidal wave of criticism crashing into you and calling it an echo chamber. The echo chamber is when you are never exposed to exactly that. In an echo chamber, you don't realize you're in one; the only viewpoints you're hearing are your own.
The argument we're having isn't over whether people leave because they get criticized too much. That's obviously a real phenomenon. It's over whether that constitutes an "echo chamber." Those people leave because they are used to echo chambers.

2026-04-07 02:34:32 UTC

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I don't think you're going to be persuaded away from this view. However, the reply guys exposing you to a paradigm different from your own, holding you to expectations you're unfamiliar with, are exactly what makes it not an echo chamber. If nobody ever bothered you or came into your notifs to disagree with you, you'd be in an echo chamber. Which it seems is what you're used to.
In most social media, there might be Nazis and communists on the same website. The algorithm constructs separate "bars" for them by simply not showing them each others' posts, heavily auto-moderating what language you can use in your posts, and recommending you people to follow that you like to interact with because you agree with them.
That is what builds social media platform retention. Mastodon has none of that. Instead, you defederate the Nazi bar and only talk to the bars that don't allow Nazis. Most people don't "get" that because it's always been done for them. And that's OK.

2026-04-06 23:52:49 UTC

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Respectfully, Mastodon is less of an echo chamber than any social media on earth presently. That's exactly why people bounce off of it. There is absolutely nothing built into the system to shepherd you into a "good" experience. It's just humans. Love 'em or leave 'em, but if you stay it's on you to curate your experience. A lotta people don't like that, and that's OK. All Mastodon users ever asked for was the option to exist in a space they owned. Not for Threads, Bluesky, and Twitter to all shut down and everyone to be on Mastodon.