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This article about the recent arrival on Mastodon of many Twitter users from is by far more complete than many others I've seen these days: qz.com/india/1746734/angry-twi
But unsurprisingly it ends with a common doubt about Mastodon being a platform filled with echo chambers.

Well, being an italian that in the last days interacted with so many people from India and having learned from many new things about indian society from them it sounds fun 😄

On Mastodon you can find and interact with a huge amount of different communities: LGBT communities based in UK, vegans from the States, german metalheads, Solarpunks, some algerian guys, italian anarchists, french hackers, anime-fans from all around, indian muslims, south american activists...

It's a kind of variety that is rarely encountered on commercial social media.

Anyway the risk of creating an echo chamber on Mastodon exists: if you are on an Instance run by a community that refuses any interaction with everyone that doesn't share your views you can easily isolate yourself.

But that also happens in real life if you refuse to hear anything but yourself!

That's up to the maturity of a community to be more or less open to the others!

You cannot force somebody to hear you: it never works.

At the opposite on comnercial social media your echo-chamber is created not by you but by algorythms that decide what you must see and what not, who you may follow and what is the topic you should care today.

Which of the two approaches is more human?

@Ca_Gi The former for sure. Although an algorithm connects me to people with similar interests. Makes it a bit easier I guess.

@Ca_Gi However without algorithms, I can see a whole range of topics and opinions that algorithms could mask/hide.

@wabbster True, but at the same time it emphasizes so much your given interests to reduce the possibility to encounter something different from them.

The point is that on an algorythm-based platform, the platform itself has more power on you that the opposite.

@wabbster (I answered before reading your second toot 😅)

@Ca_Gi probably, echo chambers are not as bad as filter bubbles (that is how I would call the echo chambers created by algorithms). they both leverage on the same psychological drive but filter bubbles are artificially created to exploit us

@caycepollard You can say that everyone lives in his own echo chamber and depending by his culture and open mindness that chamber can be very small or extremely large and with time and experience could also grow or shrink.

Instead filter bubbles are a sort of computer-driven echo chambers regulated by commercial platforms that will always put company's interest before people's interest.

An algorithm that hides certain posts from your TL or shadowbans users without informing anybody surely doesn't contribute to your knowledge.

@caycepollard filter bubbles should help people to receive information of interest @Ca_Gi

@aaronwinstonsmith @Ca_Gi especially information that people "like", information that confirms what they already know/think. the point is they are not created to help, they are created to sell ads

@caycepollard @Ca_Gi yes, expecially information which interest other peoples in the bubble. These tecnologies has been develop to limit the overwelming of information.

@aaronwinstonsmith @Ca_Gi I think that this is a by-product. These algorithms have been developed to gratify the user and make her/him stay longer on the given social or platform. The more you stay the more valuable are the ads on your page

@Ca_Gi The echo chamber in Mastodon can create itself even if the admins don't block any instance. If all the people on the instance share roughly the same insterests, then the federated timeline contains only content of people with similar interest, as the users only follow people in which they're interested and with whom they share their opinions.

@nex True. But that depends on the culture, interests and curiosity of the users and is not intentionally created by the platform.
That happens also in real life.

Re: last boost, I think most of those people are on Twitter too - but joining a decentralized social network shakes things up a bit.

🐘

@Ca_Gi Hi I'm a dalit female artist Activist from India

@Ca_Gi thanke. What's the story behind your scuba diving avarar

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