This article about the recent arrival on Mastodon of many Twitter users from #India is by far more complete than many others I've seen these days: https://qz.com/india/1746734/angry-twitter-india-users-are-migrating-to-mastodon-in-thousands/
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.
@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
@Ca_Gi exactly
@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
@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.