Mastodon, as a network, leans pretty strongly anti-AI. Not just the people I follow, but the network overall. It’s something I see every day, but today I saw a very clear single example.

1Password posted a link to a blog post about how they use AI for backend dev on Masto which showed up in my feed and I immediately noticed the amount of negative replies: 42 replies, 41 of which were negative. Here is a representative slice, paraphrased so I’m not singling anyone out:

• “No. Just no.”
• Equating any AI use with deliberately introducing security flaws.
• “Stochastic parrots.” “AI slop.” “Grey goo.”
• “The ideal agent-to-human ratio is 0.”
• A lot of “I’m canceling my subscription” / “guess I need to find a new password manager.”
• “Set itself on fire in the race to shove AI into everything.”

I went to see if they posted that blog link anywhere else. They posted the same blog post link on LinkedIn and on X, but not on their Threads or Bluesky accounts. There are a lot fewer replies on both and they are mostly just engaging with the topic or asking for support.

I mainly read through Mastodon to learn about cool tech stuff + a lot of my real-life friends are on there, but Masto seems to be getting more anti-tech in general these days and I am finding less cool stuff there recently.

I find Threads is better for photography and general interest. How weird that photographers have migrated over to Threads from Instagram since Insta is all about Reels now…

The norms building up inside the post-twitter text-based social networks are fascinating to watch. I honestly never would have assumed a large network could have visible biases like this.

Is there an online space that is pro-“tech to help people”? Or pro-this-stuff-is-cool-check-it-out? Or just generally biased towards constructive convos?