Post AV7WF2OhMvBPH5VcMS by williampietri@sfba.social
(DIR) More posts by williampietri@sfba.social
(DIR) Post #AV7WExSPjgBTxAD0xU by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T16:56:47Z
0 likes, 5 repeats
Reading about #bluesky, it's impressive to me how little Jack has learned.As somebody who (briefly) worked at Twitter on anti-abuse, the place is a goldmine of lessons on fucked-up behavior. And the CEO comes out of the cryptocurrency space, which also has a rich history of garbage people run wild.But instead of something that applies any of that, they have apparently produced the same sort of tired neoliberal marketplace-of-ideas horseshit product that Twitter was to start.(a thread)
(DIR) Post #AV7WEyC8zelQEzbXEm by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T17:06:30Z
0 likes, 2 repeats
I haven't used it, but from what I've read, Bluesky launched with no block button, and possibly no moderation at all. Which is unconscionable.Maybe in 2006 you could pretend that the Internet was a nice place of hugs and rainbows. (That was untrue; even founders of the earliest social web sites in the mid 90s have abuse problems, and they were the same problems seen in the pre-Internet social computing spaces.) But today acting like 4chan doesn't exist is just announcing you aren't serious about abuse.
(DIR) Post #AV7WEz7ZY8hX76TOka by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T17:16:34Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
And I've seen suggestions to give them a chance. Respectfully: Nah, I'll pass. Not only because of their launch. But because of what they've written.For example, look at the survey of existing social media they did 2 years ago: https://gitlab.com/bluesky-community1/decentralized-ecosystem/-/blob/master/topics/moderation.mdThat is, charitably, a very light analysis. It acknowledges the "acute problems" for centralized platforms, but doesn't seem to think the same thing applies to decentralized systems. (And let's note here that Bluesky has launched a centralized system.)What's missing? A single example of a problem, for one. Let alone any serious look at what makes moderation necessary. Or how the mechanisms so briefly described work and don't work with particular problems.
(DIR) Post #AV7WEzwGVfFbeKBslU by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T17:23:40Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Or we could look at this, from just 2 weeks ago:https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/4-13-2023-moderationThis at least has examples of possibly problematic content: "spam" and "nsfw". But what's conspicuously missing is other kinds of content that often gets moderated. Which is weird given that plenty of places, Twitter included, have lists: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules
(DIR) Post #AV7WF0mNNuw0FwZUzQ by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T17:33:35Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Imagine if they had looked at those lists and asked, "Will this mechanism solve these problems?" Assuming they just didn't blink and say, "Indeedily doodily", they would have recognized that they had to scrap it and start over.For example, let's take the famous Leslie Jones dogpile of 2016: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/leslie-jones-twitter-trolls-point-of-view-1.3690404It was bad enough both for Jones and for Twitter's PR team that it was a turning point inside Twitter. The "free speech wing of the free speech party" was a fine abstract point, beloved by white dudes who didn't want anybody to tell them no. But it didn't work well in practice for everybody else.How would Bluesky solve this? Apparently by hoping Jones had gone deep enough into the settings to turn off the "racist abuse" setting. Assuming that somebody, somewhere was labeling the racist abuse fast enough, of course.
(DIR) Post #AV7WF1ZeQiLkilcqnI by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T17:39:53Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
But even if that worked (and see my previous feelings on neoliberal marketplace-of-ideas fantasies), that still leaves you with a racist mob feeling bold and looking for new targets. Looking for ways around the (inevitably leaky) automated labeling.So what they're going to do is continue with their digital ethnic cleansing campaign, congratulating each other all the while.
(DIR) Post #AV7WF2OhMvBPH5VcMS by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T17:44:04Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
As an aside, let me add that ethnic cleansing is as American as pie. I strongly recommend everyone read Loewen's "Sundown Towns", which carefully documents a hidden era of ethnic cleansing across America. And looks at how the cultural traditions linger. I think it's essential for understanding the age we're in, the second Nadir. https://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483
(DIR) Post #AV7WF3E6HoIdqVYfTs by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T17:52:10Z
0 likes, 2 repeats
But back to #bluesky. An essential dimension of moderation is asking the question, "On who does the burden fall?"If the burden of dealing with racism falls on the targets of racism, then congrats, you've just created something with built-in systemic racism.Some of that is inevitable. The true shitbags are tireless. They will be probing and subverting your defenses. So you're at least in part going to have to rely on user reports. So you have to work hard to minimize that.I see no evidence of that here. Or even awareness of the problem.
(DIR) Post #AV7WF49WqIEkicQWzg by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T18:02:58Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
How did this happen? Well, you could look at their initial team announcement:https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/2-31-2022-initial-bluesky-teamOr their jobs page (the history of which you can see on the Wayback machine):https://blueskyweb.xyz/joinOr who LinkedIn thinks is working there:https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?currentCompany=%5B%2279571598%22%5D&origin=COMPANY_PAGE_CANNED_SEARCH&sid=8VDI don't see anybody there with expertise in these problems. There's definitely nobody whose job it is to think about this. So we have the classic approach of "build for the comfortable, worry about anybody else later if at all".
(DIR) Post #AV7WF55JNSSRbpSg3k by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T18:09:46Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
And I'd add that all of these problems, as Bluesky is learning, are hard enough with a centralized service. They get enormously harder with something decentralized.A key dynamic is whether the anti-abuse people can adapt faster than the pro-abuse dirtbags. Once you are baking decisions into distributed protocols, your speed of iteration drops radically. Even with all of Twitter's centralized power, the place spent years just filled with abuse. A distributed product has to be more on the ball, not less.
(DIR) Post #AV7WF5yG5APUMFAYhk by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T18:14:53Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
So in conclusion, I think #bluesky is off to a terrible start and that nobody should use it. I get that Jack is persuasive and good at fooling people. As a recovering Twitter user, I also get that people just want those feelings back.But as things stand now, Bluesky looks like it will be worse than Twitter in terms of abuse, and that will fall disproportionally on marginalized people. Ask yourself if you want to lend your personal slice of credibility to that. Whether you want to generate free content for a billionaire, the same billionaire that fucked this up last time.
(DIR) Post #AV9pJYIuy8IUpqaibQ by mike805@fosstodon.org
2023-04-28T20:50:06Z
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@williampietri so what is wrong with having some places that are absolute free speech (and probably a dumpster fire of abuse) and some places that are safe spaces with puppies and padded walls? The rest can be in the middle. At least you will put the abusers all in one place, and the people who don't want to be abused just don't go there.Here there was an infamous ham radio repeater called 435 which was full of abuse, illegal foul language, often jammed, etc. It kept the other repeaters clean.
(DIR) Post #AV9pJYvCfmvEkaVIHI by womble@infosec.exchange
2023-04-28T22:32:26Z
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@mike805 @williampietri as places like kiwifarms, *chan, et al, have shown, the cess pools don't contain the filth, they breed it, and it leaks out to contaminate everything else.
(DIR) Post #AV9pJZR6lARWLXQm0W by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T22:41:20Z
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@womble @mike805 Exactly. For some people, abuse is a solo hobby. For others, it's a team sport. For all of them, it's a learned behavior. The problem with the dumpster fires of abuse is that fires spread. First in the dumpster, then elsewhere.
(DIR) Post #AV9pJa9Q6Pt8YyAA4m by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T22:42:18Z
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@womble @mike805 And I also have some real questions about the people who spend their time and money nurturing those dumpster fires. Whatever their nominal intent, I think they're of a piece with the open racists, misogynists, antisemites, etc, etc.
(DIR) Post #AV9pJaho2ZOUHcFcfo by mike805@fosstodon.org
2023-04-28T22:49:41Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@williampietri @womble the problem is there is nobody you can trust to decide who can and cannot speak. Everyone is biased.On the opposite side from 8chan dumpster fires, look how censorship on centralized social media escalated.From banning the Daily Stormer (a dumpster fire with a well-organized troll army) to banning anyone who criticized a few pet causes, in just a few years.We really need separate Left and Right social media. No way they can coexist on one site.
(DIR) Post #AV9pQdoesFX5xPolWa by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T22:55:53Z
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@mike805 @womble Yeah, it's very hard to reconcile those who want organized, often violent suppression of outgroups with the view that those outgroups are people with human rights who should be treated as equals. What's a person to do? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(DIR) Post #AV9pQeePlovuXw26CG by womble@infosec.exchange
2023-04-28T23:02:34Z
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@williampietri @mike805 violent suppression of outgroups is an American tradition, while treating everyone as equal sounds like some sort of commie thing, so that's all easily decided.
(DIR) Post #AV9pQfJtHc6scZRDqS by mike805@fosstodon.org
2023-04-28T23:31:12Z
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@womble @williampietri Violent suppression of outgroups is a human characteristic that seems to be hardwired. There was a recent discussion on mastodon of a book called "The Tailor King" about the anabaptists. Now THERE was an outgroup that got violently suppressed! Eventually the person advocating censorship of "those bad people" will find him/herself on someone else's naughty list.Nazis and Commies did not come to power through free speech, but rather through deplatforming their opponents.
(DIR) Post #AV9pgeXzvHEGrIeyv2 by christinkallama@mastodon.social
2023-04-29T19:25:05Z
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@mike805 How outgroups are defined and whether they are violently suppressed depends heavily on context - the Anabaptists in Muenster were annihilated, but other Anabaptist groups survived, and groups liked the Hutterites were welcomed in certain parts of East Central Europe. So we should be asking what allows for the inclusion and safety of non-dominant groups, not assuming that violent suppression is inevitable.
(DIR) Post #AV9pgfNOqALVQii22S by christinkallama@mastodon.social
2023-04-29T19:35:08Z
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@mike805 Allowing bigotry in public spaces (in meatspace or virtual space) means excluding members from marginalized groups from those spaces. It's like asking "why can't there be a 'whites only' beach for racist people?" It fosters marginalization and racist dynamics. There's a difference between censorship (government proceedings against speech acts) and deplatforming/content moderation in publicly accessible settings.
(DIR) Post #AV9pgg2sLxWTVM79ge by christinkallama@mastodon.social
2023-04-29T19:39:40Z
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@mike805 "Deplatforming", by the way, is a curious way to refer to what the Nazis and Communists did - which was instead literal censorship and the use of state power to oppress and silence marginalized groups. They did not gain this state power by "deplatforming" their opponents. In the Nazi case, they gained it by stoking antisemitism and fear of communism into a toxic brew that allowed Hitler to be handed power. In the case of the Russian Revolution, it was violent overthrow.
(DIR) Post #AV9pggmxacNzoHfxWC by mike805@fosstodon.org
2023-04-29T21:54:02Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@christinkallama I'm talking about the early history of Nazism and Communism in Germany, before either had state power. Then there was deplatforming in the modern sense.Many cities were Communist strongholds. Nazis could not rent a meeting hall there. If they did get one, the Communists would disrupt the meeting, usually leading to a brawl.The Nazis formed the S.A. to win those fights. Once they succeeded, they deplatformed the Communists the same way.Antifa was around then too.
(DIR) Post #AV9tcAv4XIebczZb0q by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T19:42:38Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Addendum: This is helpful (and very colorful) look from @chuckwendig that confirms that Bluesky doesn't have a block button: https://terribleminds.com/ramble/2023/04/28/social-media-report-card-time-to-reskeet-the-blooski-apparently/
(DIR) Post #AV9tcBRga2k3G8pdqa by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-28T20:02:39Z
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Also, by saying all this, I don't want to suggest that Mastodon is better (or that it isn't). I happen to be on an instance where the admins seem to take moderation pretty seriously. But I haven't studied what's going on at scale, and the replies here raise real concerns:https://mas.to/@BlackAzizAnansi/110278023405568530
(DIR) Post #AV9tcC9dwbu5STOkMa by williampietri@sfba.social
2023-04-29T00:40:43Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Another good addendum: a series of posts from the Bluesky CEO on how unprepared they were and how thoroughly they're half-assing all this: https://mastodon.social/@atomicpoet/110279204795922359