[HN Gopher] User ban controversy reveals Bluesky's decentralized...
___________________________________________________________________
User ban controversy reveals Bluesky's decentralized aspiration
isn't reality
Author : gregsadetsky
Score : 127 points
Date : 2025-10-07 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (plus.flux.community)
(TXT) w3m dump (plus.flux.community)
| ranger_danger wrote:
| From what I have seen, the "solution" to moderation troubles in
| decentralized solutions has mostly always been... more
| centralization.
| threatofrain wrote:
| ML could potentially provide a decentralized mechanism for
| filtering unwanted content, or even hybrid approaches. IMO the
| worst of content filtering (gore or other psychologically
| disturbing content) will soon be an automated job.
| astrange wrote:
| It already is and has been for a long time. The kinds of
| content you have to moderate are not things anyone wants to
| look at. The worst ones are far worse than you can imagine
| and the average ones are nudes of people you don't want to
| look at all day.
|
| This is actually today's controversy on Bluesky because the
| #1 attribute of its power users is they're terrified of "AI"
| and the idea that "companies will steal their posts to
| generate AI slop", which means they think the ML moderation
| is stealing their posts.
|
| Oh, but the ML can't be decentralized because the training
| datasets are illegal.
| glenstein wrote:
| The only major decentralized forms of social media that I'm
| aware of that have confronted philosophical questions of how
| handle moderation have been Mastodon, Bluesky, and arguably
| Lemmy.
|
| I don't know of any sense in which Mastodon has increased
| centralization, I think its blocking tools have been
| distributed essentially since the beginning, not something that
| has iterated toward centralization over time in response to an
| unfolding debate. Although it does have a complicated history
| and as possible that new things have happened I'm not aware of.
|
| BlueSky though, to your point, is a good example of
| centralization not being reliable in terms of not being
| accountable to users. Or for a different way of saying the same
| thing, the lack of accountability has served to reveal how
| centralized it truly is.
|
| It does seem to be simple enough that people don't get confused
| about using it, but it doesn't seem to walk the actual walk of
| decentralization.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| The big example that comes to my mind is Matrix, where most
| homeservers use Mjolnir to apply centralized public
| blocklists of other servers/people they don't like.
|
| So if for example #archlinux disagrees with your opinion and
| they decide to ban you for it, you are now banned from _many_
| other unrelated channels.
|
| I have also seen subreddits that auto-ban users that have
| ever posted in specific other (unrelated) subreddits.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Mjolnir is designed to apply _decentralised_ public
| blocklists - i.e. you pick which banlists to apply; there
| are a bunch published by different people (matrix.org, the
| matrix 'community moderation effort', etc). Admittedly
| moderators do share lists (so that if #archlinux bans you,
| others might pick up the ban), but there's no intrinsic
| centralisation.
|
| https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-
| doc/blob/msc2313/propos... is how it works fwiw.
| astrange wrote:
| BlueSky also has this, but it works poorly because people
| use blocklists as a form of harassment, or else take over
| existing lists and add their enemies to it.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| And bluesky has the ultimate power of choosing which
| blocklists to show you
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Old internet was most decentralized but since the platforms
| weren't scaling up to ridiculous heights moderation wasn't that
| big of a deal. It was also "gatekept" in a self-selecting way;
| now, everyone is online. Conspiracy beliefs have drastically
| shot up in adoption, through social media exposure.
|
| People always had irrational populist and conspiratorial
| beliefs, but that was mediated by popular media generally not
| platforming kooks. Now you have the top 10 podcasts allowing
| people to mainline validation for conspiracies.
|
| I don't see how centralization helps. Allowing (or demanding)
| that a media provider to regulate more could lead to less
| platforming for conspiracy theorists and populists.
| greekrich92 wrote:
| The founder has been posting through it, Elon-style and with as
| much cringe.
|
| It's disappointing because I've mostly been able to replicate my
| Twitter experience there. It's better actually, because more
| funny people moved and fewer journalists so it's less of a
| doomscroll.
| astrange wrote:
| "Posting through it" is a fairly nonsensical concept. It
| implies you're required to agree with people yelling at you,
| which you aren't.
|
| Bluesky in particular has this problem because it inherited a
| kind of leftist crustpunk poster from 2016 Twitter. They had a
| weird affect where they hated "nerds" for some reason and
| pretended to be those jock bully characters from 80s high
| school movies.
|
| The modern Bluesky form has evolved into being terrified of
| "AI" and screaming at anyone who uses it or has ever heard of
| it that it doesn't work and will never work but is also using
| up all the water and is going to make everyone unemployed and
| also you're a STEMlord who needs to take humanities classes to
| learn to be ethical.
|
| They're currently working on inventing new slurs for AI users
| which are mostly remarkably offensive.
| complianceowl wrote:
| All roads lead back to centralization lol.
| pixl97 wrote:
| You can't have decentralized but connected and system level
| moderation at the same time.
|
| It's either centralized and moderated system wide or
| decentralized and moderated locally.
|
| The problem with being connected and moderated locally is your
| creating global moderation problems for a local system,
| typically that means massive amounts of work for said
| moderators.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| > However, as time has gone by, Bluesky's traffic has declined
| (X's has as well) and some of its users have become increasingly
| upset at its moderation decisions, including allowing U.S. Vice
| President J.D. Vance and anti-trans writer Jesse Singal to remain
| as users of the platform.
|
| The problem, if you can call it that, is Singal hasn't broken any
| of their TOS or guidelines.
|
| Right now, AFAICT this is a people with pitchforks problem, who
| are asking for something which they don't have any business
| asking.
|
| Sure, if you want to stick your fingers in your ears, block
| Singal. There are widely used block lists for people who even
| merely _follow_ Singal. Asking for his ban from a public use
| platform is too much without more than "He wrote some articles
| for the NY Times, The Atlantic, and NY Magazine, I didn't
| personally enjoy."
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > The problem, if you can call it that, is Singal hasn't broken
| any of their TOS.
|
| Well, no, he did unambiguously break the TOS back when he
| originally joined. Then Bluesky amended their TOS, which gave
| them an avenue to avoid banning him.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| > Well, no, he did clearly break the TOS back when he
| originally joined.
|
| Care to explain? The links in the article re: potential
| violations are mostly BS.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| Doxxing people off-platform used to be against the ToS.
| When people began reporting him for that, Bluesky amended
| their ToS.
| jrflowers wrote:
| Yeah they changed the policy on off-site behavior to
| specifically allow his posts. For another example he
| routinely posted screenshots of posts from people that
| had blocked him. Block evasion is/was against the ToS as
| applied to most users other than Jesse Singal.
|
| People mix up "users wanting him banned for having
| abhorrent views" (which is the opinion of some people)
| with "users wanting him banned for the same stuff they
| see other people get banned for". It serves as a kind of
| cover because even when you point to a concrete example
| of him violating the rules the moderation team will
| dismiss your report as being personally motivated. It's a
| funny defense, "This guy couldn't possibly be breaking
| the rules _and_ be near-universally considered an asshole
| by the users on this site! It has to be one or the
| other!"
| like_any_other wrote:
| > he routinely posted screenshots of posts from people
| that had blocked him
|
| I don't like platforms that try to keep me ignorant of
| what others are _publicly_ saying, keeping me in a non-
| consensual information bubble. It is basically deception.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > I don't like platforms that try to keep me ignorant of
| what others are publicly saying
|
| That's neither here nor there. The nuclear block is a big
| part of how Bluesky works, and abiding by it/was part of
| the rules for users other than Jesse Singal.
|
| The point I made is that other users that share your
| disagreement with the nuclear block would get suspended
| or banned for evading it, whereas Jesse Singal would
| not/does not. The message to _other_ users was "if you
| don't like it, tough"
|
| I say is/was because I don't read his posts. I stopped
| paying close attention to all that some time after it
| became clear that retroactive changes to the ToS to
| justify (lack of) actions is the baseline for how Jay and
| Aaron run the site.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| > Doxxing people off-platform used to be against the ToS.
| When people began reporting him for that, Bluesky amended
| their ToS.
|
| Even by the loosest definition what Singal did was not
| doxxing?
|
| For instance, Alejandra Caraballo, like it or not, is a
| public figure. A role, I would add, that she has chosen
| for herself. She testifies before Congress FFS. When she
| says something in public, including on Bluesky, I'm not
| sure she deserves some radical right to not have it heard
| anywhere else. No matter what vague term you can point to
| in the Bluesky guidelines or TOS.
| whistlestop wrote:
| Also Caraballo was the one who was actually harassing and
| doxxing. Singal was just reporting on it, as any
| journalist might do.
| ajs1998 wrote:
| My understanding is their TOS was unclear and they clarified
| it after the outrage, but their moderation policy didn't
| actually change. They're not going ban people that break the
| TOS outside the S, because that's practically unenforceable.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > They're not going ban people that break the TOS outside
| the S, because that's practically unenforceable.
|
| Before they amended the ToS, they _did_ do that. It 's
| completely possible to enforce, especially when the person
| in question is the one sharing the evidence of the
| offending behavior. There's no dispute of facts at play.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| It's worse than that, as the linked TC article links to an
| explanation of his ban-worthy views that, if applied to
| everyone, would lean to a ban of probably 85% of the US.
| (Purposefully not referencing them here. The question is not
| whether those views are right, it's whether those are
| mainstream.)
|
| Bluesky has a problem of its user base demanding purity, and it
| will 100% be the death of it.
| isodev wrote:
| > would lean to a ban of probably 85% of the US
|
| A decentralized system would allow for that to happen tbh.
| That 85% can exist in their bubble but other actors who see
| them as dangerous and unsafe should have the means to
| mute/disconnect.
| a_shovel wrote:
| You'll need to explain this a little bit more, because the TC
| article seems to indicate the issue is that he is accused of
| targeted harassment. I doubt you could design a poll to make
| people vote 85% in favor of targeted harassment.
| subsistence234 wrote:
| > he is accused of targeted harassment
|
| yeah but that's an accusation without basis in reality.
| felixgallo wrote:
| oh, there's tons of basis in reality. How could you even
| say that? Just a cursory google:
|
| https://www.professorwatchlist.org/
|
| https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-
| makes...
|
| https://www.azregents.edu/news-releases/abor-chair-
| statement
| wnoise wrote:
| That's for Charlie Kirk et al, not Jesse Singal.
| monocularvision wrote:
| Even better: the only "evidence" of Singal's "anti-trans"
| views are that his work has been quoted by anti-trans
| politicians and activists. This is an absolute ridiculous bar
| to have. Anyone who follows him would be hard-pressed to
| describe him as "anti-trans" unless you think anything less
| than a full throated endorsement of self ID and medical
| transition interventions for minors is "anti-trans".
| whistlestop wrote:
| Indeed, Singal is a journalist you go to when you want to
| read a thoughtful, data-driven analysis of a controversial
| issue.
|
| He's exceptionally skilled at taking complex and highly
| polarized topics and picking them apart in a way that
| invites readers to consider different perspectives.
|
| Unfortunately, that in itself is a polarizing approach, as
| many people just want their pre-existing beliefs
| reinforced.
| lkey wrote:
| Speaking of confirmation bias, do you disagree with
| Singal about anything in particular? What about
| agreement?
|
| Who else have you read on this 'controversial issue'? Why
| did you consider them less persuasive than a journalist
| with no particular expertise?
|
| Why have you not named what the 'issue' is?
|
| Are 'people' an 'issue' to be solved _in general_ , or
| just in this case?
|
| If we changed topics to 'what should be done about the
| "autism issue"', does your opinion change? If so, why?
| There are _perfectly valid questions_ being brought up by
| heterodox thinkers all the time. We 're not even certain
| that _those people_ experience emotions, there 's
| literally no way to tell, and we shouldn't shy away from
| _hard questions_ and even _harder_ truths, don 't you
| think?
|
| Do you believe that the executive branch of the federal
| government is best-suited to dealing with undesirable
| minorities generally? If so, what national-level
| 'solutions' currently being discussed in the halls of
| power are your favorites?
|
| In the spirit of cooperation, I'll go first. Openly
| trial-ballooning the revocation of the second amendment
| for trans people is my favorite in terms of pure
| audacity.
| dmbche wrote:
| I don't know, a cursory 'singal anti trans" google search
| had this as first result :
| https://www.transgendermap.com/issues/topics/media/jesse-
| sin...
|
| I'm fine with labelling this person "anti trans"
| carynh wrote:
| I wanted to give you (and the website you linked) the
| benefit of the doubt since with all the accusations they
| make there is a link in there. I thought it was sources
| of Jesse actually doing any of this stuff (which he
| didn't but I am willing to be proven wrong) .. but no.
| Those links are all just internal info dumps and almost
| nothing of the accusations on the page is sourced .. at
| all.
| fresh_broccoli wrote:
| Right, the website lists the accusations with links, but
| the links seem unrelated to the accusations.
|
| For example, I'd expect "criticizing expert medical and
| scientific consensus on healthcare for our minors" to
| link to some kind of article describing what Jesse Singal
| said about this topic and why it's incorrect, but instead
| it links to a general page about "healthcare providers
| serving gender diverse youth" that doesn't even mention
| anything about the accused person or their writings.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| How dare they write for... _The Atlantic_!
|
| Why are some people like this?
| dmbche wrote:
| That's the one thing you pick up?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I had never heard of Singal but I went ahead and started
| following him. Thanks!
| dmbche wrote:
| How exciting
| gedy wrote:
| > unless you think anything less than a full throated
| endorsement
|
| That is absolutely how some of the more "passionate"
| activist types have been for the past 5+ years on a number
| of social topics, not just trans.
| snapetom wrote:
| There was an article about this issue on techcrunch
| yesterday, and it linked to a long discussion on Bluesky
| about whether "clanker" was a slur that should be banned. JC.
| What a waste of time by some people.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >if applied to everyone, would lean to a ban of probably 85%
|
| I'm not American but looking in from the outside i can't
| figure out anything 85% of you would agree on there right
| now.
| jerrya wrote:
| Dolly Parton!
| o11c wrote:
| "People who disagree with me should not be allowed to
| speak" is definitely up there.
| LexiMax wrote:
| The _actual_ trouble with Bluesky is that it's just a retread
| of Twitter with only a few minor tweaks, right down to the
| inevitable moderation and governance problems from shoving
| every user into a single shared social space and having a
| single centralized point of failure.
|
| It's not 2012 anymore, and the modern mainstream social media
| ecosystem has turned into an utter disaster area. If you're
| going to do social media in the 2020's, you need something
| better, not the same tired ideas and empty promises about
| "We'll do it _right_ this time around, honest."
|
| Mastodon, for all its fault, at the very least was truly and
| demonstrably decentralized.
| lkey wrote:
| Facebook and Twitter no longer bother with moderation, do you
| think the experience on those platforms is better or worse
| than 5 years ago?
|
| It used to be common sense to immediately ban creeps of all
| stripes, especially the obvious ones. Singal certainly
| qualifies. Putting aside the super annoying 'just asking
| questions' vitriol that he publishes to national papers, his
| pdf-file chat log stuff alone would warrant an instant perma
| from me without a second thought.
|
| Speaking to your broader point about the 'death' of a
| platform. The people that made bsky what it is now (good and
| ill) are precisely the people you are blaming for its
| downfall, which is weird. Normally when you run a business
| you want your users to remain so that you might profit.
|
| Relatedly, I'm very very tired of the 4chan/crypto/ai gas-
| leak that has enshittified everything, aren't you?
|
| I've seen bsky users chat casually about their r _pe and
| death-threat ratio before and after leaving twitter, and for
| that alone, I would choose the 'threat lite' platform for as
| long as it remained so.
|
| > "The question is not whether those views are right, it's
| whether those are mainstream."
|
| I don't agree that this is the question, nor do I agree with
| the your unsupported number. This isn't an election, and
| popularism is a coward's appeal. Was the Gaza genocide not a
| genocide until the polls caught up with what we could all see
| was happening?
|
| I don't even think you believe what your wrote. If the
| 'views' in question are truly shared by _85%!* of a
| population that _never agrees on anything_ , then surely
| there's no problem with sharing them on this forum? A
| guarantee of 85% positive karma is awaiting you if you just
| speak your truth. It's the Trump era, and you can say the
| 'r-word' and the 't-slur' now. What was actually holding you
| back?
| dlivingston wrote:
| > This isn't an election, and popularism is a coward's
| appeal.
|
| These platforms were supposed to be the "digital town
| square". Implicit in that is the idea that anyone and
| everyone can discuss and share their ideas. When would you
| remove someone from an actual town square? Only when they
| are being extremely disruptive or violent.
|
| Further, it cannot be a "town square" if half the town
| isn't allowed to be there.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Facebook and Twitter no longer bother with moderation, do
| you think the experience on those platforms is better or
| worse than 5 years ago?
|
| I haven't used FB in years but Twitter is very (stupidly
| and incoherently, but very actively) moderated. Unless you
| are being technical and saying that Twitter doesn't exist
| and so isn't moderated, and the moderated thing is X,
| but...
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| > Facebook and Twitter no longer bother with moderation, do
| you think the experience on those platforms is better or
| worse than 5 years ago? > It used to be common sense to
| immediately ban creeps of all stripes, especially the
| obvious ones. Singal certainly qualifies.
|
| The experience on these platforms is somewhat better than
| it was five years ago, because the people making moderation
| decisions for these platforms have been largely replaced by
| people who are less prone to banning people because someone
| who dislikes their political speech labels them a creep.
| There are still serious moderation issues on these
| platforms, but yeah compared to five years ago there is
| somewhat more freedom to speak without risking getting
| arbitrarily banned, and a wider range of topics being
| talked about.
|
| > Putting aside the super annoying 'just asking questions'
| vitriol that he publishes to national papers, his pdf-file
| chat log stuff alone would warrant an instant perma from me
| without a second thought.
|
| You should be able to perma-ban anyone you want from your
| own feed for any reason. If it is possible for you to make
| the platform ban Singal (or anyone else) in a way that
| affects anyone other than ypu, then that platform is not
| meaningfully decentralized. I've occasionally read articles
| by Singal but I don't follow his output closely and don't
| have a strong opinion about him one way or the other. I
| should still be able to read what he posts even if you
| think it is not worth reading.
|
| > Relatedly, I'm very very tired of the 4chan/crypto/ai
| gas-leak that has enshittified everything, aren't you?
|
| I don't think 4chan, cryptocurrency, or AI have much to do
| with each other, nor that online discussion related to to
| these phenomena in some way universally constitutes
| enshittification or not.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Bluesky has a problem of its user base demanding purity,
| and it will 100% be the death of it.
|
| Yup.
|
| As someone who describes themselves as Leftist, I wanted to
| enjoy Blue Sky, but the purity tests are _insane_.
|
| To give a concrete example, I was called a Nazi for owning a
| Tesla Model 3. The fact that I bought the car 6 years ago,
| long before Elon Musk made his hard-right turn, was
| irrelevant. They literally expected me to sell the car and
| take a huge financial loss (Since I need a car and would then
| need to buy a new one, and the trade-in value of my M3P is
| shit) just to virtue signal.
| Palomides wrote:
| "he didn't technically break any rules so I won't ban him" has
| been the death of _many_ social spaces
|
| good moderation requires discretion and keeping the users
| happy, not slavish legalism
| tptacek wrote:
| That's an argument that proves _a lot_ , given that it kind
| of implies that a quorum of customers can simply vote other
| customers off the island.
| Palomides wrote:
| well... yes? does that not happen regularly on many
| platforms?
|
| even on a free service, users have some tiny leverage; they
| can vote with their feet
| tptacek wrote:
| Not on any viable investor-funded ones, nope.
| Palomides wrote:
| even billion dollar corporations like cloudflare (with a
| "free speech absolutist" CEO) absolutely do drop
| unpopular customers due to user pressure
| greazy wrote:
| This can backfire. eg Twitch moderators.
|
| Discretion should be rarely used. For everything else, create
| a set of rules and stick to them.
| spooon wrote:
| Good on Jay Graber that she's sticking to a reasoned set of
| principles instead of bowing down to the braying mob.
| Palomides wrote:
| if you call your userbase a braying mob, you're not going
| to have a userbase for long
| spooon wrote:
| It's a small fraction of the userbase that is up in arms
| about this, who want special exceptions made for their
| demands.
| astrange wrote:
| He /doesn't use the service at all/. I agree that is a way of
| not breaking its rules.
| skybrian wrote:
| There seem to be a lot of people on Bluesky who don't think
| it's wrong to post reply-spam about their favorite grievances
| even when it's entirely off topic. Complaining about Singal is
| an example. It's the sort of thing that would be downvoted to
| oblivion on Hacker News.
|
| For the most part they're fairly easy to avoid, but reading the
| replies for popular accounts is a minefield.
|
| This is sort of like email in the old days before the spam
| filters got good. Bluesky needs better reply-spam filters. Or
| maybe they already exist somewhere, but it needs better ways to
| _find_ the good filters?
|
| If that gets fixed then maybe it has a chance to become a more
| welcoming place.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I don't understand how you can "ban" anyone from distributed
| social media. The idea seems... outdated?
|
| I mean, I get "ignoring" someone so they don't show up when you
| log into whatever instance you're in, whether it's the AT
| Protocol or ActivityPub, but like... if someone somehow decides
| to do work on top of one of these protocols and extend it to
| allow people to basically comment on things that a victim user
| doesn't want to allow an antagonist to take part in, I mean,
| aren't you just like effectively putting fingers in your ears
| while someone in another room talks about you?
|
| I don't see how, without centralization, you can say to the
| world, "Hey, here's my content, interact with it," and then also
| say, "Oh you, over there, you can't participate in this thing
| that I am doing."
|
| Like, depending on the shape of the graph, that doesn't make any
| sense. You effectively cannot do that without just creating a
| bunch of silos that are non-cooperative.
|
| Bam, you've reinvented centralization with extra steps.
| pfraze wrote:
| Applications on atproto run moderation as a kind of filtering
| layer on top of the user data. A ban in that scenario is fully
| filtering their account out of the application.
| snuxoll wrote:
| I think there's a lot of misconceptions about atproto; unlike
| ActivityPub where your home server runs both the application
| as well as stores your data, atproto is build in the concept
| that "applications" like BlueSky store your data inside your
| PDS (Personal Data Store), which may or may not be hosted
| somewhere else.
|
| While anybody can host their own PDS, the public bsky.app
| instance can and will "block" users by preventing their login
| and not pulling data from the PDS of the banned user or
| showing it in feeds.
|
| Since, to date, the BlueSky "AppView" (the service backend
| itself that handles aggregating data, generating feeds, etc.)
| continues to be closed, being banned from the public instance
| is effectively being banned from the network. The data model
| (lexicon) is well documented and somebody else is free to
| write their own, but, for now, BlueSky is just as centralized
| as other platforms even if you can store your data elsewhere.
| pfraze wrote:
| It's not closed. There just isn't the needed ecosystem of
| other providers.
| whistlestop wrote:
| https://bsky.app/profile/why.bsky.team/post/3m2fjnh5hpc2f
|
| Would projects like this one, which pulls only a subset of
| Bluesky data straight from the firehose, and can be
| processed as the end user pleases, help mitigate this
| limitation?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Note that the "banning controversy" is that they're not banning
| enough people for having entirely mainstream political opinions,
| and mostly targets journalists. Or let's be more specific: mostly
| targets people who don't think that men can identify into being
| victims of misogyny.
|
| This is entirely separate from anything that they say on the
| platform. It's not about rules violations, it's about _being_
| somebody that the people who organized mass reporting brigades
| hate.
|
| If Bluesky was actually decentralized, and people had to opt-in
| to the blocklists they preferred, and no one was _banned_ (i.e.
| the minimum to be what it was supposed to be) they would be even
| more enraged. Their goal is to _silence_ people, not to avoid
| listening to people. They pretended to leave twitter because
| twitter _stopped_ silencing people, and they moved to a platform
| whose moderation was built around mass reporting being able to
| silence people. Now they just visit twitter to troll and spray
| invective at people, and plan this from Bluesky.
|
| The network won't work until these extremely mentally ill,
| narcissistic voices are marginalized, and can't do any more
| damage to other people's conversations (a problem that twitter
| also has.) It's far more important than decentralization for
| resilience. People should be able to ban themselves from other
| users, not to ban users.
|
| On both networks, it makes it virtually impossible for minorities
| (like black Americans) to speak to each other without a flood of
| freaks rolling in to interrupt. Interrupting conversations is the
| real anti-social behavior. The point is supposed to enable and
| encourage conversation.
|
| Thank God Bluesky management is getting tired of it (because it
| is their doom; they're turning into 4chan, and 4chan does not
| make the money they want to make.) They need to _improve_ on
| twitter moderation, not be even worse.
|
| edit: this site also has the same infection (the entire internet
| is subjected to the aesthetic of extremely suburban, extremely
| gaming, extremely racist, extremely misogynist, extremely
| perverted middle-class white men), and I posted full well knowing
| this. But at least you have to listen to me here, because the
| moderation has not been outsourced to the worst users. I
| certainly love some of you, but some of you need to hear the word
| no without flying into a rage.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Do you mean "misandry?"
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Do you mean "misandry?"
|
| No, OP is being transphobic and referring to trans women as
| men:
|
| > Note that the "banning controversy" is that they're not
| banning enough people for having entirely mainstream
| political opinions, and mostly targets journalists. Or let's
| be more specific: mostly targets people who don't think that
| men can identify into being victims of misogyny.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| While I can't read OP's mind, there _is_ a problem with bad
| actors abusing pro-trans policies to benefit themselves.
| One of the most outrageous examples is the _literal_
| Nazi[1] who started identifying as female after being
| sentenced. _Some_ gatekeeping is required here.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r4zrg35vlo
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Oh, I see.
| Covzire wrote:
| I call it the "unaccounted-for activist problem". Certain
| people will, without fail, like clockwork, if given the chance,
| ban or "silence" a LOT of other people from anywhere and
| everywhere that they can whether a bus, a playground, a public
| or private space, or a social media site. You have to account
| for these kinds of people, and you have to see through their
| bullshit of "speech is violence", no violence is violence and
| speech is speech and any platform that confuses the two will
| either fail or enslave everyone to many other lies.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > On both networks, it makes it virtually impossible for
| minorities (like black Americans) to speak to each other
| without a flood of freaks rolling in to interrupt. Interrupting
| conversations is the real anti-social behavior. The point is
| supposed to enable and encourage conversation.
|
| Despite all its flaws, reddit got this mostly right. Having
| explicit sub-communities allows groups of people to keep to
| themselves if they want to and ban anyone who's not welcome.
| spooon wrote:
| Well said. Very much agree with your edit too.
| trallnag wrote:
| How is it possible that this tiny minority of "[things I don't
| like] men" has such an impact on your bubble of the internet?
| It should be tiny compared to hundreds of millions of men in
| Africa, China, India, etc.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > However, as time has gone by, Bluesky's traffic has declined
| (X's has as well) and some of its users have become increasingly
| upset at its moderation decisions, including allowing U.S. Vice
| President J.D. Vance and anti-trans writer Jesse Singal to remain
| as users of the platform.
|
| So the expectation is that the _vice president of the United
| States_ should be banned because he says stuff people don 't
| like? What's the benefit of ignoring reality like this? He's not
| going to magically disappear if Bluesky bans him - indeed he'll
| remain VP with all the power that entails.
|
| This is worse than performative activism, it's like some kind of
| political denialism. You can't change reality by pretending it
| doesn't exist.
| packetlost wrote:
| When speech is violence, allowing someone a platform is akin to
| being party to and supporting <insert -ism>.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Speech is not violence, guilt by association is undemocratic,
| and this hypothesis of de-platforming as a tactic to limit
| uncouth ideas was thoroughly tested over the last ~15 years
| and demonstrably shown to be false: Trump, Alex Jones, and
| many others were banned across platforms. One of these people
| now sits in the White House, in part _because of backlash_ to
| the deplatforming of him and others with similar politics.
| astrange wrote:
| It cost $44B to get him unbanned so I think that's actually
| pretty good evidence it worked.
|
| > One of these people now sits in the White House, in part
| because of backlash to the deplatforming of him and others
| with similar politics.
|
| It's not because of anything. Cause and effect doesn't
| apply to the brain of the median American voter. They live
| in a world of pure imagination, in this case that they
| thought prices would go back down to 2016 levels.
| ogou wrote:
| Speech is not violence.
| oxonia wrote:
| I think packetlost knows that. I think the argument being
| put forward was that "if you are the kind of person that
| thinks that speech is violence, then you would believe that
| allowing someone a platform..."
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Don't be naive.
| a_shovel wrote:
| All social media moderation is "banning people for saying stuff
| people don't like". Most people don't like e.g. spam, or death
| threats, or racism, so social media offer communication
| platforms where those kinds of speech are restricted, with
| varying degrees of effort and success. The goal of banning
| Vance would be to have a social media site that moderates
| against the kinds of things Vance says.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This makes some sense if Vance was a minor, fringe figure.
| But he was on a ticket voted for by ~50% of US voters. This
| is effectively saying that the goal is to have a social media
| site where half the country is not welcome.
|
| The problem with that is two-fold. One, it neuters any
| political impact - you're effectively driving away the very
| voters you need to convince. And two, it creates an echo
| chamber that distorts reality because everywhere you look
| people are agreeing with you. Then 2028 rolls around and
| you're shocked that "the bad guys" won again.
| Devasta wrote:
| > This is effectively saying that the goal is to have a
| social media site where half the country is not welcome.
|
| That seems like a good goal. I want to chat with friends
| about formula one or whatever, not have to have everything
| messed up by some weirdo who always wants to debate whether
| minorities have rights.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I don't use bluesky and was never really on Twitter that much
| if at all but does bluesky not have an ignore feature? If you
| don't want to hear from Vance can you not just "ignore" /
| "unfollow" them? Seems like a pretty basic feature of a
| communication platform... I think even fark.com allows users to
| ignore other user's comments.
| nomel wrote:
| Yes, blocking is fully supported. The goal isn't to ignore,
| it's to silence/de-platform.
| jrsdav wrote:
| I hate to be the one to say it, but...this is why we can't have
| nice things.
|
| At a certain scale, social media tilts humanity in one direction.
| We can't seem to escape the trajectory of our very nature; it
| will outcompete any complex system we devise to outwit it.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Maybe its just a filtering problem. I wished musk would have
| thought about creating semi-permeable bubbles for every milieu,
| when he bought twitter, where you can switch between feel-good
| and controversy filters as you wish. Hard lock outs / bans only
| lead to more polarization.
| astrange wrote:
| He kind of did this by making it so you can see the posts of
| people who block you. Of course, he did this because he's so
| annoying everyone blocked him.
| derbOac wrote:
| I much prefer Bluesky to X but have had a hunch this was coming
| due to everything I've read about the practicality of running a
| Bluesky protocol service.
|
| I still think there's room for something better technically.
| Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos but I've
| never quite gotten used to the server dependency experience.
|
| Nostr appeals to me technically but every time I'm on it seems
| swamped completely by discussion of cryptocurrency.
|
| I guess to me it feels like one of these catch 22 (necessary but
| not sufficient?) problems where you have to have the right
| technical base for a platform, which seems doable, but even then
| you have to have the right userbase also.
| Simulacra wrote:
| "..systems that reward outrage only make the problem worse."
|
| I think this is what a lot of social media has become,
| particularly as people isolate themselves to only those sources
| and feeds they agree with.
| layer8 wrote:
| I upvoted you, and at the time I believe that the core of the
| problem is having ranking and reaction mechanisms.
| beardedetim wrote:
| This is the reason I left the "main" social media and what
| keeps me from engaging too much with Reddit/HN or any of the
| other new hotness like Mast, nostr, BlueSky, etc: it's just
| rage baiting or karma farming
| this_user wrote:
| The problem with a lot of social media is that a lot of it
| allows you to either directly or indirectly monetise
| engagement. That creates an strong incentive to create outrage.
|
| This has also been discussed in the context of FB's feed where
| optimising for engagement has inadvertently led to a situation
| where users are constantly being bombarded with ragebait.
| ogou wrote:
| This is not a general problem with moderation there, centralized
| or decentralized. This particular issue is specific to a large
| group of people that don't like Jesse Singal and have been trying
| to get him removed from Bluesky. It hasn't worked and that group
| is trying all kinds of way to reframe the narrative to get
| leverage. All the padding this post adds around that is
| neotechnical jargon slop.
| wmf wrote:
| The more interesting part of the article, completely unrelated
| to Jesse Singal, is that Bluesky bans also apply to Blacksky
| because Blacksky can't afford to run their own moderation.
| ogou wrote:
| According to the post, it's a usability issue of the open
| source app layer and not some failure of moderation
| principles. "Blacksky is dependent on Bluesky's application
| server to give users a fast experience, which also means that
| it is dependent on Bluesky's labeling system and its
| moderation choices." Also, Singal's name is mentioned
| multiple times throughout the the article in irrelevant
| contexts. I still see the agenda here and I've seen this
| tactic before.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > But not everyone is looking forward to the idea: "I'd go back
| to Usenet before I went back to Mastodon," wrote Bluesky user
| Count Von Horse Knuckler. "I do not need people yelling at me for
| not putting cat pictures behind trigger warnings or unwanted
| Linux advice."
|
| Cat pictures need a trigger warning? Wonder what the triggering
| effect is there?
|
| I can see Linux advice though: kill, mount, etc.
| diogocp wrote:
| > I can see Linux advice though: kill, mount, etc.
|
| And cat. Some people are triggered by useless use of cat.
| isodev wrote:
| The technology powering Bluesky is "inspired by" but never
| interoperable with existing standards or similar reference
| architectures. This is one's first queue that the direction is
| not being open.
|
| And beyond the technical details, how can a corporation commit to
| transparency and non-bias when their very funding depends on it?
| Google already provided us with the most popular example of how
| this is not possible ("don't be evil" by an ad company).
| astrange wrote:
| Bluesky is a PBC, which isn't a corporation exactly. Or rather
| it's one designed to respond to the fears of people who think
| corporations are required to maximize profits.
| mh- wrote:
| I believe a PBC designation is somewhat meaningless; _OpenAI_
| was a PBC until a few months ago.
| fsflover wrote:
| See also:
|
| Are we decentralized yet? (arewedecentralizedyet.online)
|
| 492 points by Bogdanp 38 days ago | 283 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45077291
| tptacek wrote:
| You know what they say, when you're explaining that you don't
| really wish death upon the CEO of the niche social network
| platform on which you depend, you're losing.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I'd argue that people lose the moment they sign up for an
| account, deluding themselves into believing that the problem
| with the last nth iteration of the same thing isn't them.
|
| The format is the problem. The medium is the problem. Poorly
| moderated groups of anonymous people voidscreaming as some
| "this will be monetized once we hit critical mass" exercise is
| the problem.
|
| I believe that eventually people will sort ourselves out into
| the masses who never really understand or accept that, and
| those of us who choose not to subject ourselves to something so
| obviously poisonous.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| 100% it doesn't make any sense to expect different behavior
| out of the same format just because you make slightly
| different promises about what the rules will be
|
| Bluesky has been drama central since the beginning,
| consisting mostly of people who thought Twitter wasn't
| censoring enough (or censoring the wrong people), the free
| speech crowd came later and, well, tested the waters and
| found transphobic speech was in fact not free, and that
| despite distributed promises, the town wasn't big enough for
| the two parties to coexist
| LexiMax wrote:
| I'll actually go further and say that the biggest of those
| problems, the original sin, is the idea of shoving everybody
| into a single shared social space. The other problems follow
| from that starting point.
| hitekker wrote:
| That's a good observation about position. For those curious,
| the original (and arguably representative) Bluesky user said:
|
| > "I want to be extremely clear I was not making a death threat
| or inciting violence," he told me, saying that he had sent 12
| separate examples of other people posting the same Kirk image
| as a reaction meme. "I don't wish death on Jay, I wish for her
| and her team to grow a conscience. I disagree with the decision
| and how it was handled. My account was taken down without any
| explanation for almost a full day in what can only be viewed as
| a retroactive ban."
| flutas wrote:
| which is leaving out the full context, they specificly cited
| the alt-text of the image, not the image itself.
|
| The email, verbatim read:
|
| > A reply with an image; alt text reads:
|
| > 'Charlie Kirk sitting in a white T-shirt that says
| "Freedom." A negative consequence follows!
|
| [0]: https://bsky.app/profile/aliafonzy.blacksky.app/post/3m2
| jm7u...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Still the whole premise of blue sky being decentralized was
| that when one server bans you you could pop over to another
| community that doesn't consider memes a death threat, so this
| is a good test of how centralized bluesky remains (very)
| naldb wrote:
| How about when you don't say what you mean clearly but instead
| you write it smugly like you're sneering at the audience of
| your comment?
| TinkersW wrote:
| From the article I got the impression Singal was some far right
| loon, but after looking it up.. nope, he is a liberal that said
| something mildly out of sync with trans activists opinions...
| tptacek wrote:
| No good will come of a fulsome litigation of Singal but it's
| fair to say that he doesn't go out of his way to avoid these
| controversies. Sort of like Fredrik deBoer, he's one of
| journalism's answers to the concept of edgelordery. People who
| vocally wish he was less influential would do well to remember
| how much juice they've been giving him.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| > he doesn't go out of his way to avoid these controversies.
|
| Science journalist covering the science of perhaps the most
| salient social issue of our time?
|
| Don't get me wrong -- there are other really important
| stories which aren't being covered as well as they should be,
| but Singal's beat would seem to be at least as important
| as... most anything linked from HN on a daily basis.
|
| > People who vocally wish he was less influential would do
| well to remember how much juice they've been giving him.
|
| I totally agree. By turning Singal into a boogeyman he almost
| certainly isn't, people are only feeding his social and
| journalistic capital. Singal is just someone who disagrees
| with you (in that classically liberal 90s American sense).
| Efforts to cancel or ban him have made some look like they
| don't have actual arguments to contribute.
|
| That's how Singal makes those with opposing views look
| ridiculous.
| carynh wrote:
| > he's one of journalism's answers to the concept of
| edgelordery
|
| either the term "edgelord" means something very different
| from what it did 10ish years ago or you have a very
| misinformed understanding about how timid Jesse approaches
| online conflict. I haven't seen him initiate any form of edgy
| engagement in forever .. maybe ever.
| tptacek wrote:
| I followed him long after he was declared persona non
| grata, sort of uncomfortably agreeing that he was getting
| dogpiled unfairly (I don't think I agree with him about
| much, but at the time, it didn't seem like he was saying
| anything more than a stddev from the media consensus). I
| don't follow him anymore, after it became very clear that
| he's steering right into personal conflicts with people,
| and reciprocating all the weird grudges. I've also had
| reason to listen to his podcast within the past year (they
| did an episode covering our local library system), and feel
| comfortable with the decision to yuck out of paying
| attention to him.
|
| (Not over the library coverage itself, just over ancillary
| stuff I heard on the podcast).
|
| I'll put it this way: I had reason to tip our local
| politics Facebook off to the episode he did, and when I did
| that, I wrote a paragraph long disclaimer about what he's
| like. Not because I have any animus towards Singal, but
| because I didn't want anybody to associate me with some of
| what he's said.
|
| So yeah, I'd push back on this.
|
| Singal is a lot less interesting a subject (aren't we all
| exhausted of debating Singal at this point) than whether
| Bluesky is going to be a viable mainstream competitor to
| Twitter, and he's interesting to me only in what this drama
| says about that question.
| rtpg wrote:
| The guy's whole bit is arguing from some sort of vague
| sociological perspective against gender affirming care. And
| pretending that (in the United States of America of all places)
| teens can just walk up to their doctors super easily and get
| surgery done somehow.
|
| He presents this issue as a sort of parental-rights-ignoring
| epidemic, but if you dig into the reality of it all there's a
| hell of a lot of parental consent, a hell of a lot of checks
| within the medical establishment about whether to do these
| things, and of course the person themselves being involved.
|
| Singal is a fellow traveler to people who defend conversion
| therapy, which is a thing where _kids are sent to a camp to be
| trained into a different sexuality_. This is shit that's
| basically banned in many places in Europe, because many believe
| that those camps are basically child abuse.
|
| So you're looking at a person who has a lot of distrust for the
| medical establishment, falsely presents the reality of the
| thing to make it sound like people are walking in for free top
| surgery the moment they get into middle school[0], and this is
| stuff that is being cited to add restrictions on other things.
|
| There's this deeply personal thing that a very small segment of
| the population is trying to deal with. There are medical
| professionals that have some help (including just of the
| "talking" variety), some degree of acceptance in pockets of
| society. And this sort of thing means that people can have a
| little bit of dignity. And the medical establishment is trying
| to treat people!
|
| Meanwhile this guy is using his voice to just spread fear
| around all of this, misrepresenting even really basic things.
| And to what goal? Again, parental rights are part of the
| equation in reality! And we're not talking about a sports thing
| here. So who is Singal out there fighting for?
|
| I kind of don't care what this guy's opinion is on, like, taxes
| and the role of government in the rest of life. He's going out
| there writing this kind of stuff so consistently that he's
| known for it. And I have a very hard time understanding who he
| is the voice for, except for people who are just against trans
| people existing in public society.
|
| I don't care about him being banned off of bluesky or whatever.
| I just want people here to have at least some access to medical
| care (in various forms) if doctors and parents agree. And his
| stuff is helping to provide ammo to roll this access back at a
| legislative level. Serious people should know that what he says
| doesn't hold up on examination. In the same way that people
| "know" that Trump just says things that sound emotionally right
| to him in the moment to prove a point.
|
| [0]: I'm exagerating here but again, in the USA access to
| medical treatment is not easy!
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| > And pretending that (in the United States of America of all
| places) teens can just walk up to their doctors super easily
| and get surgery done somehow.
|
| You should see some of the background evidence on this. NY
| Times did a podcast series not long ago, which covered the
| controversy, called The Protocol:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-
| protocol/id1817731...
|
| It was about how the so called Dutch Protocol re: gender
| affirming care first came to the US, and how long-ish
| psychological evaluation times were often truncated because
| of how far patients had to travel in the US. Then the lid
| flew off when such care moved to California.
|
| > Singal is a fellow traveler to people who defend conversion
| therapy
|
| Yikes. One doesn't usually expect people to use the actual
| language of McCarthy-ites.
|
| > So who is Singal out there fighting for?
|
| The kids? It's really not crazy to believe that the children,
| perhaps not given adequate care, could be wrong, or even
| socially influenced (like everything else in a teenager's
| life).
|
| > He's going out there writing this kind of stuff so
| consistently that he's known for it. And I have a very hard
| time understanding who he is the voice for, except for people
| who are just against trans people existing in public society.
|
| It's a new treatment and how it is practiced here in the US
| is the very Q he is examining. I'm not saying he's right, but
| I do feel better if there is someone with a critical eye
| looking at new treatment methods.
| rtpg wrote:
| I am going to re-insist on the idea that parental consent
| is going to play a big role in practice in US healthcare
| practices, if only for financial reasons. I have very
| little patience for the idea that access is easy.
|
| Perhaps there is a debate to be had on treatment protocols,
| but I generally feel like, for something that covers such a
| small segment of the population, the default is to err
| towards letting that debate happen in professional circles.
| grigio wrote:
| nostr protocol seems a better alternative
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting. Reddit by contrast is moderation decentralized
| system centralized.
| viccis wrote:
| This reminds me of when some NFTs were stolen and OpenSea
| delisted them. Like yeah, they still exist out there on the
| blockchain, but when a central authority can gatekeep peoples'
| ability to view them, how decentralized are they actually?
|
| Moxie Marlinspike wrote a good essay [1] about "Web3" that
| highlighted a few of these kinds of issues, and I think it
| applies to anything like Bluesky claiming to be "decentralized"
| when it's prohibitively difficult to access it any way other than
| the biggest central service.
|
| 1: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is like grasping at a boogeyman web3 straw to make a
| point. More heat than light, smells a bit of karma farming.
|
| Concretely, Bluesky has an AppView that takes posts from relays
| and PDSes, subscribes to moderation labelers, filters posts
| that have labels which have certain labels, then displays them
| in the browser. Blacksky is the first independent
| implementation of relays and other large components of the
| system.
|
| The default Bluesky AppView subscribes to the Bluesky
| Moderation labeler which cannot be disabled. No independent
| AppView has been made which can turn off the Bluesky Moderation
| labeler. That's all.
|
| I have my concerns over the network, namely DAUs decreasing and
| community politics, but the tech is largely a matter of time I
| feel. It's true that the ActivityPub ecosystem has a lot more
| federation happening but ActivityPub is a much older system
| (which itself derives from OStatus which originated in
| 2012-ish.) Mastodon was released in 2016. It's bound to be more
| federated than Bluesky.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| How can people laugh and make meme at someone else murder ? Like
| the guy, hate him, but there is something that used to be shared
| amongst humans, it's that you respect the dead.
|
| That's just empathy. Seems like it's gone to the toilet in some
| part of the usa or maybe it's just weirdos on internet. Either
| case it's despicable.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| User and content bans are a great way to make money right now as
| partisans are super gullible
|
| If a platform doesn't ban someone: short it
|
| If a platform does ban someone: also short it
|
| requires a publicly traded platform like Netflix or Disney+ as
| significant pieces of the parent company's revenue
| jrm4 wrote:
| Mastodon is the right model. I keep saying this and I keep being
| surprised that it isn't more obvious to most. It's the right
| model because it's essentially the same model as email. Yes,
| there is TONS of "human" work to be done to change people's minds
| on this, but STRUCTURALLY it's the only one that can handle
| things correctly.
|
| I _always_ found what Bluesky was "optimizing" for to be a
| stupid goal, and inherently a bad idea -- namely "the ability to
| keep your everything permanent."
|
| That's EXACTLY what brings MORE danger to centralization. I get
| that losing an identity on a thing sucks BUT WE'VE ALREADY DEALT
| WITH THIS WITH EMAIL, and more over the ability to
| lose/destroy/start over -- like with email -- is a FEATURE as
| much as it is a bug.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I definitely have my concerns over the decreasing DAUs on the
| platform and the crabby, toxic community that has come to really
| define Bluesky these days but I don't think the tech is the
| problem. For folks who keep pointing at Mastodon, remember that
| ActivityPub's predecessor OStatus originates from 2012 and
| Mastodon itself was kicked off in 2016. Mastodon is 9 years old
| at this point. Bluesky is only a few years old.
|
| In AP land, for better or for worse microblogging is dominated by
| the ad-hoc set of standards that Mastodon pioneered, and too much
| of the community just treats AP as "HTTP+REST JSON APIs for
| social" and ignores the semantic components that AP can use to
| interoperate.
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