User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
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Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
#2From what I have seen, the "solution" to moderation troubles in decentralized solutions has mostly always been... more centralization.
Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
#3The 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.
Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
#4All roads lead back to centralization lol.
Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
#5From what I have seen, the "solution" to moderation troubles in decentralized solutions has mostly always been... more centralization.
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.
Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
#6[flagged]
Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
#7> 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."
Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
#8From what I have seen, the "solution" to moderation troubles in decentralized solutions has mostly always been... more centralization.
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.
Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
#9I 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.
Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality
#10[flagged]
When you say extremism and calls for violence, what do you mean specifically?