Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

plus.flux.community

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 410 posts

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#61

Post by tptacek »

Palomides wrote: post #46
mustache_kimono wrote: post #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 pi…

"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

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.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#62

Post by greazy »

Palomides wrote: post #46
mustache_kimono wrote: post #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 pi…

"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

This can backfire. eg Twitch moderators.

Discretion should be rarely used. For everything else, create a set of rules and stick to them.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#63

Post by monocularvision »

huhkerrf wrote: post #24
mustache_kimono wrote: post #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 pi…

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.

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”.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#64

Post by wmf »

ogou wrote: post #28

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.

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.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#65

Post by chasd00 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #12

> 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…

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.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#66

Post by tptacek »

TinkersW wrote: post #60

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...

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.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#67

Post by torben-friis »

kstrauser wrote: post #34
torben-friis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't be serious. I don't use neither X nor bluesky, but I did get an X account for a while so I could check the links in random news or conversations, and half the posts had unrelated Nazi messages just below. Not 'oh that's right wing so he's a Nazi' comments, I mean literal swastikas and kkk uniforms.

That's been my experience, too. I signed up with an account so I could follow some people, and my default timeline has been full of some pretty extreme stuff. For example, there were a shocking number of posts against the proposed digital ID system because it's being advocated for by "Larry Ellison, a Jew". That's a verbatim quote, BTW. Uh, excuse me? There are plenty of valid reasons to dislike Larry Ellison, but hi…

Yup, that’s the kind of thing I was talking about.

Curiously I was immediately downvoted, which (assuming most people here aren’t that extreme) makes me think people relatively into the network aren’t familiar with the current state for a newish user.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#68

Post by whistlestop »

monocularvision wrote: post #63
huhkerrf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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”.

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.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#69

Post by like_any_other »

whistlestop wrote: post #53
greekrich92 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why do you believe that description applies to Singal? His work is well-researched, grounded and reasonable. Perhaps his journalistic output conflicts with your beliefs, but that's no reason to cast false aspersions on him.

> Why do you believe that description applies to Singal? His work is well-researched, grounded and reasonable.

To answer your question: because truth is no defense. How many times have you seen some statement accused of being something-ist, instead of simply false? How often did in further arguing the factuality of the original statement not even come up?

Post reply on HN