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

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181–190 of 410 posts

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

#181
I just don’t see why Joe Public will ever care about decentralisation as a concept.

We tend to hand wring about principles within the tech sphere, when the bulk of people just want a place that won’t make them feel immediately (longer term doesn’t matter) crappy when they use it, whatever that means for them. That tends towards centralisation because decentralised services have awful moderation and tend to create an even stronger strain of groupthink.

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

#182
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> 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...

X then. By unmoderated I mean it's a cess-pool of pay-boosted groypers, crypto ad accounts, ai accounts, sex accounts, pure scams, ai generated underage girlfriends, and actual CSAM, that go mostly ignored if they shell out 8 USD.

I'm sure some actual humans manage to still get banned from time to time, but you can't be telling me that things haven't changed for the worse right? Do they even have a 'trust and safety' team anymore?

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

#183

"..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.

Our children and grandchildren can and should judge us for what we devolved into in our pursuit of Internet Points.

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

#184
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you link to some of those analyses? I'm sure that Hacker News would love to delve into the arguments instead of trying to downvote or flag your posts into non-visibility because they disagree with you.

The most comprehensive “Singal does bad journalism” montages come from the left-wing media outlets and leftist bloggers that he’s targeted over the years. The typical HN commenter is going to immediately gloss those accounts as partisan hyperbole. And why not? It’s purely academic for some of them, and internally worldview-challenging for others. But if you really are honestly curious and unbiased, M. K. Anderson wro…

Thanks. I'm well acquainted with Hacker News' proclivities for mob censorship, but I didn't know a ton about this specific incident.

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

#185
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted you, and at the time I believe that the core of the problem is having ranking and reaction mechanisms.

But don't you have to have some sort of ranking system for discoverability?

That's a self-inflicted wound caused by the need for massive scale. Focused user communities don't need to rely on crowds to assist in moderation.

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

#186

I just don’t see why Joe Public will ever care about decentralisation as a concept. We tend to hand wring about principles within the tech sphere, when the bulk of people just want a place that won’t make them feel immediately (longer term doesn’t matter) crappy when they use it, whatever that means for them. That tends towards centralisation because decentralised services have awful moderation and tend to create an…

I think Bluesky exists to demonstrate that people want the features that come with centralization without the oppressive platform lock-in. If Bluesky's moderation, TOS, UI, default feeds, etc. are intolerable to you, then you should be free to move your content and your network to an app with different moderation, TOS, feeds, etc.

Bluesky isn't marketing itself as a decentralized platform because it's not. It's an opinionated view of a decentralized network, and others are free to use differently opinionated views or make their own.

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

#187
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like grasping at a boogeyman web3 straw to make a point. 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 Blues…

This just reads like not a response to the problem, but instead a description of technical implementations. Concretely, nobody is going to subscribe to anything else in bsky but the default stack, anything else is unlikely to ever gain much adoption, and thus federation is basically meaningless and a technical implementation detail for how they wanted to manage their stuff.

In fact, I'd argue that blue sky encouraged this by nerfing federation from the beginning. Rather than adopting ActivityPub, they made their own boutique protocol and put up barriers for third parties to use that protocol.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This is an insane thing to ban in the terms of service, and it is in and of itself a good reason to avoid using BlueSky. I would not want to rely on any service to communicate that made it against the rules to post a screenshot of a pub…

> This is an insane thing to ban in the terms of service, and it is in and of itself a good reason to avoid using BlueSky.

That’s a perfectly reasonable opinion to have. The post you were responding to was not about the merits of the rule, it is about uneven enforcement of it.

That rule would be a reason to avoid BlueSky if you are not Jesse Singal, because you could get banned for breaking it. If you are Jesse Singal it is not a reason to avoid BlueSky, because that rule does not exist for you.

The strange thing about this is that Jay and the moderation team are sympathetic to your point. They don’t think that evading blocks (or doxxing) should always be grounds for taking action against an account. For at least one user they ignore all instances of it

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

#189
post #49

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.

> 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.

Wouldn't the remaining 15% be the section in a bubble?

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't like Vance at all, but him being on the same social media platform as you isn't the same thing as him showing up uninvited to your formula one conversation.

Sure, but banning him sends a signal to people who do like them that they also aren't welcome.
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