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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

#331

Post by blackqueeriroh »

cogman10 wrote: post #187
hobs wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ActivityPub is a bad protocol.

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

#333

Post by belorn »

jrflowers wrote: post #308
sph wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who defines intolerance though? What if you call me intolerant because I do not like your favourite programming language, and have dared criticize it - is that OK? It's a recursive paradox: an intolerant person cannot define what intolerance is, but that's what often happens in reality.

There are quite a few solutions to the paradox of tolerance. One of which was even articulated by the guy that coined the term, which the wiki link covers. I also recommend https://medium.com/extra-extra/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-prec...

The article mostly redefine the question about tolerance as being a strategy for peace, one which will be given up when war is unavoidable. It not so much a solution to the problem of tolerance and more of a description of the motivations behind the who deploy it.

As an effect it also reject the concept of an intolerant person, as there are only people with different views about what constitutes an acceptable state of peace and what represent real and present danger.

If the left view the right as jeopardizing safety, and the right view the left as jeopardizing safety, then existential conflict is inevitable and tolerance as a strategy is dropped by both.

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

#334

Post by veeti »

sigmar wrote: post #283
LeroyRaz wrote: post #276

I don't understand how the removing of right wing users is described as a necessary good to create a safe and inclusive space, while the removal of left wing users is decried as censorship. If you dismiss people who have genuine concerns about things as bigoted, you yourself are being bigoted! It is as though people don't understand the definition of the word.

[flagged]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...

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

#335

Post by afiori »

mariusor wrote: post #317
danpalmer wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos I'm not sure that's true. It's important to note that these bans are from the Bluesky App View (one component of the infra), and that these users can continue to post under their identity (if they own it, which they can), and users on App Views that haven't banned these users could continue to follow them. None of that works with Mastodon. An admin bans you from t…

That is true, but due to the smaller size and larger number of instances, it's easier to find a place where you won't get randomly banned without an admin taking the time to talk to you about what's wrong. My instance has about 1K active people on it and I've always been able to have a dialogue with the moderators and sysop. When things have gone wrong I had the opportunity to correct them. I think there's a great va…

But this is completely not decentralized at the user level (especially IIUC mastodon users cannot export/import their data)

Bluesky is trying to build something as decentralized as email where still few providers dominate the market and most use few common ip/domain blacklists.

Yet it is one of the most decentralized protocols on the internet.

I a not saying Bluesky is a masterpiece but I think it is naive to hold it to a higher standard than email as a protocol.

If it fails due to little adoption then it is a fail, if it succeed there is a possibility of it becoming a good decentralized protocol

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

#336

Post by jrflowers »

belorn wrote: post #333
jrflowers wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few solutions to the paradox of tolerance. One of which was even articulated by the guy that coined the term, which the wiki link covers. I also recommend https://medium.com/extra-extra/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-prec...

The article mostly redefine the question about tolerance as being a strategy for peace, one which will be given up when war is unavoidable. It not so much a solution to the problem of tolerance and more of a description of the motivations behind the who deploy it. As an effect it also reject the concept of an intolerant person, as there are only people with different views about what constitutes an acceptable state o…

That is a good point. If we analyze this article called “Tolerance Isn’t A Moral Precept” with the understanding that it is arguing under the assertion that it actually is a moral precept and then imagine in our minds an enormous number of people that have no concept of “clear and present danger” at all, it is very troublesome indeed. In a vein that has very similar relevance to the article and discussion at hand, the fact that there is a Popemobile in Cars 2 means that the failed 1981 assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II didn’t just theoretically happen in the Cars universe, it objectively happened in the Cars universe. Now, it is clear that we do not know if that pope was man or Car but we must posit tha

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

#337

Post by mariusor »

afiori wrote: post #335
mariusor wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but due to the smaller size and larger number of instances, it's easier to find a place where you won't get randomly banned without an admin taking the time to talk to you about what's wrong. My instance has about 1K active people on it and I've always been able to have a dialogue with the moderators and sysop. When things have gone wrong I had the opportunity to correct them. I think there's a great va…

But this is completely not decentralized at the user level (especially IIUC mastodon users cannot export/import their data) Bluesky is trying to build something as decentralized as email where still few providers dominate the market and most use few common ip/domain blacklists. Yet it is one of the most decentralized protocols on the internet. I a not saying Bluesky is a masterpiece but I think it is naive to hold it…

I'm not sure I can follow your logic of having smaller communities not being decentralized "at user level" whatever you mean by that. And you hyperfocus on Mastodon - which granted is correct as we're talking about mass adoption and where average users might go - but it is not the only project in the fediverse which is one of the main advantages over BlueSky. (And Mastodon does offer account move between instances, despite indeed missing porting over the existing posts)

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

#338

Post by belorn »

Manuel_D wrote: post #240
rtpg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

What is Singal misrepresenting? His writings on the subject mostly serve to highlight just how poor the evidence around gender affirming pediatric care is. And he's hardly alone in this conclusion. The UK, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Norway, and Finland have all stopped routine prescription of hormone blockers to children. Most countries never allowed it in the first place.

This highlight the importance to let scientists and doctors do their research and focusing on the findings. Politicians and parents have opinions, but in the end we as a society has chosen to use science and evidence to determine when to apply medical care and have the government fund both science and medical care.

Looking at Sweden, it was alarms from the medical and research side that resulted in stopping the prescription of hormone blockers to children. The historical record has demonstrated poor treatment results and high rate of harm, with doctors reporting problems of politicians and parents pressuring them into doing treatments that they themselves do not think will be to the benefit of the patient. Opponents has described the act of removing treatments as transphobic, and politicians from both side joined in, but very little is now focused on the science or data.

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

#339

Post by LikesPwsh »

esperent wrote: post #322
LikesPwsh wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The users could reject exchanges and trade entirely on-chain, but that's expensive/complicated/risky. It is a serious concern for cryptocurrency that most users don't even get the touted benefits because of reliance on exchanges.

> The users could... Any response that starts with "users could..." or "people could..." is pure wishful thinking and not worth wasting your time on. People don't work this way. En masse they will flow to the path of least resistance, and no amount of wishful thinking will ever change that.

To clarify, I don't see users ever leaving centralised exchanges.

That means classic claims like "bitcoin is scarce" or "transactions don't require anyone's permission" or "transactions can't be censored" or "nobody can seize your bitcoin" are generally false in practice.

Even if a person only trades via bags of cash in dark alleyways and never touches exchanges, they're affected by all this "paper" bitcoin.

If they need to touch an exchange at any point, even if holding in a cold wallet 99% of the time, that exchange can still take 100% of their tokens.

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

#340

Post by LikesPwsh »

bryceneal wrote: post #270
LikesPwsh wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The users could reject exchanges and trade entirely on-chain, but that's expensive/complicated/risky. It is a serious concern for cryptocurrency that most users don't even get the touted benefits because of reliance on exchanges.

OpenSea is very nearly "entirely on-chain" if I'm understanding your point correctly. It's powered by smart contracts. It's not custodial like Coinbase or Robinhood. Users custody their assets in their own wallets. They trade by submitting transactions directly from their wallet to a smart contract address on-chain which facilitates fulfillment of the trade. The code for these smart contracts is open source and verif…

Anyone can generate an NFT, including IP you don't own or existing collections.

Hundreds of wallets might contain a the same monkey picture (or same hash and IPFS link to nitpick).

What matters is that Opensea says you have the "real" one.

Their database is the real list of who owns what, the blockchain is a distraction.

You can see it in their anti-theft systems. NFTs get hidden and blocked from trading after a police report, even if it's still there on the chain.

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