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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

#351

Post by extraduder_ire »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #139
viccis wrote: post #122

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…

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…

Moderation labels are applied at the client level, not at appview level. Forks of the official client (e.g. deer.social) allow you to completely remove the official moderation labeller.

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

#352

Post by extraduder_ire »

rsynnott wrote: post #332

This leaves the biggest question, why they're broken on Blacksky, too, unanswered. My general understanding was that this should _not_ happen.

Their CEO, Rudy, explained it in a thread here: https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:w4xbfzo7kqfes5zb7...

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

#353

Post by sigmar »

bad_username wrote: post #315
sigmar wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

So you can frame anyone you disagree with as "intolerant", and then you are free to be intolerant to them. Also I can be intolerant to you, because you are intolerant (to people you think are intolerant). This is neither smart nor moral. This is logically inconsistent and breeds conflict almost by definition.

>Also I can be intolerant to you, because you are intolerant (to people you think are intolerant).

It's never been more clear to me that you didn't click the link

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

#354

Post by extraduder_ire »

throwawaygmbno wrote: post #259

Some US states have started trying to ban or require ID for Bluesky. Is it possible to self host on your own hardware that allows somebody to get around that. If not the decentralization doesn't seem real.

You can circumvent that without self-hosting anything. (though self-hosting your PDS is one way to avoid all but the block on Mississippi)

https://gist.github.com/mary-ext/6e27b24a83838202908808ad528...

Their official website/app are compliant with those laws when unmodified.

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

#355

Post by NaomiLehman »

swed420 wrote: post #261
slg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always comes back to the userbase. I don't know how many times technologists need to learn the lesson that normal people simply don't care about ideological technical principles like decentralization and often actually prefer the benefits of centralized systems like ease of use and typically stronger moderation. And when it comes to social media, businesses are naturally going to end up prioritizing the desires of…

> It always comes back to the userbase. I don't know how many times technologists need to learn the lesson that normal people simply don't care about ideological technical principles like decentralization and often actually prefer the benefits of centralized systems like ease of use and typically stronger moderation. The choice need not be limited to the familiar corporate hellscape vs decentralized usability nightma…

I think more important than usability is the lack of moderation on some websites

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

#356

Post by extraduder_ire »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #279
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…

Twitter banned the president of the United States in 2020.

I thought that was 2021. Did it happen earlier too?

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

#357

Post by mpalmer »

jrm4 wrote: post #285
mpalmer wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep saying this and I keep being surprised that it isn't more obvious to most. Well I read your explanation, and it's still not obvious. Nor do I appreciate the implication that anyone who disagrees with you is missing something obvious. Not the best choice, rhetorically.

Meh. Handle a little spiciness and participate in the actual topic of discussion, or don't.

Oh I did, did you miss it? You confusingly compared both systems to email, and capitalized a bunch of words which offers a reading experience not unlike walking barefoot on gravel, and failed to explain why email is actually a good thing.

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

#358

Post by TimorousBestie »

Manuel_D wrote: post #313
TimorousBestie wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I welcome any novel, high-quality scientific research on better treatments for gender dysphoric children. But, in the States at least, there is no longer any funding for that. They cut all of it by grepping the NIH and NSF databases for “gender”, more or less. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/nih-terminating-active-researc... What there soon will be in the States, assuming SCOTUS overturns the Colorado ban this term, is…

There has been quality research published recently on treating gender dysphoria. For instance, A 2020 study on treating GD with hormone therapy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08039488.2019.1... Somewhat unique among studies on pediatric gender affirming hormone therapy, this study had a control group that wasn't prescribed blockers. The group on blockers fared no better than the control group. This is…

I’m not interested paying to read your study. The bulk of your comment is a non sequitur that conflates “novel, high-quality scientific research” with a single N=58 study that may very well be high-quality, but in any case does not propose a novel course of treatment. It has always been the case that many gender dysphoric children do not receive puberty blockers.

You conflate the European change in medical policy, which still permits the use of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria, with American legislative bans that do not permit that. “Not routinely prescribed” is logically distinct from “never prescribed.”

Finally, you misrepresent conversion therapy. “Exploring ways to become more comfortable in one's natural body” is simply an inaccurate description of both conversion therapy as practiced in the past and “gender exploration therapy” as practiced today.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10018052/

> Proponents of gender-exploratory therapy acknowledge that some consider it a form of conversion practice, paradoxically resenting the suggestion while opposing bans on conversion practices on account that it would prohibit their approach. As for critiques of gender-exploratory therapy, they are presented as evidence of trans health care’s ideological capture. Yet a close comparison of gender-exploratory therapy and conversion practices reveals many conceptual and narrative similarities. How proponents talk about gender-exploratory therapy is nearly identical to how individuals offering conversion practices targeting sexual orientation frame their own work. Despite the language of exploration, gender-exploratory therapy shares more with interrogation, if not inquisition.

Well, anyway. I cannot quote the entire article here.

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

#359

Post by extraduder_ire »

snuxoll wrote: post #264
pfraze wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not closed. There just isn't the needed ecosystem of other providers.

What are you talking about? Yes, it is closed - their PDS implementation and clients are open, but the actual service that runs on bsky.app is, at present, not open source. Without the backend that handles all of the XRPC endpoints [1] being available, BlueSky still effectively maintains centralized control over their part of the 'atmosphere'. Somebody could, of course, make an open source implementation of the app.b…

The endpoint mentioned in those docs you linked ( https://public.api.bsky.app/ ) points to this repo: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto

What is missing?

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

#360

Post by extraduder_ire »

viraptor wrote: post #298
rdtsc wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a bit random though. Are mastodon people big on trigger warnings? I never signed up for it. Heck, I never signed up for twitter or bluesky either. For mastodon I considered it, but telling people "ha, ha, I am writing toots" was a little too silly, even for me.

Not on trigger warnings, but on content warnings on general. It folds the post by default, but shows the warning description so it's useful for lots of reason. For example "USpol" is often used as common CW but not specifically TW. But it could be "boob", or "giant spider", or "furry", or "food photo", or "super long post" whatever else you think people may react to with "I wish I didn't have to see that while scroll…

On bluesky, the self-applied user moderation is abused in a similar way to hide spoilers.

If you post an image, you can tick the "Adult Content" box and it has that label applied to it. It's the only way to do that currently.

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