Bluesky are openly welcoming, verifying and hosting accounts of prominent far right politicians.
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"Now you are right in the observation that Bluesky PBLLC is choosing to platform vance, jesse singal and others; Their moderation is very akin to centrist beliefs, and as such quite weak in protecting especially those most vulnerable."
"It's just that from a technical standpoint with how ATProto works,"
Maybe you shouldn't be using ATProto then?
It's designed to give large organisations more control than small ones or individuals, and you chickening out over this is an example.
@FediTips @alexia This is an unnecessary focus on defederation imo: the line to be drawn is at an individual instance's discretion, not for you to specify when you aren't even a user of that instance.
In this case, they've assessed that there's sufficiently many innocent / good accounts which they want to maintain relationships with on bsky (or, equivalently, mastosoc) that it's worth the moderation overhead of banning the individual accounts instead to protect their users - something which is also a viable choice between ActivityPub instances, albeit rarely chosen.
Some instances are irredeemable: those whose purpose and entire user base is complicit in spreading hate and vitriol; that does not currently, ime, describe bsky overall, whose users have pushed back against Singal, Vance, and hell, even bullied Adobe off their platform (something fedi, in any other context, would usually be celebrating).
Freedom of association exists and should be one of fedi's greatest strengths. Would I agree with their assessment myself? Idk. But my opinion doesn't matter here as I'm not a user of their instance, so I'm unaffected. If I was affected, then my opinion would matter as to whether I defederated from them or not -- but again, thus far, their moderation has meant I've been unaffected by similar actors, so...
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@FediTips @alexia This is an unnecessary focus on defederation imo: the line to be drawn is at an individual instance's discretion, not for you to specify when you aren't even a user of that instance.
In this case, they've assessed that there's sufficiently many innocent / good accounts which they want to maintain relationships with on bsky (or, equivalently, mastosoc) that it's worth the moderation overhead of banning the individual accounts instead to protect their users - something which is also a viable choice between ActivityPub instances, albeit rarely chosen.
Some instances are irredeemable: those whose purpose and entire user base is complicit in spreading hate and vitriol; that does not currently, ime, describe bsky overall, whose users have pushed back against Singal, Vance, and hell, even bullied Adobe off their platform (something fedi, in any other context, would usually be celebrating).
Freedom of association exists and should be one of fedi's greatest strengths. Would I agree with their assessment myself? Idk. But my opinion doesn't matter here as I'm not a user of their instance, so I'm unaffected. If I was affected, then my opinion would matter as to whether I defederated from them or not -- but again, thus far, their moderation has meant I've been unaffected by similar actors, so...
"the line to be drawn is at an individual instance's discretion, not for you to specify when you aren't even a user of that instance."
No.
This is absolutely the wrong approach to fascism and hatred. Once you leave it entirely up to individual discretion, you are opening up society to 1930s scenarios where hatred is mainstreamed.
I've tried to give an example here:
https://social.chinwag.org/@FediThing/112581263140051643
Vulnerable minorities will suffer and die if you use an individiual block approach.
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would you like a one to one chat explaining why concepts from here can not apply to bluesky or you rather keep being smug in public?
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"the line to be drawn is at an individual instance's discretion, not for you to specify when you aren't even a user of that instance."
No.
This is absolutely the wrong approach to fascism and hatred. Once you leave it entirely up to individual discretion, you are opening up society to 1930s scenarios where hatred is mainstreamed.
I've tried to give an example here:
https://social.chinwag.org/@FediThing/112581263140051643
Vulnerable minorities will suffer and die if you use an individiual block approach.
It's vital that we drive fascists out of all mainstream discourse. They are not participating in good faith, they are participating in order to radicalise people to do acts of the worst kind of hatred and violence.
They don't care if individuals block them, because all they care about are those who don't block them. Those who don't block them can be radicalised into spreading hatred themselves, which radicalises even more people.
Fascism is a virus, it thrives on publicity.
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dont get me wrong I also love being a smug cunt. its fucking adictive.
But seriously, the federation architecture is VERY different.
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would you like a one to one chat explaining why concepts from here can not apply to bluesky or you rather keep being smug in public?
I'm not being fucking smug, I'm being fucking angry and terrified.
People like Vance are threatening very vulnerable minorities who are shit scared of what will happen to them. People are living in fear and terror. If you're not even addressing this then you are the one who needs to do more research.
No one should have anything to do with anyone who welcomes people like Vance.
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dont get me wrong I also love being a smug cunt. its fucking adictive.
But seriously, the federation architecture is VERY different.
Do you love being scared that fascists are going to beat you up or kill you?
Because that's the effect Vance has on vast chunks of vulnerable minorities.
Maybe you could stop joking about this and address this seriously.
I'm not being smug about Bluesky, I'm being scared and angry. Can you have some empathy for that?
I don't give a shit about tech, I give a shit about people who are scared. If tech exists, it should be to protect such people.
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"As such straight up blocking this PDS from being indexed has about the same impact as blocking a large Mastodon instance like mastodon.social or something along those lines would have: We would hit lots of people that have nothing to do with vance, or are even actively blocking and shaming him"
...in other words, too big to defederate?
That's a copout answer, shame on you.
If mastodon.social was hosting Vance, other instances would be defederating them including mine.
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If Fosstodon hosted Vance, you can bet it would be defederated by people who are on the fence.
I would personally defederate any instance that hosted Vance, including mastodon.social.
I've also spent lots of time trying to discourage large instances even existing, I run a site at https://fedi.garden and account at @FediGarden to promote good smaller instances.
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@gabboman @FediTips @alexia listen, I don’t want to get embroiled in another argument, but let me provide my insights: I think Gabbo is allowed to have his instance and run it how he wants. Bluesky federation is currently opt-in, and I trust it’ll be completely removed if the situation gets much worse. secondly, some things aren’t worth arguing over. just block and move on. I like both of you, so please heed my advice.
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Bluesky are openly welcoming, verifying and hosting accounts of prominent far right politicians. Trump's VP Vance is now on Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/jd-vance-1.bsky.social
"We welcome the Vice President to the conversation on Bluesky" (Bluesky in their email to Fox News)
More
: Bluesky is centralised, run by a for-profit corporation, its CEO has blockchain background, it is partly owned by VCs & Blockchain Capital.Bluesky are going down exactly the same Nazi Bar path as Twitter.
(via @mastodonmigration)
YIKES
For me it would be such a day of JOY if i can ban hammer JD Vance from Mastodon
And yes, I would him right away, he's a fascist and those are not allowed on my platforms
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@FediTips @McWabbit Bluesky invited somebody for a discussion. Discussions are good. Discussions help us to shape or rethink an opinion. They did not invite him to post propaganda (although it will be interesting to see, how Bluesky reacts, if he does)
If you want a fediverse, which blocks discussions, because you don't like the other person's (extreme) opinion.... Is then bluesky the problem? Or maybe it might be you?
@dideldum @FediTips @McWabbit
Get lost with that "tolerate the intolerant". How often do people have to point out the tolerance paradox? How often do people be reminded that right extremists don't care what your intentions are as long as they gain attention and power from it? Western societies atre past the time when we had enough freedom to discuss with those that have "different opinions". We've done that and look how well we dismantled them: they sit in every government. -
@gabboman @FediTips @alexia listen, I don’t want to get embroiled in another argument, but let me provide my insights: I think Gabbo is allowed to have his instance and run it how he wants. Bluesky federation is currently opt-in, and I trust it’ll be completely removed if the situation gets much worse. secondly, some things aren’t worth arguing over. just block and move on. I like both of you, so please heed my advice.
@GroupNebula563 @gabboman @alexia
"secondly, some things aren’t worth arguing over"
Fascism is worth arguing over.
Calling me a "smug cunt" for trying to warn against fascism is just... there's no words. What are you thinking?
Do you think this is some kind of childish tech vs tech dispute like Mac vs Windows?
I run these accounts purely to try to stop the spread of fascism and hatred. Any tech that helps in that fight, I promote. Any tech that hinders that fight, I warn about.
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@GroupNebula563 @gabboman @alexia
"secondly, some things aren’t worth arguing over"
Fascism is worth arguing over.
Calling me a "smug cunt" for trying to warn against fascism is just... there's no words. What are you thinking?
Do you think this is some kind of childish tech vs tech dispute like Mac vs Windows?
I run these accounts purely to try to stop the spread of fascism and hatred. Any tech that helps in that fight, I promote. Any tech that hinders that fight, I warn about.
@GroupNebula563 @gabboman @alexia
If you think I've got a tech wrong that's fine to discuss, I do discuss things regularly and I often message developers to find out more. But hateful name calling and patronising and avoiding mentioning the Nazi elephant in the room is not the way to do it.
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If Vance joined a Fediverse instance, and the instance admin didn't kick him off, other instances would defederate that instance.
But this isn't possible on Bluesky because it's centralised.
On Bluesky you can subscribe to a Maga block list. It's a seamless experience and automatically blocked him for me before I heard he was there.
Here on the fediverse I encounter more homophobia than on Bluesky and fewer people speak up about it sadly.
Here I'll stumble upon admins of an instance defending a moderator who blocks LGBTQ hashtags and quotes homophobes in their profile because of 'free speech'.
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On Bluesky you can subscribe to a Maga block list. It's a seamless experience and automatically blocked him for me before I heard he was there.
Here on the fediverse I encounter more homophobia than on Bluesky and fewer people speak up about it sadly.
Here I'll stumble upon admins of an instance defending a moderator who blocks LGBTQ hashtags and quotes homophobes in their profile because of 'free speech'.
It's not enough to block these yourself.
Fascists don't care about people who block them.
Fascists care about people who don't block them, because they can radicalise them into believing and spreading hateful lies about vulnerable minorities.
I've tried to give an example here: https://social.chinwag.org/@FediThing/112581263140051643
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YIKES
For me it would be such a day of JOY if i can ban hammer JD Vance from Mastodon
And yes, I would him right away, he's a fascist and those are not allowed on my platforms
@stux @FediTips @mastodonmigration I mean, very pedantically speaking, Trump is on Mastodon, no? As in, truth dot social is a mastodon instance with the branding replaced?
But I don't think it federates at all, and if it did, it would be very high in the fediblock lists.
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@stux @FediTips @mastodonmigration I mean, very pedantically speaking, Trump is on Mastodon, no? As in, truth dot social is a mastodon instance with the branding replaced?
But I don't think it federates at all, and if it did, it would be very high in the fediblock lists.
@ainmosni @stux @mastodonmigration
Trump's media org stole Mastodon's software code in order to build their own centralised platform.
I wouldn't personally count them as part of Mastodon.
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Bluesky are openly welcoming, verifying and hosting accounts of prominent far right politicians. Trump's VP Vance is now on Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/jd-vance-1.bsky.social
"We welcome the Vice President to the conversation on Bluesky" (Bluesky in their email to Fox News)
More
: Bluesky is centralised, run by a for-profit corporation, its CEO has blockchain background, it is partly owned by VCs & Blockchain Capital.Bluesky are going down exactly the same Nazi Bar path as Twitter.
(via @mastodonmigration)
p.s. It isn't enough to say that individuals can just block stuff they don't like.
Fascists don't care about people who block them, they only care about those who don't block them.
Fascists use platforms to try to radicalise anyone who will listen. Fascists spread hateful lies about vulnerable minorities, and if someone believes those lies they may follow the fascist and spread lies too.
I've tried to explain this in a way that hopefully anyone can relate to:
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@daemon_nova @alexia @FediTips
Precisely. I saw a number of their moderators dismissing and gas lighting the concerns of LGBTQ people in my feed
I don't see that on Bluesky. In fact when there is a trans /homophobic user there, they are dealt with swiftly by the community. Here there are often crickets, or when marginalized groups bring up concerns there is much defensiveness.
