Bluesky are openly welcoming, verifying and hosting accounts of prominent far right politicians.
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Hello feditips.
I am a moderator at this instance you see me posting from, app.wafrn.net.
We have optional (read: opt-in) bluesky integration and we have just banned JD Vance
Yes, we can do that. Because yes, Bluesky is just a bit more open than you make it out to be
That's a bridge, not actual federation.
And blocking just Vance is not defederation. It does nothing to isolate the instance that is hosting him and platforming him. If you want to defederate, you need to block the entire bsky.social instance.
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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)
@FediTips (I know it's blue-ticked, but…) that very good, serious and trustworthy looking handle of "jd-vance-1.bsky.app"
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@FediTips (I know it's blue-ticked, but…) that very good, serious and trustworthy looking handle of "jd-vance-1.bsky.app"
Yeah, they briefly blocked him because they thought it was fake.
As soon as Bluesky found out it was really Vance they restored and verified the account, and then emailed Fox News to say they welcome him.
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That's a bridge, not actual federation.
And blocking just Vance is not defederation. It does nothing to isolate the instance that is hosting him and platforming him. If you want to defederate, you need to block the entire bsky.social instance.
No, we are not a bridge, here read our source code:
https://github.com/gabboman/wafrn/tree/main/packages/backend/atproto
We ingest the firehose directly, we interact with bluesky directly. You can even view bluesky accounts like, say, bluesky's own directly: https://app.wafrn.net/blog/@bsky.app
Notice how there's no bridgy in there? You can check my profile on the bluesky side at https://bsky.app/profile/alexia.at.app.wafrn.net too ← Notice how there's no bridgy here either?
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That's a fair point and I did wonder for a while whether or not to link directly to the account.
I posted the link because it proves he's there and active (he had briefly been blocked because BS thought it was fake), it proves he's hosted by Bluesky and it proves he's been verified by Bluesky.
The link is a smoking gun of Bluesky's behaviour, so it seemed on balance best to post it.
@FediTips @Eh__tweet If you don’t want to link directly to the account, you can link to the ClearSky page, which also gives you things like “How many people/Lists are blocking the account”
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No, we are not a bridge, here read our source code:
https://github.com/gabboman/wafrn/tree/main/packages/backend/atproto
We ingest the firehose directly, we interact with bluesky directly. You can even view bluesky accounts like, say, bluesky's own directly: https://app.wafrn.net/blog/@bsky.app
Notice how there's no bridgy in there? You can check my profile on the bluesky side at https://bsky.app/profile/alexia.at.app.wafrn.net too ← Notice how there's no bridgy here either?
If you are federating, are you now going to defederate bsky.social?
Or are you okay with them platforming fascists?
Are you going to take a stand on this or not?
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If you are federating, are you now going to defederate bsky.social?
Or are you okay with them platforming fascists?
Are you going to take a stand on this or not?
Well to answer that we must first look at how
bsky.socialis just the auto-assigned domains for new usersthe underlying servers are all hosted at subdomains of
.bsky.network, luckily mary-ext / mary.my.id has a neat lil' GitHub repo that collects them all in one place: https://github.com/mary-ext/atproto-scraping?tab=readme-ov-file#bluesky-hosted-serversNow if we wanna specifically exclude content from the PDS that JD Vance is on, all I'd have to do is look up which one of these PDS instances vance's account is, nuke it from our database and stop ingesting content from that PDS through the firehose
For reference, we can use https://pdsls.dev to look up JD's server and determine it to be
https://woodear.us-west.host.bsky.network/problem is, unlike how fedi tends to work, the underlying PDS instances are assigned automatically; Vance didn't choose that PDS, it was chosen for him. 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
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, it doesn't quite make as much sense to block the server vance is currently on, it makes much more sense to block the account and associated
did:plcidentity ← This makes sure that even IF vance moves his account (although I'd doubt it) to another PDS, he will stay blocked on our infra.
#bluesky -
Well to answer that we must first look at how
bsky.socialis just the auto-assigned domains for new usersthe underlying servers are all hosted at subdomains of
.bsky.network, luckily mary-ext / mary.my.id has a neat lil' GitHub repo that collects them all in one place: https://github.com/mary-ext/atproto-scraping?tab=readme-ov-file#bluesky-hosted-serversNow if we wanna specifically exclude content from the PDS that JD Vance is on, all I'd have to do is look up which one of these PDS instances vance's account is, nuke it from our database and stop ingesting content from that PDS through the firehose
For reference, we can use https://pdsls.dev to look up JD's server and determine it to be
https://woodear.us-west.host.bsky.network/problem is, unlike how fedi tends to work, the underlying PDS instances are assigned automatically; Vance didn't choose that PDS, it was chosen for him. 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
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, it doesn't quite make as much sense to block the server vance is currently on, it makes much more sense to block the account and associated
did:plcidentity ← This makes sure that even IF vance moves his account (although I'd doubt it) to another PDS, he will stay blocked on our infra.
#bluesky"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 you are federating, are you now going to defederate bsky.social?
Or are you okay with them platforming fascists?
Are you going to take a stand on this or not?
We take care of moderation ok ishly.
The model there is different than here same way they federate in a different way than us
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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.
"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.
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We take care of moderation ok ishly.
The model there is different than here same way they federate in a different way than us
The model there prevents defederation then?
Or is it not really federated after all?
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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.
@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?
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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)
@FediTips @mastodonmigration Please avoid personal biases. I believe that this account is not the right place for that. Spread your opinions on a personal account and boost it with this one, but do not spread personal biases in the name of Fedi.tips.
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If you are federating, are you now going to defederate bsky.social?
Or are you okay with them platforming fascists?
Are you going to take a stand on this or not?
Your insistence on believing there is a single bsky.social instance is commendable, for sure
Multiple people have explained to you over time how there is no singular bsky.social instance (as they have an entirely different technical model) and how blocking the server is less effective than deplatforming the user.
Because again, account moves are more powerful on Bluesky than they are on fedi.
Maybe you should do just a bit more research into how ATProto works
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@FediTips @mastodonmigration Please avoid personal biases. I believe that this account is not the right place for that. Spread your opinions on a personal account and boost it with this one, but do not spread personal biases in the name of Fedi.tips.
Being against fascism is a duty of humanity, not a personal bias.
Fascism is innately wrong, like murder or rape.
If you are okay with fascism, please unfollow me.
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Your insistence on believing there is a single bsky.social instance is commendable, for sure
Multiple people have explained to you over time how there is no singular bsky.social instance (as they have an entirely different technical model) and how blocking the server is less effective than deplatforming the user.
Because again, account moves are more powerful on Bluesky than they are on fedi.
Maybe you should do just a bit more research into how ATProto works
You're not really selling AT Proto if this is your approach.
Maybe you should take a bit more action against fascism instead of hiding behind technicalities and promoting something designed for corporations above individuals?
Using compulsory relays is hardly the way to democratise social networks.
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@FediTips @Eh__tweet If you don’t want to link directly to the account, you can link to the ClearSky page, which also gives you things like “How many people/Lists are blocking the account”
I don't think most people would be familiar with that site, or what it represents?
I'm trying to make sure people see the full impact of platforming a fascist.
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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?
