The description of Singal in the article is borderline whitewashing, not surprising of a major news outlet speaking about a transphobe. He spreads disinformation frequently. The "activity off the...
Exemplary
The description of Singal in the article is borderline whitewashing, not surprising of a major news outlet speaking about a transphobe. He spreads disinformation frequently. The "activity off the platform" that BlueSky has declined to ban him for is directing his Twitter followers to harass BlueSky users that disagree with him.
I see that as a jurisdictional hack to avoid having to pass judgement on what’s happening on the entire Internet. (And Twitter in particular.) It may prove unviable, but they’re going to try to...
I see that as a jurisdictional hack to avoid having to pass judgement on what’s happening on the entire Internet. (And Twitter in particular.) It may prove unviable, but they’re going to try to avoid increasing the scope of what their moderators have to investigate, since they’re already scrambling to ramp up moderation.
One thing I think this controversy shows is the limits of decentralized moderation. Users can already block Singal and any alternative moderation service can block him too. It’s not going to keep Bluesky itself from having to make a call about what to do with the official moderation service that everyone uses.
Also, journalists sometimes limit scope too. To really cover what Singal and his allies and opponents are doing, the reporter would have to do a deeper investigation to figure out what’s true, and it seems they decided not to do that, just reporting on what they could find easily. They might not have known what to look for in Singal’s Twitter feed?
Since it’s easy to do, they did link to an article that Singal wrote complaining that Bluesky users are sending him death threats and attempting to dox him. They posted the wrong address, so it would be a “wrong house” attack if anyone acted on it. Apparently Bluesky took a while to block posts with the address. Maybe they hadn’t done it before and had to write code in a hurry?
Meanwhile, I’m avoiding passing judgment because I don’t really know what to believe and I’m not willing to do enough investigation myself to figure it out. I don’t want want to get into a “contempt court” discussion on Tildes where we argue about whether Singal is worthy of contempt. That would be no fun for anyone.
I’d rather outsource that. An in-depth investigation by a neutral journalist I trust would be a real service, and this reporter declined to do that, because the article is really about Bluesky. A pity, but understandable.
I understand (I'm not sure if I agree or disagree) with BlueSky's decision not to ban him for things that didn't happen on BlueSky, but it seemed irresponsible to me that the article mentioned...
I understand (I'm not sure if I agree or disagree) with BlueSky's decision not to ban him for things that didn't happen on BlueSky, but it seemed irresponsible to me that the article mentioned that what he was doing wasn't on BlueSky without mentioning that it would directly affect BlueSky users on BlueSky. It's materially different to ask BlueSky to ban him for something on Twitter that you could avoid by not using Twitter, versus something that affects your experience of using BlueSky. It may still be the right decision for the platform not to ban him, but the request in the former situation is petty and unreasonable and in the latter it makes complete sense.
As far as the light in which they showed Singal, I think they should have either said less or more. Their current description makes him sound reasonable and potentially credible. They could have described him without making him sound credible or contemptible. If they weren't going to do the research, that's what they should have done.
Banning Singal on Bluesky doesn’t keep him from posting messages to his followers on Twitter, though, so it would be a performative action that doesn’t directly solve the problem. To actually fix...
Banning Singal on Bluesky doesn’t keep him from posting messages to his followers on Twitter, though, so it would be a performative action that doesn’t directly solve the problem. To actually fix it, they need to moderate what Singal’s followers do on Bluesky.
(Substitute anyone else who has accounts on multiple services - I don’t actually know what Singal or his followers did.)
Fair enough, I'm convinced that it's reasonable not to ban him from BlueSky (for that. Spreading disinformation is another question.) My criticism of the article stands, though.
Fair enough, I'm convinced that it's reasonable not to ban him from BlueSky (for that. Spreading disinformation is another question.)
I think a lot of things X refugees like about BlueSky aren't intentional, but a result of that platform being young. I expect that to change over time. Someday I will be downloading a script from...
I think a lot of things X refugees like about BlueSky aren't intentional, but a result of that platform being young. I expect that to change over time. Someday I will be downloading a script from GitHub to delete all of my posts from BlueSky as I did with X. :-)
Deleting posts appears easy enough, but it’s kind of limited on Bluesky. Here is a feed of deleted BlueSky posts. It doesn’t keep them, but anyone else could set up a feed that does. (Worse,...
Deleting posts appears easy enough, but it’s kind of limited on Bluesky. Here is a feed of deleted BlueSky posts. It doesn’t keep them, but anyone else could set up a feed that does.
Do you mean stopping someone from reposting you or taking reposts out of your following feed? (Skeet is the alternate to post, it's controversial among some but I prefer it)
Do you mean stopping someone from reposting you or taking reposts out of your following feed?
(Skeet is the alternate to post, it's controversial among some but I prefer it)
Oh, I actually have that turned off and forgot about it! Oops. There's something else I'd like to see, though. There are some people who retweet things I like and others who don't. So I'd rather...
Oh, I actually have that turned off and forgot about it! Oops.
There's something else I'd like to see, though. There are some people who retweet things I like and others who don't. So I'd rather it be something that could be set per account that I follow, like on Mastodon.
Do you think the BlueSky crowd are the type of people who go to the fediverse if BlueSky became twitterish or do you think they would flee to whatever the current twitter-like clone is then?
Do you think the BlueSky crowd are the type of people who go to the fediverse if BlueSky became twitterish or do you think they would flee to whatever the current twitter-like clone is then?
This is one of the thoughts I've had, I'm pretty sure the majority of bsky users are simply previous twitter users, and not necessarily technically savvy ones that even know or care that such a...
This is one of the thoughts I've had, I'm pretty sure the majority of bsky users are simply previous twitter users, and not necessarily technically savvy ones that even know or care that such a protocol exists. They probably don't think of bsky as anything other than "new twitter" and couldn't be bothered to consider jumping the hurdles of the fediverse. If ATProto/bsky somehow eventually solve those hurdles and make it seamless and completely transparent/easy-to-understand to the "normal"/non-tech crowd, then maybe.
But to me it's this weird hybrid right now of built with some federation in mind while simultaneously being its own centralized platform, where the federation is sort-of a "future promise" and something a large portion of the user-base may never encounter or bother with changing, and so it kinda becomes de-facto centralized regardless of what its capabilities are
I've joined and quit twice. I don't think it's for me. There are things that I like about it in contrast to prior platforms, but my belief is ultimately once bsky needs to pursue monetization more...
I've joined and quit twice. I don't think it's for me. There are things that I like about it in contrast to prior platforms, but my belief is ultimately once bsky needs to pursue monetization more aggressively, it will slowly decline and follow the same road other platforms have. As it grows, it will become just as awful. It will just be one big sesspool of brands, celebrities, replyguys, and bumper-sticker (and limited, often American overton-window two-party politics). I can never find enough accounts to follow, and I just don't have the types of posts that are going to gain followers either, so it's just a ghost town for me personally.
I think once I left Twitter in the shadow of Elon entering the scene (and prior to that, I was already primed to leave due to Twitter being awful even before he was in the picture), I just don't find value personally in public critical-mass microblog social media.
I do enjoy Mastodon, but even as a user of Mastodon, I see it as an alternative, NOT a replacement, for things like Twitter/bsky, so I am in no way recommending you use it instead. I'm glad that the server I am on in Mastodon is extremely heavily moderated/picky in who they federate with, isn't open to a critical mass of users, and we just have our own small community we've built there over time. As an alternate approach, it's perfect for me (and it's actually ideal that it never try to be bsky or twitter). Being a replacement for those services would ruin it, actually.
There are a couple of accounts I want to keep tabs on on bsky, but I've just bookmarked the public page of their accounts (Technology Connections, for instance)
The description of Singal in the article is borderline whitewashing, not surprising of a major news outlet speaking about a transphobe. He spreads disinformation frequently. The "activity off the platform" that BlueSky has declined to ban him for is directing his Twitter followers to harass BlueSky users that disagree with him.
I see that as a jurisdictional hack to avoid having to pass judgement on what’s happening on the entire Internet. (And Twitter in particular.) It may prove unviable, but they’re going to try to avoid increasing the scope of what their moderators have to investigate, since they’re already scrambling to ramp up moderation.
One thing I think this controversy shows is the limits of decentralized moderation. Users can already block Singal and any alternative moderation service can block him too. It’s not going to keep Bluesky itself from having to make a call about what to do with the official moderation service that everyone uses.
Also, journalists sometimes limit scope too. To really cover what Singal and his allies and opponents are doing, the reporter would have to do a deeper investigation to figure out what’s true, and it seems they decided not to do that, just reporting on what they could find easily. They might not have known what to look for in Singal’s Twitter feed?
Since it’s easy to do, they did link to an article that Singal wrote complaining that Bluesky users are sending him death threats and attempting to dox him. They posted the wrong address, so it would be a “wrong house” attack if anyone acted on it. Apparently Bluesky took a while to block posts with the address. Maybe they hadn’t done it before and had to write code in a hurry?
Meanwhile, I’m avoiding passing judgment because I don’t really know what to believe and I’m not willing to do enough investigation myself to figure it out. I don’t want want to get into a “contempt court” discussion on Tildes where we argue about whether Singal is worthy of contempt. That would be no fun for anyone.
I’d rather outsource that. An in-depth investigation by a neutral journalist I trust would be a real service, and this reporter declined to do that, because the article is really about Bluesky. A pity, but understandable.
I understand (I'm not sure if I agree or disagree) with BlueSky's decision not to ban him for things that didn't happen on BlueSky, but it seemed irresponsible to me that the article mentioned that what he was doing wasn't on BlueSky without mentioning that it would directly affect BlueSky users on BlueSky. It's materially different to ask BlueSky to ban him for something on Twitter that you could avoid by not using Twitter, versus something that affects your experience of using BlueSky. It may still be the right decision for the platform not to ban him, but the request in the former situation is petty and unreasonable and in the latter it makes complete sense.
As far as the light in which they showed Singal, I think they should have either said less or more. Their current description makes him sound reasonable and potentially credible. They could have described him without making him sound credible or contemptible. If they weren't going to do the research, that's what they should have done.
Banning Singal on Bluesky doesn’t keep him from posting messages to his followers on Twitter, though, so it would be a performative action that doesn’t directly solve the problem. To actually fix it, they need to moderate what Singal’s followers do on Bluesky.
(Substitute anyone else who has accounts on multiple services - I don’t actually know what Singal or his followers did.)
Fair enough, I'm convinced that it's reasonable not to ban him from BlueSky (for that. Spreading disinformation is another question.)
My criticism of the article stands, though.
I think a lot of things X refugees like about BlueSky aren't intentional, but a result of that platform being young. I expect that to change over time. Someday I will be downloading a script from GitHub to delete all of my posts from BlueSky as I did with X. :-)
Deleting posts appears easy enough, but it’s kind of limited on Bluesky. Here is a feed of deleted BlueSky posts. It doesn’t keep them, but anyone else could set up a feed that does.
(Worse, they’re all digitally signed.)
I really can't stand that I can't shut off reposts/retweets.
Do you mean stopping someone from reposting you or taking reposts out of your following feed?
(Skeet is the alternate to post, it's controversial among some but I prefer it)
Stopping people from retweeting other people's posts and having those retweets appear in your feed.
That is a setting now I believe, one sec
Settings, content and media, following feed preferences
And just like that...they all disappeared.
Thank you.
Oh, I actually have that turned off and forgot about it! Oops.
There's something else I'd like to see, though. There are some people who retweet things I like and others who don't. So I'd rather it be something that could be set per account that I follow, like on Mastodon.
Yeah that's one of those things that is likely in the works. But you can set up a feed of those folks.
Yes, absolutely. The UI is improving fairly quickly, though, so who knows. Also, there might be third-party workarounds.
Do you think the BlueSky crowd are the type of people who go to the fediverse if BlueSky became twitterish or do you think they would flee to whatever the current twitter-like clone is then?
This is one of the thoughts I've had, I'm pretty sure the majority of bsky users are simply previous twitter users, and not necessarily technically savvy ones that even know or care that such a protocol exists. They probably don't think of bsky as anything other than "new twitter" and couldn't be bothered to consider jumping the hurdles of the fediverse. If ATProto/bsky somehow eventually solve those hurdles and make it seamless and completely transparent/easy-to-understand to the "normal"/non-tech crowd, then maybe.
But to me it's this weird hybrid right now of built with some federation in mind while simultaneously being its own centralized platform, where the federation is sort-of a "future promise" and something a large portion of the user-base may never encounter or bother with changing, and so it kinda becomes de-facto centralized regardless of what its capabilities are
Agreed.
I've joined and quit twice. I don't think it's for me. There are things that I like about it in contrast to prior platforms, but my belief is ultimately once bsky needs to pursue monetization more aggressively, it will slowly decline and follow the same road other platforms have. As it grows, it will become just as awful. It will just be one big sesspool of brands, celebrities, replyguys, and bumper-sticker (and limited, often American overton-window two-party politics). I can never find enough accounts to follow, and I just don't have the types of posts that are going to gain followers either, so it's just a ghost town for me personally.
I think once I left Twitter in the shadow of Elon entering the scene (and prior to that, I was already primed to leave due to Twitter being awful even before he was in the picture), I just don't find value personally in public critical-mass microblog social media.
I do enjoy Mastodon, but even as a user of Mastodon, I see it as an alternative, NOT a replacement, for things like Twitter/bsky, so I am in no way recommending you use it instead. I'm glad that the server I am on in Mastodon is extremely heavily moderated/picky in who they federate with, isn't open to a critical mass of users, and we just have our own small community we've built there over time. As an alternate approach, it's perfect for me (and it's actually ideal that it never try to be bsky or twitter). Being a replacement for those services would ruin it, actually.
There are a couple of accounts I want to keep tabs on on bsky, but I've just bookmarked the public page of their accounts (Technology Connections, for instance)
Do you think the reporter should have done something different? I thought it covered Bluesky’s current controversies pretty even-handedly.