Reading about #bluesky, it's impressive to me how little Jack has learned.
As somebody who (briefly) worked at Twitter on anti-abuse, the place is a goldmine of lessons on fucked-up behavior. And the CEO comes out of the cryptocurrency space, which also has a rich history of garbage people run wild.
But instead of something that applies any of that, they have apparently produced the same sort of tired neoliberal marketplace-of-ideas horseshit product that Twitter was to start.
But back to #bluesky. An essential dimension of moderation is asking the question, "On who does the burden fall?"
If the burden of dealing with racism falls on the targets of racism, then congrats, you've just created something with built-in systemic racism.
Some of that is inevitable. The true shitbags are tireless. They will be probing and subverting your defenses. So you're at least in part going to have to rely on user reports. So you have to work hard to minimize that.
I see no evidence of that here. Or even awareness of the problem.
So in conclusion, I think #bluesky is off to a terrible start and that nobody should use it. I get that Jack is persuasive and good at fooling people. As a recovering Twitter user, I also get that people just want those feelings back.
But as things stand now, Bluesky looks like it will be worse than Twitter in terms of abuse, and that will fall disproportionally on marginalized people. Ask yourself if you want to lend your personal slice of credibility to that. Whether you want to generate free content for a billionaire, the same billionaire that fucked this up last time.
Hoo boy, is there ever a lot of emotion swirling around the #Bluesky issue. I share a lot of the feelings but some of the statements are, um… not 100% fact-based.
@timbray I still think #bluesky is a false flag project as Jack Dorsey still owns more than 2% of #twitter. Why would Jack Dorsey jeopardize his twitter investment? The idea behind bluesky is to promise an alternative to twitter, then not delivering, thereby stopping people from moving to other social platforms
My $10 take on this #Mastodon vs #Bluesky dustup is: Maybe algorithms are a net good?
I've always scrolled chronologically—maniac that I am—so this isn't the issue I'm getting at. Looking at the unintended consequences of how design influences practice: I think I waste more time on Mastodon than I did on #Twitter because I'm seeing the same couple dozen popular (unarguably relevant) posts reboosted x10000.
And this seems to be a consequence of "People are the algorithm" design.
@csgordon The tricky thing about traditional engagement algorithms is that it typically involves giving the algorithm writer as much of your data as possible. On most of Big Social that includes things like "likes", comments, and shares but also lots of "soft data." Like on TikTok, for example, where the amount of time you watch a video is taken into consideration of how much you may have liked that video.
From everything I've been able to tell, #BlueSky intends there to be an algorithmic layer where all sorts of algorithms can access data on any of the instances. Some of these algorithms may be nice and fun, and others may be intentionally rage-baiting people. And I don't think they have controls for users to say "hey don't include my stuff in the rage-bait algorithm but do include it in the cute puppies algorithm."
From my perspective, the #ATProtocol gives way too much of users' data to algorithm writers. It does not feel like much of an improvement on Big Social.
Some people will never leave Twitter because it's familiar, they're an established journalist addicted to feeling important, or because they're right-wing chuds who want to see Musk and Truth Social Redux succeed.
Some will migrate to Bluesky for Twitter without Musk. Some will stick with Mastodon on principle or because it's good enough. And then there's some also rans. But I don't think Mastodon or Twitter are going anywhere anytime soon.
@donnodubus All I am saying is that, fundamentally, #Bluesky breaks no new ground and it seems that its design intent was effectively a clone of Twitter - which is immediately frictionless to many just seeking a quick "Musk free" alternative.
Fine with me, but I predict Bluesky users are running straight into the same buzzsaw.
#Mastodon and the #Fediverse, while far from ideal today on multiple levels, are at least putting the work in to change an already proven-to-be disastrous status quo.
@jalcine I have zero interest in another profit-driven (1) platform with questionable terms of service (2) and lenient attitude towards moderation (3), and one that uses the term "decentralized" very generously, considering its single instance is invite-only.
@jalcine Honestly, I'm not even going to get mad about this. For me, the fediverse already won. I found some really cool people here, and I don't really care too much to connect with anyone who stayed behind on Twitter just to shitpost.
Reminder that one of the folks that's a big influence on it, jack, is the one who killed Vine. Possibly the single stupidest decision in a very long list of pre-musk stupid decisions made at Twitter.
Not having a block feature out of the box is a huge red flag right off the bat. Jack came from Twitter and he, especially, should know the pitfalls of crap moderation. So far I'm seeing zero indication he learned anything from his Twitter fuckups.
Reading comments about #Bluesky and realizing what I want from social media is very different from a number of other people.
Bluesky has shitposters, they say, gleefully. Back when I was on Twitter, I blocked people who self-identified as shitposters.
(And yes, Bluesky has other serious issues. I'd never join a social media site that doesn't have both blocking and a decent moderation policy/practice. And there's the Jack Dorsey issue, too.)
Y'all keep on talking first about #Twitter on here and now about #BlueSky while at least I try to focus on making this here place better in iterative ways. #OpenFTW, always :)
It’s easy to point to #bluesky like “look, you can’t even block the truly awful racists there” while ignoring that we here in the Fediverse have a lot of work to do in that regard.
Even when we successfully block and defederate the worst of the worst (hopefully!), we’re not exactly great when it comes to more subtle forms of racism.