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New Anti-Toxicity Features on Bluesky

105 points by runarberg 2y ago

richbell 2y ago
> This helps you maintain control over a thread you started, ideally limiting dog-piling and other forms of harassment. On the other hand, quote posts are often used to correct misinformation too. To address this, we’re leaning into labeling services and hoping to integrate a Community Notes-like feature in the future. I'm confused. It seems like they're acknowledging why this is a bad idea yet are proceeding with it? If you don't want people to be able to reply critically to a post, why not have a private profile or not post it in the first place?
- josefresco 2y ago
  It is confusing language but basically they're saying "we're giving you this ability, but will be adding a new feature to fix this unfortunate side effect". I think it will cause a shift to "screenshots of posts" as is done on Twitter/X when the retweeter does not want to @ / mention the original author.
  - Jare 2y ago
    That's perfectly fine. Screenshots as posts deter 90% (my guess) of people from going through the trouble of finding the original post/author, but still allow dedicated people to do that. It reduces the ability to trivially post mindless shit to someone on a whim. I totally believe that this approach can significantly increase the signal/noise ratio, without allowing anyone to silence anyone else arbitrarily.
    - GrinningFool 2y ago
      It's also completely untrustworthy. It's not complex to make a fake tweet screenshot. It doesn't even always have to pass close scrutiny.
      - Jare 2y ago
        This feature doesn't change that. Whoever wanted to doctor a screenshot will still do, and whoever wanted to post a real screenshot can still do. Now, if someone wanted to quote-reply with the legitimacy of a link but now has to make do with a screenshot that their readers may not trust, well, sounds like they haven't earned a good reputation among their readers, and that's entirely their problem.
- roblabla 2y ago
  They're acknowledging that it has some downsides, that they think they can resolve through other features that they'll develop later. > If you don't want people to be able to reply critically to a post, why not have a private profile or not post it in the first place? The problem isn't people replying critically, it's people being assholes on the internet, leveraging their follower base to harass someone. This feature gives tool to the bluesky posters to protect themselves against this form of harassment. Hence why they're going with it despite the downsides: it's a necessary feature for people to protect themselves against harassment.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - richbell 2y ago
    > The problem isn't people replying critically, it's people being assholes on the internet... it's a necessary feature for people to protect themselves against harassment. The problem is that "harassmemt" is a nebulous term. Many people inappropriately (in my opinion) claim any sort of dissenting voices are "harassment".
    - xg15 2y ago
      Are you claiming there are no such things as shitstorms, dogpiling or cyberbullying?
      - richbell 2y ago
        > Are you claiming there are no such things as shitstorms, dogpiling or cyberbullying? Please quote where you believe I made this claim.
        xg15 2y ago
        Well, how would you protect against cyberbullying then?
- malwrar 2y ago
  I think they’re intending to address something like THE X GROUP DID Y THING TO THE Z GROUP (which we will assume to be false) by allowing for factual corrections via “community notes” and “labels” that I assume the T&S team plans to control. Depending on how the specifics of this future plan manifest, I think this could be useful for quelling legitimate adversarial or genuinely uninformed and harmful misinformation. I still worry about the bias and transparency of whoever controls these labels, and the general potential of these features to enable the creation of echo chambers, but least this will all be transparent and observable via the developer API so factual investigation and reporting can be done on how this actually plays out in practice. I hate censorship and the general cowardice of people who would abuse these features to stifle legitimate dissent, but I think these features are a good compromise between that and the opposite real problem of malicious/harmful legitimate misinformation.
- newsclues 2y ago
  Sounds like they are making a tradeoff of creating community bubbles or silos in order to limit unwanted interactions. Seems like safe spaces online, where people can be happy but perhaps they will be sharing opinions and information that are incorrect, but they won't be unhappy from people they disagree with providing the facts.
- anonfordays 2y ago
  >If you don't want people to be able to reply critically to a post, why not have a private profile or not post it in the first place? Exactly. Someone will post something abhorrent, critical replies will be removed, supportive replies will stay. It will make echo chambers worse than they ever have been. Then again, that may be exactly what the users want.
  - skrbjc 2y ago
    This is a key criticism of reddit, and everyone knows how much of an echo chamber reddit is
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      I don't. Enlighten me, please.
      - ineedaj0b 2y ago
        it's sorta like reading the breitbart comment section but it's all left wing. there's some good stuff, but there's also good stuff on mass email chains if you read enough of them. reddit ain't what it used to be.
      - Levitz 2y ago
        Reddit enforces echo chambers mainly on two levels, the user level and the mod level. Nobody respects etiquette anymore, and rather than upvoting valuable content they upvote whatever they like. As an extreme example, you can make the best, most honest, rational argumentation of a political issue, if the users don't agree with your stance it's going to be downvotted and hidden. Similarly, they will tolerate content that might be against the rules or the spirit of the subreddit if it's something they agree with. On top of that, the vast majority of the time moderators enforce echo chambers themselves through bias, with a few of them going as far as banning every single user that posts in communities they disagree with, even if they have never engaged with the community they themselves moderate.
        2y ago
- bangaroo 2y ago
  bluesky currently doesn't support private profiles, so that's a no-go. while i fundamentally agree with what you're saying, the cases where a quote-skeet contains a polite or well-intentioned correction vs. is explicitly designed to enrage the quoter's follower-base and dunk on that person are way out of balance. there are many people who will, rather than attempt to correct a misunderstanding (or simply ignore an opinion they don't agree with,) immediately jump to quote-tweeting and dunking on someone, trying to drag their followers into a dogpile. it's often just blatantly unnecessary and it is frequently a miserable experience to be on the receiving end of that. i worry i'm coming across as lamenting cancel culture or something - i'm not - but i've absolutely had cases where someone with a different flavor of an opinion i agree with will see something i said, take my slightly different view on it, and quote skeet it with some nasty comment tearing into me. their friends, with no context of the discussion i was initially having, will just dive in and tear into me because they are clearly having fun doing it, not because it's actually correcting a problem or resolving a misunderstanding. i frequently have this happen from completely random passers-by to whom i wasn't speaking and who really would have no reason to see my post in the first place. i'm really not a controversial poster on bluesky, either. i really don't think i'm saying anything particularly offensive or earth-shattering. it's just a dumping ground for shower thoughts, mostly. great example of this is some guy who randomly found a post i made about the fact that i was disappointed in joe biden's debate performance, which i'd say is a pretty uncontroversial opinion. he said some nasty stuff, i made the mistake of responding trying to explain myself, and then he just started replying to me exclusively in quote-skeets, berating me and mocking me, and the gaggle of idiots following him just dove on in and also decided to tear in to me for reasons that still don't make a whole lot of sense. all this to say, if you've had any meaningful interaction with folks on these platforms, i feel like you understand the idealized version of a quote post and how far it is from how it's most frequently used.
  - Kye 2y ago
    Another real world example: A famous comedian once grossly misunderstood something I said, quote tweeted it with a framing based on that, and sent tens of thousands of views, hundreds of replies, and thousands of notifications my way over the course of a few minutes. All extremely hostile. It can go well: SwiftOnSecurity once QTd me and their comment led to lots of good conversation on the quote and in my own notifications. But they cultivate a good community of followers and understand the responsibility they hold with a 6 digit follower count. The thing about quote posting is that the very act completely collapses context, and puts all the power and responsibility on the quoter. An innocent mistake can be as harmful here as malice because, as I experienced, no amount of trying to address the mis-representation to people coming at me helped because I was just some nobody and someone they trusted told them what's what.
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  On Reddit I mostly see this feature used for political manipulation. Especially by people who to me are obviously propagandists. It's a very common pattern for me to encounter something, writing a reply I think is superb, seeing it highly upvoted, and then seeing the person I replied to delete that comment. It's incredibly effective-- you get your propaganda out, and when it gets questioned it just disappears-- the lies will have affected many and the rebuttal seen by few.
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    That's why you quote the relevant portions...
    - impossiblefork 2y ago
      Yes, but upon the deletion visibility is greatly reduced.
perihelions 2y ago
I'm only minimally familiar with BlueSky. Is it a fair analogy, for understanding what this is, to say it's like: - If someone replies to this HN comment I just wrote, and I don't like it, I can delete their comment (because there is an thread ownership concept on BlueSky, and the earliest comment is the owner); - If someone links to this HN comment I just wrote, and I don't like it, I can make that hyperlink disappear, or invalidate in some way (because BlueSky is a locked API garden and hyperlinks are not plain text, but magic cloud API tokens) Is this much correct?
- skrbjc 2y ago
  Pretty much, the first one being more like you can hide a comment that you don't like and if someone wants to see it they can click "see hidden replies"
  - Jare 2y ago
    My reading of "hiding replies" was that people who follow the replier would still see the reply as part of their normal feed. So you are not silencing them for their audience. Which is fair. The removal of links to yourself is also very welcome. Both tools have cons, and there's methods to work around them / prevent them from taking effect. But they address the default easy/trivial ways in which people can pollute other users, so in practice the value for users should prove high.
- roblabla 2y ago
  > - If someone replies to this HN comment I just wrote, and I don't like it, and I can delete their comment (because there is an thread ownership concept on BlueSky, and the earliest comment is the owner); You can hide it - which I agree is functionally equivalent to deleting it as people are very unlikely to go dig for hidden comments. FWIW this is kinda similar to "flagging" a comment on HN, which (as far as I understand) will cause it to be hidden for everyone - at least until someone vouches it back. > - If someone links to this HN comment I just wrote, and I don't like it, I can make that hyperlink disappear, or invalidate in some way (because BlueSky is a locked API garden and hyperlinks are not plain text, but magic cloud API tokens) You can just make the hyperlink disappear to anyone using the default BlueSky frontend. But from my understanding, the hyperlink will still be accessible through the API.
sigmar 2y ago
>The Bluesky app won’t list all the quote post removals directly on your post, but developers with knowledge of the Bluesky API will be able to access this data. Seems like they have some good ideas for how to deal with quote posts/tweets. But I don't understand how decisions like this are compatible with their hopes to eventually make the network decentralized. Surely you can't trust individual servers to obey this anti harassment feature? Are they no longer planning to make it decentralized?
- rapht 2y ago
  The fact that you can still access hidden quotes/replies/etc from the API makes me think it's a client-side (i.e. app-only) feature.
  - saurik 2y ago
    But would any other client bother to implement this feature? Helping me not see toxic bullshit helps me as a user and I might opt in to various content curation schemes; but, if I am already looking at something, removing the context for what they are talking about does not help me. It is like, imagine if I was permalinked on HN to a flagged comment, because someone wanted me to see it, but the "parent" button didn't work.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      Most people will be using the official app or the web site and if you're really dedicated one of the web archives will probably have the post and the quoted post archived. It's not about being perfect, it's about cutting off wide masses from abusive behavior.
      - saurik 2y ago
        If BlueSky truly believes that there will even be an "official app (or the web site)" for their decentralized protocol--the one they claim they only even developed a client for at all in order to promote the usage of--then they have already fallen off mission.
echelon 2y ago
This is a "gotcha" mechanic, not a feed filtering mechanic. Platforms are not only turning people thin-skinned, they're actively amplifying the desire for us to control the behaviors of others. This is why we need true P2P social media instead of platforms or cabal-led federation.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  It's really nothing to do with "controlling the behavior of others". What I'm seeing on Mastodon is a desire by quite a few people to use these open, public messaging systems as something more akin to private mailing lists. They have no desire for anyone-can-read/anyone-can-reply, they just want a nice little circle of people who all agree to be a part of the circle and to have the others there too. I believe that many of the people who want this are too young to have ever been on old listserv-style mailing lists, and for them, this sort of messaging technology is obviously how you would do this sort of thing. I don't think they are right, but I also see how they would think this, and they're not clearly wrong.
  - edflsafoiewq 2y ago
    Twitterlikes seem to straddle the space between a public forum, with open discussion on particular topics, and a private blog, where the author moderates the comment section on their posts.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      That's a take, but I think its quite generational (I could be wrong). Twitterlikes to me seem utterly public, and I get really confused when I encounter people who think they are having a private group chat. But as I said, I do understand how and why these different views of the same technology could arise.
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    That's correct, but what are the alternatives? Most people aren't going to do it via email, so Listserv won't work. And they want convenient features like links and images. I'm not a social media guy so I truly don't know if alternatives exist. Google Plus is the only service I know that seriously tried to solve the problem. At the moment Mastodon seems like the simplest approach. If they could define "circles" (that applies across servers), then it would be ideal. I'm on server A and you are on server B. I define a circle (and own it), and I add you to it. The system ensures that only people within the circle can see the posts, and you cannot reshare outside the circle. If someone in the circle is misbehaving, I can kick them out. Perhaps add some moderation capability (within the circle). You can argue that this is just a "Mastodon network within a Mastodon network", and you'd be correct. It still acts mostly like a "private" list. Lots of other subtleties to figure out, but this alone would be a great start!
nwoli 2y ago
Love every program having a little police bundled in them these days
neilv 2y ago
UI design comment: In their first example of detachment, two ways that "Removed by author" seems ambiguous: * which author is meant (the quoter, or the quotee) * whether the quoted post was removed, or merely the link to it This ambiguity not only requires learning by all users of that platform, but will also be confusing to non-users, such as when screenshotted on another venue.
- pfraze 2y ago
  Yeah actually I agree about this, we should update it
  - Kye 2y ago
    Hi paul Anyway, consider "hidden by quoted user"
    - layer8 2y ago
      I find “quoted user” more difficult to understand than “original author”.
      - rwmj 2y ago
        They can't just say "hidden by user XYZ"?
        layer8 2y ago
        Then it's not clear that the named user is also the author of the quoted post, and moreover it could incite harassments against the now exposed user.
    - neilv 2y ago
      Something like "quote unlinked" is more terse/cryptic/technical, but at least it's something people will have to look up the meaning of, rather than misinterpret by default.
taeric 2y ago
Anyone have a good analysis on the various strategies different sites have tried over the years? Feels like it would have to include threaded versus non-threaded conversations, as well. I don't typically think of that as a way to control toxic crowds, but it does help stay aware of conversations without having to follow down rabbit holes.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  Shadowban everyone, use ai to fake engagement.
  - seoulmetro 2y ago
    Shadowban everyone and everything. Use moderators to instil a regime of discourse that puts certain concepts on a unjust pedestal. Use people who agree with the message as missionaries and AI/fake posts as fuel. Sell this as a functional system of discourse and attach ads to the product so people have no need to login.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  The only strategy that works is a tight knit community that is hostile to bad actors and good moderation. Trying to automate away human negativity will never work.
  - symlinkk 2y ago
    Moderation just leads to censorship. Upvote / downvotes are good enough on their own, we don’t need someone babysitting us.
    - mark242 2y ago
      That is fundamentally wrong. Pushing content moderation onto every person who posts a message on social media is a chilling effect on people posting. Pushing content moderation onto every person who reads a message on social media is a chilling effect on people reading.
bangaladore 2y ago
This is a terrible idea. They even note it by saying "we’re leaning into labeling services and hoping to integrate a Community Notes-like feature in the future". Why push an update that is undoubtedly a net negative when the company itself suggests that it's not the best solution?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Show me a perfect solution. I'll wait.
  - bangaladore 2y ago
    Having no solutions may be better than implementing flawed solutions.
- CuriousCosmic 2y ago
  What makes you think this is a terrible feature. This is a federated service and the company is actively attempting to get the service to a state where it can exist independently of them, preferably without the service fracturing into a bunch of islands, mostly separate from each other (cough mastodon cough). What solution would you propose that's better than this one and how is this solution a net negative (personally I think labelling services are a great approach to the problem)?
  - bangaladore 2y ago
    Community notes have been very effective in retaining public trust while combating misinformation on Twitter/X. This is the polar opposite of that. Delete all opinions you disagree with, no matter the reasons. Echo chambers are not productive. Full stop. It will lead to worse outcomes. I would have a different opinion if they weren't advertising this as a general-purpose way to shut people up. This could work if it were just a method to remove "rule-breaking" posts where some authority would still evaluate the reason for removal.
    - deleted 2y ago
scudsworth 2y ago
just a few more years of work on the moderation features. then the site will get really good, probably
- skybrian 2y ago
  The UI is quite pleasant already, provided you want "superficially like Twitter was, but better." I have trouble finding people or feeds worth following, but give it time. The same was true for Twitter when I started. My one recommendation: the Moss feed is agreeably chill.
  - verdverm 2y ago
    The recently introduced StarterPacks so people can collect groups of accounts on a topic for new users go quickly find and follow. They seem to be holding off on indexing these, as well as the block lists, to prevent abuse. I saw they wrote that somewhere, but cannot find it at the moment
koolala 2y ago
People talking about people is taboo to me. It's a very easy habbit to get into. I like seperating Ideas from People.
mlindner 2y ago
Well I was considering creating a Bluesky account, but now I definitely won't. I don't want my comments getting purged just because I argued with the author of a post. This isn't "Anti-Toxicity" in as much it as "affirmation bubble creating". Your followers become your yes men and anyone arguing with you gets their comments purged from anyone seeing them.
- anamexis 2y ago
  Do you use Twitter (X)? Because you can hide specific replies to your post there, too.
- layer8 2y ago
  Your comments don’t get purged, they just require an extra “show hidden comments” click to be viewed.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
seoulmetro 2y ago
These aren't anti toxicity features. They're censorship tools. It's quite hard to make anti-toxicity features and I'd love to see some real ones. These aren't them.

105 points by runarberg 2y ago

> This helps you maintain control over a thread you started, ideally limiting dog-piling and other forms of harassment. On the other hand, quote posts are often used to correct misinformation too. To address this, we’re leaning into labeling services and hoping to integrate a Community Notes-like feature in the future. I'm confused. It seems like they're acknowledging why this is a bad idea yet are proceeding with it? If you don't want people to be able to reply critically to a post, why not have a private profile or not post it in the first place?

josefresco 2y ago
It is confusing language but basically they're saying "we're giving you this ability, but will be adding a new feature to fix this unfortunate side effect". I think it will cause a shift to "screenshots of posts" as is done on Twitter/X when the retweeter does not want to @ / mention the original author.
- Jare 2y ago
  That's perfectly fine. Screenshots as posts deter 90% (my guess) of people from going through the trouble of finding the original post/author, but still allow dedicated people to do that. It reduces the ability to trivially post mindless shit to someone on a whim. I totally believe that this approach can significantly increase the signal/noise ratio, without allowing anyone to silence anyone else arbitrarily.
  - GrinningFool 2y ago
    It's also completely untrustworthy. It's not complex to make a fake tweet screenshot. It doesn't even always have to pass close scrutiny.
    - Jare 2y ago
      This feature doesn't change that. Whoever wanted to doctor a screenshot will still do, and whoever wanted to post a real screenshot can still do. Now, if someone wanted to quote-reply with the legitimacy of a link but now has to make do with a screenshot that their readers may not trust, well, sounds like they haven't earned a good reputation among their readers, and that's entirely their problem.
roblabla 2y ago
They're acknowledging that it has some downsides, that they think they can resolve through other features that they'll develop later. > If you don't want people to be able to reply critically to a post, why not have a private profile or not post it in the first place? The problem isn't people replying critically, it's people being assholes on the internet, leveraging their follower base to harass someone. This feature gives tool to the bluesky posters to protect themselves against this form of harassment. Hence why they're going with it despite the downsides: it's a necessary feature for people to protect themselves against harassment.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- richbell 2y ago
  > The problem isn't people replying critically, it's people being assholes on the internet... it's a necessary feature for people to protect themselves against harassment. The problem is that "harassmemt" is a nebulous term. Many people inappropriately (in my opinion) claim any sort of dissenting voices are "harassment".
  - xg15 2y ago
    Are you claiming there are no such things as shitstorms, dogpiling or cyberbullying?
    - richbell 2y ago
      > Are you claiming there are no such things as shitstorms, dogpiling or cyberbullying? Please quote where you believe I made this claim.
      - xg15 2y ago
        Well, how would you protect against cyberbullying then?
malwrar 2y ago
I think they’re intending to address something like THE X GROUP DID Y THING TO THE Z GROUP (which we will assume to be false) by allowing for factual corrections via “community notes” and “labels” that I assume the T&S team plans to control. Depending on how the specifics of this future plan manifest, I think this could be useful for quelling legitimate adversarial or genuinely uninformed and harmful misinformation. I still worry about the bias and transparency of whoever controls these labels, and the general potential of these features to enable the creation of echo chambers, but least this will all be transparent and observable via the developer API so factual investigation and reporting can be done on how this actually plays out in practice. I hate censorship and the general cowardice of people who would abuse these features to stifle legitimate dissent, but I think these features are a good compromise between that and the opposite real problem of malicious/harmful legitimate misinformation.
newsclues 2y ago
Sounds like they are making a tradeoff of creating community bubbles or silos in order to limit unwanted interactions. Seems like safe spaces online, where people can be happy but perhaps they will be sharing opinions and information that are incorrect, but they won't be unhappy from people they disagree with providing the facts.
anonfordays 2y ago
>If you don't want people to be able to reply critically to a post, why not have a private profile or not post it in the first place? Exactly. Someone will post something abhorrent, critical replies will be removed, supportive replies will stay. It will make echo chambers worse than they ever have been. Then again, that may be exactly what the users want.
- skrbjc 2y ago
  This is a key criticism of reddit, and everyone knows how much of an echo chamber reddit is
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    I don't. Enlighten me, please.
    - ineedaj0b 2y ago
      it's sorta like reading the breitbart comment section but it's all left wing. there's some good stuff, but there's also good stuff on mass email chains if you read enough of them. reddit ain't what it used to be.
    - Levitz 2y ago
      Reddit enforces echo chambers mainly on two levels, the user level and the mod level. Nobody respects etiquette anymore, and rather than upvoting valuable content they upvote whatever they like. As an extreme example, you can make the best, most honest, rational argumentation of a political issue, if the users don't agree with your stance it's going to be downvotted and hidden. Similarly, they will tolerate content that might be against the rules or the spirit of the subreddit if it's something they agree with. On top of that, the vast majority of the time moderators enforce echo chambers themselves through bias, with a few of them going as far as banning every single user that posts in communities they disagree with, even if they have never engaged with the community they themselves moderate.
      - 2y ago
bangaroo 2y ago
bluesky currently doesn't support private profiles, so that's a no-go. while i fundamentally agree with what you're saying, the cases where a quote-skeet contains a polite or well-intentioned correction vs. is explicitly designed to enrage the quoter's follower-base and dunk on that person are way out of balance. there are many people who will, rather than attempt to correct a misunderstanding (or simply ignore an opinion they don't agree with,) immediately jump to quote-tweeting and dunking on someone, trying to drag their followers into a dogpile. it's often just blatantly unnecessary and it is frequently a miserable experience to be on the receiving end of that. i worry i'm coming across as lamenting cancel culture or something - i'm not - but i've absolutely had cases where someone with a different flavor of an opinion i agree with will see something i said, take my slightly different view on it, and quote skeet it with some nasty comment tearing into me. their friends, with no context of the discussion i was initially having, will just dive in and tear into me because they are clearly having fun doing it, not because it's actually correcting a problem or resolving a misunderstanding. i frequently have this happen from completely random passers-by to whom i wasn't speaking and who really would have no reason to see my post in the first place. i'm really not a controversial poster on bluesky, either. i really don't think i'm saying anything particularly offensive or earth-shattering. it's just a dumping ground for shower thoughts, mostly. great example of this is some guy who randomly found a post i made about the fact that i was disappointed in joe biden's debate performance, which i'd say is a pretty uncontroversial opinion. he said some nasty stuff, i made the mistake of responding trying to explain myself, and then he just started replying to me exclusively in quote-skeets, berating me and mocking me, and the gaggle of idiots following him just dove on in and also decided to tear in to me for reasons that still don't make a whole lot of sense. all this to say, if you've had any meaningful interaction with folks on these platforms, i feel like you understand the idealized version of a quote post and how far it is from how it's most frequently used.
- Kye 2y ago
  Another real world example: A famous comedian once grossly misunderstood something I said, quote tweeted it with a framing based on that, and sent tens of thousands of views, hundreds of replies, and thousands of notifications my way over the course of a few minutes. All extremely hostile. It can go well: SwiftOnSecurity once QTd me and their comment led to lots of good conversation on the quote and in my own notifications. But they cultivate a good community of followers and understand the responsibility they hold with a 6 digit follower count. The thing about quote posting is that the very act completely collapses context, and puts all the power and responsibility on the quoter. An innocent mistake can be as harmful here as malice because, as I experienced, no amount of trying to address the mis-representation to people coming at me helped because I was just some nobody and someone they trusted told them what's what.
impossiblefork 2y ago
On Reddit I mostly see this feature used for political manipulation. Especially by people who to me are obviously propagandists. It's a very common pattern for me to encounter something, writing a reply I think is superb, seeing it highly upvoted, and then seeing the person I replied to delete that comment. It's incredibly effective-- you get your propaganda out, and when it gets questioned it just disappears-- the lies will have affected many and the rebuttal seen by few.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  That's why you quote the relevant portions...
  - impossiblefork 2y ago
    Yes, but upon the deletion visibility is greatly reduced.

perihelions 2y ago

I'm only minimally familiar with BlueSky. Is it a fair analogy, for understanding what this is, to say it's like: - If someone replies to this HN comment I just wrote, and I don't like it, I can delete their comment (because there is an thread ownership concept on BlueSky, and the earliest comment is the owner); - If someone links to this HN comment I just wrote, and I don't like it, I can make that hyperlink disappear, or invalidate in some way (because BlueSky is a locked API garden and hyperlinks are not plain text, but magic cloud API tokens) Is this much correct?

skrbjc 2y ago
Pretty much, the first one being more like you can hide a comment that you don't like and if someone wants to see it they can click "see hidden replies"
- Jare 2y ago
  My reading of "hiding replies" was that people who follow the replier would still see the reply as part of their normal feed. So you are not silencing them for their audience. Which is fair. The removal of links to yourself is also very welcome. Both tools have cons, and there's methods to work around them / prevent them from taking effect. But they address the default easy/trivial ways in which people can pollute other users, so in practice the value for users should prove high.
roblabla 2y ago
> - If someone replies to this HN comment I just wrote, and I don't like it, and I can delete their comment (because there is an thread ownership concept on BlueSky, and the earliest comment is the owner); You can hide it - which I agree is functionally equivalent to deleting it as people are very unlikely to go dig for hidden comments. FWIW this is kinda similar to "flagging" a comment on HN, which (as far as I understand) will cause it to be hidden for everyone - at least until someone vouches it back. > - If someone links to this HN comment I just wrote, and I don't like it, I can make that hyperlink disappear, or invalidate in some way (because BlueSky is a locked API garden and hyperlinks are not plain text, but magic cloud API tokens) You can just make the hyperlink disappear to anyone using the default BlueSky frontend. But from my understanding, the hyperlink will still be accessible through the API.

sigmar 2y ago

>The Bluesky app won’t list all the quote post removals directly on your post, but developers with knowledge of the Bluesky API will be able to access this data. Seems like they have some good ideas for how to deal with quote posts/tweets. But I don't understand how decisions like this are compatible with their hopes to eventually make the network decentralized. Surely you can't trust individual servers to obey this anti harassment feature? Are they no longer planning to make it decentralized?

rapht 2y ago
The fact that you can still access hidden quotes/replies/etc from the API makes me think it's a client-side (i.e. app-only) feature.
- saurik 2y ago
  But would any other client bother to implement this feature? Helping me not see toxic bullshit helps me as a user and I might opt in to various content curation schemes; but, if I am already looking at something, removing the context for what they are talking about does not help me. It is like, imagine if I was permalinked on HN to a flagged comment, because someone wanted me to see it, but the "parent" button didn't work.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    Most people will be using the official app or the web site and if you're really dedicated one of the web archives will probably have the post and the quoted post archived. It's not about being perfect, it's about cutting off wide masses from abusive behavior.
    - saurik 2y ago
      If BlueSky truly believes that there will even be an "official app (or the web site)" for their decentralized protocol--the one they claim they only even developed a client for at all in order to promote the usage of--then they have already fallen off mission.

echelon 2y ago

This is a "gotcha" mechanic, not a feed filtering mechanic. Platforms are not only turning people thin-skinned, they're actively amplifying the desire for us to control the behaviors of others. This is why we need true P2P social media instead of platforms or cabal-led federation.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
It's really nothing to do with "controlling the behavior of others". What I'm seeing on Mastodon is a desire by quite a few people to use these open, public messaging systems as something more akin to private mailing lists. They have no desire for anyone-can-read/anyone-can-reply, they just want a nice little circle of people who all agree to be a part of the circle and to have the others there too. I believe that many of the people who want this are too young to have ever been on old listserv-style mailing lists, and for them, this sort of messaging technology is obviously how you would do this sort of thing. I don't think they are right, but I also see how they would think this, and they're not clearly wrong.
- edflsafoiewq 2y ago
  Twitterlikes seem to straddle the space between a public forum, with open discussion on particular topics, and a private blog, where the author moderates the comment section on their posts.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    That's a take, but I think its quite generational (I could be wrong). Twitterlikes to me seem utterly public, and I get really confused when I encounter people who think they are having a private group chat. But as I said, I do understand how and why these different views of the same technology could arise.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  That's correct, but what are the alternatives? Most people aren't going to do it via email, so Listserv won't work. And they want convenient features like links and images. I'm not a social media guy so I truly don't know if alternatives exist. Google Plus is the only service I know that seriously tried to solve the problem. At the moment Mastodon seems like the simplest approach. If they could define "circles" (that applies across servers), then it would be ideal. I'm on server A and you are on server B. I define a circle (and own it), and I add you to it. The system ensures that only people within the circle can see the posts, and you cannot reshare outside the circle. If someone in the circle is misbehaving, I can kick them out. Perhaps add some moderation capability (within the circle). You can argue that this is just a "Mastodon network within a Mastodon network", and you'd be correct. It still acts mostly like a "private" list. Lots of other subtleties to figure out, but this alone would be a great start!

nwoli 2y ago

Love every program having a little police bundled in them these days

neilv 2y ago

UI design comment: In their first example of detachment, two ways that "Removed by author" seems ambiguous: * which author is meant (the quoter, or the quotee) * whether the quoted post was removed, or merely the link to it This ambiguity not only requires learning by all users of that platform, but will also be confusing to non-users, such as when screenshotted on another venue.

pfraze 2y ago
Yeah actually I agree about this, we should update it
- Kye 2y ago
  Hi paul Anyway, consider "hidden by quoted user"
  - layer8 2y ago
    I find “quoted user” more difficult to understand than “original author”.
    - rwmj 2y ago
      They can't just say "hidden by user XYZ"?
      - layer8 2y ago
        Then it's not clear that the named user is also the author of the quoted post, and moreover it could incite harassments against the now exposed user.
  - neilv 2y ago
    Something like "quote unlinked" is more terse/cryptic/technical, but at least it's something people will have to look up the meaning of, rather than misinterpret by default.

taeric 2y ago

Anyone have a good analysis on the various strategies different sites have tried over the years? Feels like it would have to include threaded versus non-threaded conversations, as well. I don't typically think of that as a way to control toxic crowds, but it does help stay aware of conversations without having to follow down rabbit holes.

mensetmanusman 2y ago
Shadowban everyone, use ai to fake engagement.
- seoulmetro 2y ago
  Shadowban everyone and everything. Use moderators to instil a regime of discourse that puts certain concepts on a unjust pedestal. Use people who agree with the message as missionaries and AI/fake posts as fuel. Sell this as a functional system of discourse and attach ads to the product so people have no need to login.
ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
The only strategy that works is a tight knit community that is hostile to bad actors and good moderation. Trying to automate away human negativity will never work.
- symlinkk 2y ago
  Moderation just leads to censorship. Upvote / downvotes are good enough on their own, we don’t need someone babysitting us.
  - mark242 2y ago
    That is fundamentally wrong. Pushing content moderation onto every person who posts a message on social media is a chilling effect on people posting. Pushing content moderation onto every person who reads a message on social media is a chilling effect on people reading.

bangaladore 2y ago

This is a terrible idea. They even note it by saying "we’re leaning into labeling services and hoping to integrate a Community Notes-like feature in the future". Why push an update that is undoubtedly a net negative when the company itself suggests that it's not the best solution?

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Show me a perfect solution. I'll wait.
- bangaladore 2y ago
  Having no solutions may be better than implementing flawed solutions.
CuriousCosmic 2y ago
What makes you think this is a terrible feature. This is a federated service and the company is actively attempting to get the service to a state where it can exist independently of them, preferably without the service fracturing into a bunch of islands, mostly separate from each other (cough mastodon cough). What solution would you propose that's better than this one and how is this solution a net negative (personally I think labelling services are a great approach to the problem)?
- bangaladore 2y ago
  Community notes have been very effective in retaining public trust while combating misinformation on Twitter/X. This is the polar opposite of that. Delete all opinions you disagree with, no matter the reasons. Echo chambers are not productive. Full stop. It will lead to worse outcomes. I would have a different opinion if they weren't advertising this as a general-purpose way to shut people up. This could work if it were just a method to remove "rule-breaking" posts where some authority would still evaluate the reason for removal.
  - deleted 2y ago

scudsworth 2y ago

just a few more years of work on the moderation features. then the site will get really good, probably

skybrian 2y ago
The UI is quite pleasant already, provided you want "superficially like Twitter was, but better." I have trouble finding people or feeds worth following, but give it time. The same was true for Twitter when I started. My one recommendation: the Moss feed is agreeably chill.
- verdverm 2y ago
  The recently introduced StarterPacks so people can collect groups of accounts on a topic for new users go quickly find and follow. They seem to be holding off on indexing these, as well as the block lists, to prevent abuse. I saw they wrote that somewhere, but cannot find it at the moment

koolala 2y ago

People talking about people is taboo to me. It's a very easy habbit to get into. I like seperating Ideas from People.

mlindner 2y ago

Well I was considering creating a Bluesky account, but now I definitely won't. I don't want my comments getting purged just because I argued with the author of a post. This isn't "Anti-Toxicity" in as much it as "affirmation bubble creating". Your followers become your yes men and anyone arguing with you gets their comments purged from anyone seeing them.

anamexis 2y ago
Do you use Twitter (X)? Because you can hide specific replies to your post there, too.
layer8 2y ago
Your comments don’t get purged, they just require an extra “show hidden comments” click to be viewed.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

seoulmetro 2y ago

These aren't anti toxicity features. They're censorship tools. It's quite hard to make anti-toxicity features and I'd love to see some real ones. These aren't them.