28 ms·
We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour
- yapyap 2y ago“ Excessive moderation is a barrier to open and robust debate, ultimately undermining the diversity of perspectives that make meaningful discourse possible. Supressing dissenting opinions will lead to an echo chamber effect. Would you like to join me an upcoming campaign to restore Europe? Deus vult!” ah social media, some people are truly as dumb as rocks
- ranger_danger 2y agoNot to mention all the people extremely confused over what "CSAM" is seemingly without having the ability to google it.
- astrange 2y agoI think your life is better off if you don't know what that means, so feel free not to look it up.
- iambateman 2y agoThis is definitely true here and probably true in lots of other areas. I have a friend who didn’t know who won the US presidential election until I told him. He just had other things going on. Part of me envies that kind of focus.
- manquer 2y agoIf your friend lives in the US and perhaps even otherwise, I wouldn’t characterize that as focus and certainly wouldn’t envy it . It is a complete disregard of freedom and rights that generations of people before him fought and died over so he has the luxury of ignoring elections . A luxury he or his next generations (1) may not have in the future as a result of their attitude and indifference. It is one thing not to be able leave the world a better place than we got it, it is something else to leave it behind worse not even due to greed but of sheer indifference. (1) and this has nothing to do with trump directly or any hyperbole that democracy is on the line. A interested population is key to not having power concentrated in the hands of few who will exploit it inevitably.
- 9x39 2y ago>A interested population is key to not having power concentrated in the hands of few who will exploit it inevitably. Doesn't this suggest its populations' collective votes that matter, not individuals' efforts? It could be different if you have a sizable audience or something and can effectively influence that population, but otherwise, individual votes are irrelevant. If you're not in power, positive personal outcomes can be mutually exclusive with being hyperinformed.
- astrange 2y agoIndividual votes are relevant in local politics. It's not rare to see elections won by tens of votes there.
- manquer 2y agoIndividual votes have importance not because they can impact the outcome of any election. They are important because they can distribute the keys to power to larger group , the incentives of the rulers align with larger proportion of the ruled than autocratic regimes do. Here is an excellent CGP grey video on the topic https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs —- > hyperinformed Knowing the results of the four year election cycle of the most influential country is just being informed . We are not talking about every gaffe trump did or said during the run up to the election, just the results, anything below that is ignorant
- Teever 2y agoI'm pretty sure that they're aware of the concept but not the term CSAM. CSAM is just the latest iteration of the term we use for the concept due to the euphemism treadmill. https://youtu.be/hSp8IyaKCs0?si=l5BbV39-rxC4UY8t https://youtu.be/hSp8IyaKCs0?si=l5BbV39-rxC4UY8t
- astrange 2y agoI mean, if you expand the acronym it isn't euphemistic at all! I think it's actually a little too specific. It's trying to exclude "innocent" things like selfies or "simulated" things like drawings, but those are just as illegal in some or all countries.
- Teever 2y agoShellshock is to PTSD as kiddy porn is to CSAM.
- Dweller1622 2y ago> It's trying to exclude "innocent" things like selfies or "simulated" things like drawings, but those are just as illegal in some or all countries. Selfies shared between teenagers are innocent! When an adult enters the picture is when it becomes a problem, because yes: it’s abuse and exploitation that we’re objecting to. Unless we think morality is a question of aesthetics, then yes, this also means drawings are not in and of themselves our concern. Why do think this is unreasonable?
- Teever 2y agoIt's more nuanced than you think. How do you feel about 17 year olds collecting nudes of 14 year olds to gawk at and bully them over?
- Dweller1622 2y agoThe supposition that this is “more nuanced than I think” given the particular example you’ve chosen strikes me as quite bizarre. Does “17 year olds collecting nudes of 14 year olds to gawk at and bully them over” not strike you as abusive and/or exploitative? Because it certainly does to me. I think you’ve chosen to interpret my post in an excessively literal manner (i.e only adults abuse or exploit teenagers) rather than the far more obvious alternatives I intended (e.g a 16 year old “sexting” their 17 year old partner). Or, put another way, if I say we’re opposed to abuse and exploitation, and then you present me with a situation involving abuse and exploitation, of course I’d be opposed to it. Certainly you’re capable of figuring out this isn’t the sort of thing I was talking about.
- rustcleaner 2y agoCSAM: the digital munitions glowies drop on a target they intend to frame and eliminate. Examples include free speech imageboards, blogs hosting unpopular opinions and the communities surrounding them, etc. I can't run a free speech darknet site because some glowboy will upload CP to it and then netflow dox me to put me in a federal pen if I'm not fast enough on it! The only good fix is "there are no illegal numbers."
- ASalazarMX 2y agoGoogling it gives the expected child porn definition as the first result. It's not a scarlet letter in your Google profile to google CSAM, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to be familiar with the term.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- paulddraper 2y agoIt's the rightist inverted version of "paradox of tolerance"
- Funes- 2y ago[flagged]
- ASalazarMX 2y agoI'm sorry you had to go through such a horrible experience @EndWokeness, but you could have stated an actual biological fact by posting "There are only two sexes", even if there are corner cases. This week I've started to see new users that post flamebait, gore, or even child porn in BlueSky. These get banned quickly, but I can't fathom what's the psychological necessity of people like you following the "wokes" to a new platform when they just left X to be out of your way.
- Funes- 2y ago[flagged]
- Jensson 2y agoSince gender is a social construct with no physical meaning it means he isn't wrong, everyone is allowed to decide how many genders there are in their own mind. His social construct just has 2 genders, others might have more.
- AlexeyBelov 2y agoI think this is not quite correct. Social construct doesn't imply that everyone decides for themselves and all those decisions are equally valid.
- kenmacd 2y agoAdding a content warning to the account/post seems about right to me. Someone that creates an account just to immediately post something like this is very likely not following the community guidelines. It's not like it was posted with any research, or as an opinion, or even on a thread on that topic. It's unlikely to have been posted with any altruistic intentions. It's much more likely to have been posted from a base of hate and with the intent to cause harm. Heck, that you have an issue with this and think that it is 'extreme censorship' makes me much more likely to be suspect of your intention behind future posts here. That you frame this action as being 'banned' when the account wasn't actually banned only adds to that.
- OutOfHere 2y ago[flagged]
- whaaaaat 2y agoModeration is orthogonal to free speech. They are separate concerns.
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoHow does that make any sense? More moderation clearly means speech is less free, in that you are blocking some of it (whether for good reason or not)
- jp_nc 2y agoI do not have a right to put signs promoting my beliefs in your front yard. Preventing me from doing that is not a prohibition of free speech. What’s going to slay me is that the group that bitched and moaned about twitter preventing free speech have turned it into a hellhole nobody wants to be in. Now they will come over and say the same about Blue Sky??? Guys - you can post your ridiculous nonsense on X… nobody is infringing on your right to free speech.
- anon291 2y agoIf you live in California, you have every right to say what you want even in privately owned spaces so long as they're regularly opened to the public. More states should be like this and enforce it
- hn_acker 2y agoSuch a law doesn't apply to a social media site [1]. [1] Supreme Court Signals Loud And Clear That Social Media Sites Are Not Public Forums That Have To Allow All Speech: https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/18/supreme-court-signals-loud-clear-that-social-media-sites-are-not-public-forums-that-have-to-allow-all-speech/ https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/18/supreme-court-signals-lo...
- hipadev23 2y agoDue to how easy it is to setup accounts and post on Bluesky, it’s likely many of the same operatives behind the propaganda and bot armies on Twitter are now pushing the same vitriolic content, and triggering these reports. If they can negatively impact Bluesky at a critical moment, it’ll reduce the flow of users who will quickly surmise “oh this is just like twitter”
- ranger_danger 2y agoHow would they make it harder / reduce bots without sacrificing privacy (such as SMS/ID verification/etc.)? I think if you can realistically solve that you'd be a millionaire already.
- hipadev23 2y agoI don’t think you realistically can. I’d instead approach it from limiting the reach of new accounts until proven as good actors. Or switch it back to invite only, as there’s a massive userbase now, and if you invite a problematic account it becomes a problem for your account too. Operate on a vouch system.
- fullstackchris 2y ago> good actors Aha... dont be naïve... what is the definition of "good" in 2024? Take the US population for example... 50% will say your intentions are "good", the other half will not!
- rizky05 2y agoThis still better than existing system.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y agoSo maybe think with your own head instead of just taking the average of everyone else's opinion.
- 2y ago
- voat 2y agoI'm interested to see how Bluesky ends up handling bad actors in the long-term. Will they have the resources to keep up? Or will it become polluted like the other large platforms. Also, if a part of their business model will be based off selling algorithmic feeds, won't that mean more spam is actually good for their bottom line because they'll sell more algorithmic feeds that counter the spam?
- paxys 2y agoThe AT Protocol already accounts for this. There will eventually be community-built content labelers and classifers that you can subscribe to to rank and moderate your own feed however you want.
- luckylion 2y agoI understand the moderators working for the big social networks have a terrible job and often see the worst the internet has to offer. Who is going to do that job as a volunteer? Or is that expected to be solved by technology? Hard to imagine them achieving what Google, Facebook etc could not reliably.
- dartos 2y agoThe internet has been run on volunteer moderators for a long long long long long time.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoindeed. and I think the one thing we can agree on is that moderation does not scale gracefully. We aren't in the 00's anymore.
- bdangubic 2y agoyou really think Google/Facebook/… can’t do it reliably? :-)
- 2y ago
- shams93 2y agoI saw what happened on threads, essential CSA material flooding in, very very creepy so I stopped using threads.
- AzzyHN 2y agoBlegh. Hopefully they're using some computer assistance, like PhotoDNA or Project Arachnid
- James_K 2y agoDo they have any way to make money yet?
- CharlesW 2y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2024/10/24/24278666/bluesky-working-on-premium-subscription https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/24/24278666/bluesky-working...
- jmyeet 2y agoThis is the big challenge of any platform for user-generated content and it's incredibly difficult to scale, do well and be economical. A bit like CAP, it's almost like "pick 2". You will have to deal with: - CSAM - Lower-degree offensive material eg Youtube had an issue a few years ago where (likely) predators were commenting timestamps on inocuous videos featuring children or on Tiktok videos with children get saved way more often. I would honestly advise any parent to never publicly post videos or photos of your children to any platform, ever. - Compliance with regulation in different countries (eg NetzDG in Germany); - Compliance with legal orders to take down content - Compliance with legal orders to preserve content - Porn, real or AI - Weaponization of reporting systems to silence opinions. Anyone who uses Tiktok is familiar with this. Tiktok clearly will simply take down comments and videos when they receive a certain number of reports without it ever being reviewed by a human, giving you the option to appeal - Brigading - Cyberbullying and harassment This is one reason why "true" federation doesn't really work. Either the content on Bluesky (or any other platform) has to go through a central review process, in which case it's not really federated, or these systems need to be duplicated across more than one node.
- sailfast 2y agoAgreed - moderation at scale is a tough and expensive problem to get right. That said, I wonder how much these days it would take to get it working well enough using existing LLMs. I'm not sure how much you would need to do that wasn't a bit off the shelf if you were mostly trying to keep your safe harbor protections / avoid regulator scorn.
- egypturnash 2y agoI wonder how they're planning to pay for people to deal with these reports.
- CharlesW 2y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2024/10/24/24278666/bluesky-working-on-premium-subscription https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/24/24278666/bluesky-working...
- bigbones 2y agoI think the central nature of moderation needs fixed, rather than moderation itself. Real world moderation doesn't work by having a central censor, it involves like-minded people identifying into a group and having their access to conversation enabled by that identification. When the conversation no longer suits the group, the person is no longer welcome. I think a technical model of this could be made to work. Looked semi-seriously at doing a Twitter clone around the time Bluesky was first announced, and to solve this I'd considered something like GitHub achievement badges (e.g. organization membership), except instead of a static number, these could be created by anyone, and trust relationships could exist between them. For example, a programming language community might have existing organs who might wish to maintain a membership badge - the community's existing CoC would necessarily confer application of this badge to a user, thus extending the existing expectation for conduct out from the community to that platform. Since within the tech community these expectations are relatively aligned, trust relationships between different badges would be quite straightforward to imagine (e.g. Python and Rust community standards are very similar). Outside tech, similar things might be seen in certain areas of politics, religion or local cultural areas. Issues and dramatics regarding cross-community alignment would naturally be confined only to the neighbouring badges of a potential trust relationship, not the platform as a whole. I like the idea of badge membership and badge trust being the means by which visibility on the platform could be achieved. There need not be any big centralized standards for participation, each user effectively would be allowed to pick their own poison and starting point for building out their own visibility into the universe of content. Where issues occur (abusive user carrying a highly visible badge, or maintainer of such a badge turning sour or suddenly giving up on its reputation or similar), a centralized function could still exist to step in and potentially take over at least in the interim, but the need for this (at least in theory) should be greatly diminished. A web of trust over a potentially large number of user-governed groupings has some fun technical problems to solve, especially around making it efficient enough for interactive use. And from a usability perspective, application onboarding for a brand new account Running on little sleep but thought it was worth trying to sketch this idea out on a relevant thread.
- photochemsyn 2y agoThe whole point of online discussion IMO is not to join some little hive mind where everyone agrees with each other (eg many subreddits) but rather to have discussion between people with different information bases and different viewpoints. That's why it's valuable, you learn new things and are exposed to different points of views.
- Waterluvian 2y agoI suspect that when people love Bluesky so much, a lot of that is actually just the fact that it’s free and has no ads and the population was quite manageable. I don’t think I’ve seen a concrete plan for how it’s going to keep scaling and pay the bills.
- CharlesW 2y ago"With this fundraise, we will continue supporting and growing Bluesky’s community, investing in Trust and Safety, and supporting the ATmosphere developer ecosystem. In addition, we will begin developing a subscription model for features like higher quality video uploads or profile customizations like colors and avatar frames. Bluesky will always be free to use — we believe that information and conversation should be easily accessible, not locked down. We won’t uprank accounts simply because they’re subscribing to a paid tier." https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a
- Waterluvian 2y agoI’m hoping subscription model without special uprank will be sufficient! I’m very skeptical but I’m rooting for success!
- know-how 2y ago[dead]
- toss1 2y agoIf it is an influence operation, the people who want to wield influence pay the bills. Already the point of X/Twitter (large Saudi funding, likely to help prevent another Arab spring type event in their country), and the point of the hundreds of millions SBF spread around. Bluesky's Series A was Blockchain Capital; seems like part of this year's significant movement of crypto influencers into politics. If so, they don't need it to turn a profit, they'll profit off the influence. Just like the corporations who normally jettison any money-losing department, but buy and keep permanently loss-making news departments for the influence they can create.
- bakugo 2y agoThe audience Bluesky is currently cultivating is the kind of audience that mashes the report button every time they see something they disagree with, so this isn't surprising. If the user base actually keeps growing at a steady rate, I don't see how they'll get the resources to deal with so many reports (especially since they don't seem to have a plan to monetize the site yet) without resorting to the usual low-effort solutions, such as using some sort of algorithm that bans automatically based on keywords or number of reports.
- almatabata 2y ago> without resorting to the usual low-effort solutions, such as using some sort of algorithm that bans automatically based on keywords or number of reports. Or you prioritize reports from accounts with a proven track record. If I consistently report posts that clearly violate the rules why shouldn't my report count more than an account that just got created? If you consistently report nonsense then you should accumulate negative karma until at some point you can safely ignore whatever they report in the future.
- beeflet 2y agoWhat should the karma be of a new account? That is the minimum karma that spammers can readily abuse.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoThe baseline model is reddit. You start at 0, and if you get negative you're timegated from replying. HN has a karma system as well. You need 500 karma to downvote (or something to that effect). Honestly, I think something like a StackExchange lite reputation system could work well here. But as more for a credibility system than an authority one. Someone with a good reputation (by the users and the site itself) is probably making more credible reports than a newer person or a troll.
- 4ntiq 2y agosomething tells me 4chan will survive the birth and death of many social media platforms. lessons to be learned but everyone keeps repeating the same mistakes
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dyauspitr 2y agoYeah but what’s the point, most people don’t want to spend a lot of time there.
- newsclues 2y agoThe small group that does has had a major influence on culture at large.
- dyauspitr 2y agoIt does but that’s not what a large scale scalable corp is trying to achieve. You want as many participants as possible enjoying themselves for as long as possible.
- squigz 2y agoSuch as?
- newsclues 2y agohttps://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-far-right-trolls-opting-out-2024-campaign-1234631885/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-fa... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan
- harimau777 2y agoSure, but that influence has not exactly been positive. That's the catch I think. It's much easier to exert negative influence than positive influence.
- dang 2y agoRelated ongoing thread: Bluesky is currently gaining more than 1M users a day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42159713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42159713 - Nov 2024 (154 comments) Also recent and related: Bluesky is currently gaining more than 1M users a day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42159713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42159713 - Nov 2024 (153 comments) The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42156907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42156907 - Nov 2024 (48 comments) Consuming the Bluesky firehose for less than $2.50/mo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42152362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42152362 - Nov 2024 (58 comments) Maybe Bluesky has "won" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42150278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42150278 - Nov 2024 (743 comments) Watch Bluesky's explosive user growth in real time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42147497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42147497 - Nov 2024 (11 comments) How to migrate from X to Bluesky without losing your followers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42147430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42147430 - Nov 2024 (50 comments) 1M people have joined Bluesky in the last day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42144340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42144340 - Nov 2024 (124 comments) Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42129768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42129768 - Nov 2024 (44 comments) Ask HN: Will Bluesky become more popular than Twitter? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42129171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42129171 - Nov 2024 (13 comments) Visualizing 13M Bluesky users - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42118180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42118180 - Nov 2024 (236 comments) Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42112432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42112432 - Nov 2024 (168 comments) How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42086596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42086596 - Nov 2024 (79 comments) Bluesky's AT Protocol: Pros and Cons for Developers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42080326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42080326 - Nov 2024 (60 comments) Bluesky Is Not Decentralized - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41952994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41952994 - Oct 2024 (194 comments) Bluesky Reaches 10M Accounts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41550053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41550053 - Sept 2024 (115 comments)
- idlewords 2y agoBluesky would really benefit from a notional ($1/year) signup fee. That small bit of friction makes a vast difference in knocking down all kinds of spam, at the price of being considered a bit uncool (for having a revenue stream).
- hobobaggins 2y agonot sure why you're being downvoted. It's what Metafilter and Whatsapp did (but delayed until the following year, IIRC). Maybe Metafilter isn't the best example :)
- squigz 2y agoAnd at the price of anonymity, and making the platform inaccessible to those who can't afford the signup fee (which will certainly stay 1 USD per year forever, right?) (inb4 someone tells me how everyone can afford $1) Not to mention that this won't solve the spam that actually matters. What's dropping a few thousand dollars to a dedicated attacker?
- johnnyanmac 2y agono, $1, one time. Despite the owner, this was one thing SomethingAwful seemed to do right over 20 years ago. The goal isn't to make money, but discourage botting. any paywall works and $1 is about as low as you can go in a digital transaction without credit card brokers making it difficult for you. And yes, it really shouldn't go up. SomethingAwful was 10bux back in 2005, and is still 10bux in 2025 (they monetized other things over the decades, but not the entry cost). Can it be exploited? Sure, about as much as Bluesky can add "Bluesky Gold" at any time. When it enshittifies I hope it takes a shorter time to leave than Twitter. >inb4 someone tells me how everyone can afford $1 if you have the time to be commenting on social media, you can afford $1. The cost of electricity to run your phone for a month is probably $1.
- squigz 2y agoI like how nobody on HN seems to understand how poverty works.
- ot1138 2y agoCan't wait for 3 weeks from now when the Bluesky media blitz putters out.
- seivan 2y ago[dead]
- amatecha 2y agoHuh, almost as if hosting everyone on a centralized service isn't sustainable, and self-hosted, federated social media is more sustainable as more people come online? The couple times I've visited people's Bluesky profiles I've noticed they got hit with false-positive moderation actions for completely innocuous stuff, which cemented my initial impressions that the platform has fundamental problems that will probably just get worse over time. People have this proposed solution like, "Bsky should just have a user fee"... But this just reminds me how Mastodon servers are typically run by small communities and friend groups which solicit a bit of donation here and there to keep things running. Not lining the pockets of some large/powerful central org/corp but rather keeping the money within the community. As an added bonus each community gets to set our own rules which can vary from what other servers choose, thus ensuring greater trust and agency within one's self-governed community. Adding to this, servers form "relationships"/rapport with other ethically/socially-compatible communities. When there's a moderation action that goes awry (not that I have personally even seen this happen, just giving a comparison to Bsky), you have direct communication with the person/people involved because it's literally your social circle, not some stranger who will never know/care who you are. BTW, how to prevent spam on mastodon: block mastodon.social (the original "default server" people keep signing up to for some reason)
- hresvelgr 2y agoA large amount of moderation problems could very easily be solved by a standard KYC process. You can sign up and view content without it, but as soon as you want to post, you need to submit a driver's license or passport. Sure, it's a pain but the benefit is people will become A LOT better behaved. I don't think this is necessary for small community platforms but for something like X/Bluesky/etc it is needed. It is absolutely beyond me why these platforms aren't enforcing stronger measures like this.
- viraptor 2y ago1. Fake IDs. 2. Personal identification data is toxic. (You really don't want to be breached) 3. It's relatively expensive to verify if users don't pay. 4. Lots of people don't have valid IDs, but you still want them as users.
- bob_theslob646 2y agoWhat if you don't have to hold all of the information? I am not sure bluesky is highly dependent on users at the moment, I think they just want "real" users and not bots
- cibyr 2y agoFacebook has infamously failed to solve their moderation problems with their real name policy - why do you think it would work any better for bsky?
- ranger_danger 2y ago> people will become A LOT better behaved Have you met.. people? They already post whatever they want with their full name with no care in the world.
- antisocialist 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]