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From what I have seen using Bluesky this isn't true at all. It's brutally censored, even more than Twitter was in 2021. Or are there other relays and appviews I
by hntempacct99 2y ago
From what I have seen using Bluesky this isn't true at all. It's brutally censored, even more than Twitter was in 2021. Or are there other relays and appviews I can use that aren't? Is there a comprehensive list of Bluesky infrastructure that isn't run by Bluesky themselves (excluding a PDS)? Or is it totally centralized for now?
- nick_ 2y agoWhat brutal censorship have you observed?
- okeuro49 2y agohttps://bsky.app/profile/realbabylonbee.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/realbabylonbee.bsky.social
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoIt looks like you can just click through the content warning.
- wulfstan 2y agoYou can also just turn it off globally by turning off the "Intolerance" setting on the Bluesky Moderation account - visit @moderation.bsky.app and set it up how you want.
- jayd16 2y agoYeah, I just made an account to test this very thing. As a brand new user it was easy to find. Makes you wonder how earnest the complaints are.
- vehemenz 2y agoCensorship and moderation aren't the same thing. Cmon folks, this comes up once a month on HN.
- steveoscaro 2y agoThis is such a weird logical hoop that that so many people are eager to jump through.
- happytoexplain 2y agoIt's a pretty understandable semantic argument, where tons of people are going to be irrationally biased in whichever of the two directions suits them on a given example. I.e. it's not really "weird", is my point.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoSorry, which two directions? Surely you can have more than two distinct opinions on how to best handle moderation. Which is a fatal flaw to the twitter "community notes" feature, too.
- ilikehurdles 2y agoThis is just a thought-terminating cliche.
- vehemenz 2y agoIt seems like it doesn't take much to terminate thought for you. If you want to suggest that moderation and censorship are the same—two concepts with obviously differing senses in English—take a stab at making the argument instead of just asserting it in, ironically, a cliche.
- hintymad 2y agoAgreed. I think it is indeed moderation. It's just the moderation that shows how intolerant and how hysterical the left has become.
- anderber 2y agoYou can still see the content, right? So it's just a label, it seems.
- gr__or 2y agoThere is a cultural divide on where you stand wrt transphobia. The default appview is indeed not down with it, where Twitter is ofc very down with it. The protocol is ambivalent towards it, so if you seek hate, you could host your own. I'm very fine (happy even) with the bsky team not being invested in that side of history.
- gigatree 2y agoAnd what if you just espouse the normal view that all of history & 97% of people currently on earth hold?
- dpkonofa 2y agoWhich view is that? I highly doubt that there's any view that fits the criteria you just posited.
- happytoexplain 2y agoWhatever you mean, you can probably write about it without encouraging hatred for groups of people based on qualities that, by themselves, are harmless, like whether they feel male or female, are biologically male or female, are gay or straight, white or black, etc etc.
- zb3 2y agoSeems that if I write that "X that feels Y is X and not Y", then I'm apparently encouraging hate. But the real point is that I feel descriptions should belong to the person describing, not the person described.. How is this hate?
- gigatree 2y agoThe problem is that an overwhelming amount of the left label statements not meant to be hateful as hateful, specifically: “there are two genders”. Everything has been reduced to “hate”, to the point that it actively muddies the waters wrt actual hatred.
- iamdbtoo 2y agoSo the victim here is the Babylon Bee and not the trans person they are mocking?
- zb3 2y agoThe victim of censorship is the Babylon Bee, I don't see that trans person being censored.
- iamdbtoo 2y agoThey aren't censored, though. You can still read their intolerant posts they are just labeled as such. What people really have a problem with here is that they are called out for the intolerance because it reflects upon them.
- plapplap 2y agoThe article they posted was a satire on USA Today naming Levine, a man, as one of their Women Of The Year. This quote from their article highlights the absurdity: "Levine is the U.S. assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he serves proudly as the first man in that position to dress like a western cultural stereotype of a woman." Really the only "intolerance" here is from those who can't stand their ideological beliefs being made fun of, and decide to retaliate via the platform's moderation system.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kps 2y agoI think that's in line with pick-your-own — Bluesky has the concept of ‘labelling service’ (with Bluesky as a/the default labeller) and client actions based on those labels (hide/warn/show). If that's all that's happening, the really bad part is contributing to the perception that Bluesky is just a left-Gab (and if that's what you want, there are perfectly good Mastodon cliques already). There used to be a US-politics labeller, of value to non-Americans, but it seems to have fallen over.
- throwaboutbsky5 2y agohttps://bsky.app/profile/sallgrover.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/sallgrover.bsky.social https://x.com/salltweets/status/1857595757882188086 https://x.com/salltweets/status/1857595757882188086 Sall Grover is the creator of a woman-only social app in Australia that was taken to court over that sex exclusivity. Posted a few controversial statements to test the atmosphere and this is the result.
- tedajax 2y ago[flagged]
- unclad5968 2y ago"censorship is fine as long as it's happening to people I don't agree with"
- happytoexplain 2y agoWow, "brutally censored"? This is the first I've heard. What are you referring to? (I don't use Bluesky).
- hntempacct99 2y agoCheck what the default moderation service is flagging. I understand that the standard Bluesky site moderates however they want, and that's fine, but this is a decentralized network right? So a productive discussion is to discuss what other relays and appviews are currently running where the users can pick and choose that algorithm, as content exclusion is perhaps the single most important part of any content algorithm, and the defaults on standard Bluesky are pretty locked down.
- happytoexplain 2y agoThis? https://bsky.app/profile/moderation.bsky.app https://bsky.app/profile/moderation.bsky.app These looks like reasonable defaults - frankly I'm a bit delighted they are configurable. A lot of these are things most social platforms would outright ban without an opt-out. I think it makes sense to start medium-narrow and let users broaden it (not to mention it's kind to new users - though I understand that kindness is a bit dead in our culture currently, since it's been falsely accused of being mutually incompatible with having hard, real conversations). And I do get the pros and cons - I get the argument about starting broad and making the user narrow it down. But, specifically, I think "brutally censored" is pretty dramatic.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> It's brutally censored, even more than Twitter was in 2021 ??? You can literally post porn on twitter. You could in 2021, too. Pretending it was censoring people seems asinine.
- spacephysics 2y agoThey had a massive amount of reports that they can hardly keep up with. Their “safety” team will be costly and grow very large! https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/17/24298790/bluesky-moves-deeper-into-moderation-hell https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/17/24298790/bluesky-moves-d...
- josefresco 2y ago> Bluesky Safety team posted Friday that it received 42,000 moderation reports in the preceding 24 hours (versus 360,000 in all of 2023). This sounds more like an attack then a byproduct of a growth bump.
- pessimizer 2y agoIt's mass reporting. It worked on old twitter, and it works on new old twitter.
- seneca 2y agoAgreed. I spent about 10 minutes on bsky before deciding it was a blatant, seemingly intentional, echo chamber and abandoned any interest.
- happytoexplain 2y ago10 minutes?? That sounds like only enough time to see "too many" opinions you disagree with and "not enough" that you agree with, which is the shallow definition of "echo chamber" (and probably the de facto definition at this point, unfortunately).
- vehemenz 2y agoIt was in the beginning, but it's gotten better as more people have joined. Of course, some people just claim "echo chamber" when there's not enough political extremism, which seems like a false equivalence.
- kubb 2y agoFor anyone wondering, the "brutal censorship" is that a post making fun of a trans person is hidden (but can be clicked on and viewed) and flagged as intolerance.
- tedajax 2y ago[flagged]
- hnpolicestate 2y agoBluesky is just another r/politics. Irrelevant to everyone but an extreme fringe minority of Western liberals. I'm surprised how much I see posts about it on HN.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago> an extreme fringe minority of Western liberals We're on a silicon valley forum my guy, it's as western as it gets before wrapping around and becoming east again!
- rsynnott 2y ago> From what I have seen using Bluesky this isn't true at all. It's brutally censored, even more than Twitter was in 2021. Where are you getting that from? Do you mean blocklists? Like, you are not required to use blocklists. They are not even the default; you have to affirmatively use them.
- tootie 2y agoPersonally, I'm 100% on board with heavy moderation. I think it's a complete myth that unfettered free speech will make for a useful platform. Spam, abuse, disinformation, hate speech. They all make the platform less valuable.
- zb3 2y ago*as long as it fits my views
- tootie 2y agoI think this isn't as hard to solve as you may think. There is definitely gray area to all of them, but there's plenty of stuff that is obviously unacceptable. On X right now, it is common to find straight up Nazi propaganda flourishing. That is within the bounds of free speech per the first amendment, but it's almost universally (excluding the actual nazis) derided as hate speech. I don't think banning Nazis is an impossible task nor is it a slippery slope. Getting it exactly right is impossible, but there's plenty you can do without controversy and a robust appeal process could mitigate any gray areas. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-mus...
- zb3 2y agoIt is a slippery slope because there's a disagreement as to who qualifies as one. We might agree on a given definition, but then it might turn out that the person doing the moderation would regard majority of the population as Nazi, which would be ridiculous and'd actually obscure the actual tragedies that happened...
- tootie 2y agoUltimately it's the platform's choice where to draw the line and it should be a function of their ethos and the observed value to users. It seems pretty clear that Twitter functioned extremely well with a robust moderation team of highly professional experts with clear guidance. Switching to a "free speech" model + community notes has resulted in the platform losing it's appeal. Conversely, BlueSky's model has been rapidly attracting users with their moderation policy. So, active moderation is better than none. QED. Idk if it's because HN is populated with engineers who can't wrap their head around a non-deterministic solution, but a team of humans with a set of goals are capable of dealing with a problem that doesn't have a concretely defined algorithm.