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Eh, I think this is overstating the case. Private groups did come before blogs and social media: remember Compuserve and AOL? The underlying tension is the "da

by pjc50 2mo ago

Eh, I think this is overstating the case. Private groups did come before blogs and social media: remember Compuserve and AOL? The underlying tension is the "dark forest". Opening yourself up gets a bigger audience. That feels like a good thing, until your reach expands to those hostile to you. Every community has always had to deal with abuse, but now there's much more coordinated, intentional attacks on communities, orchestrated (ironically) over social media.

skybrian 2mo ago
Yes, also, the posts that are public appear to be all there is to people who don’t have access to private groups. Some people will copy that example and post in public too. A way around that is to use a pseudonym, but it requires care to not post anything revealing.
jauntywundrkind 2mo ago
There have been a couple attempts to "invade" or "takeover" Bluesky by various groups of haters, and theres two things that keep making it not go well for them: A) since everything is public it's much easier to see what someone is about, what they are doing. Including the people coming to disrupt and inflame. B) Bluesky's blocking actually gives folks the ability to deal with their haters, to block reposts for example. So folks can manage engagement they don't want. It feels like there's almost no cases where communities are given the powers and capabilities to manage the problems. The attackers have been given all the benefits of dark forest advantages, with none of the downside. It feels like there is finally a bit more of a symmetry, and some systems for defense, which until now, no social network has allowed its users. It's far from over, who knows how things go. But so far the antagonist world burners have not had nearly as good a chance setting fire to the scene as they have had everywhere else. I remain cautiously tentatively hopeful.

by pjc50 2mo ago

skybrian 2mo ago

Yes, also, the posts that are public appear to be all there is to people who don’t have access to private groups. Some people will copy that example and post in public too. A way around that is to use a pseudonym, but it requires care to not post anything revealing.

jauntywundrkind 2mo ago

There have been a couple attempts to "invade" or "takeover" Bluesky by various groups of haters, and theres two things that keep making it not go well for them: A) since everything is public it's much easier to see what someone is about, what they are doing. Including the people coming to disrupt and inflame. B) Bluesky's blocking actually gives folks the ability to deal with their haters, to block reposts for example. So folks can manage engagement they don't want. It feels like there's almost no cases where communities are given the powers and capabilities to manage the problems. The attackers have been given all the benefits of dark forest advantages, with none of the downside. It feels like there is finally a bit more of a symmetry, and some systems for defense, which until now, no social network has allowed its users. It's far from over, who knows how things go. But so far the antagonist world burners have not had nearly as good a chance setting fire to the scene as they have had everywhere else. I remain cautiously tentatively hopeful.