You might want to answer two questions before we start this discussion:
1. "Censored" by whom, and for whom?
2. "Censored" for which "right of center" views?
P.S. I should also mention that I can see the posts on that account, even if they all have flags for intolerance by the default moderation service (a service you can opt out of by the way).
"Censored" I mean "flagged", sure. In practice, they're all hidden from the casual user. But really, I'm interested on why ATProto was touted as revolutionary while in practice it powers a standalone heavily politically biased social network where moderators are extremely active flagging everything that's on the right. In that respect, Mastodon is more "revolutionary" - you handle your instance, you provide your moderation, you optionally integrate with other instances. Mastodon itself is used, in practice, to moderate a highly diverse ecosystem of social networks, from the gay-friendly ones to Gab. Nostr, although it's not so widely used, is even more tailored against sectarism by default.
From what I see, Bsky is a single instance of one of the most politically aligned social media in existence; in practice, you can achieve that with any proprietary implementation, you don't need ATProto. I honestly thought that the protocol was engineered to prevent an echo chamber, but in reality it powers an enormous standalone echo chamber that is not moving anywhere, so I was wondering what's the difference.
What you are describing is, bluntly, not happening.
Bluesky moderators take down abusive and harmful posts. There is a daily uproar on the left about how they do this to "kiwifarms but leftishly" behavior under the guise of being "anti-trans". If right-wing centered posts are getting taken down, it is because they are abusive and harmful.
Bluesky popularized subscriber lists, like blocklists. A large portion of the network mass-mutes or mass-blocks anyone on the big right-wing block lists. This is user behavior, not the platform censoring right wing people.
@phillipcarter: of course it's users (and mods) doing that, but in the end, if you open bsky today you see a single, huge, left-biased social media. If you look at Mastodon, you see at a lot left-leaning trans-and-furry-friendly instances, true, but you also see a bunch of right wing instances plus Gab. What happens with bsky today (single instance, echo chambered) is simply something I don't expect from a "distributed" social network. Why is that?
They made a transphobic joke 3 times and the bluesky users that enabled their intolerance filter never saw it. What exactly is the problem? The posts weren't deleted. Nobody liked the joke because it's a bad joke.
I don't use bluesky, but out of interest is this "intolerance" filter effectively a political filter, or an actual "intolerance" filter?
Like if someone is talking about "white fragility" and being intolerant towards white people, or being xenophobic about American culture, would that be likely to result in them being flagged for intolerance also?
Asking because while I don't mind the concept, I find in practice most of the time platforms add these filters and rules as a way to enforce ideological consensus.
It's dreadfuly simple - Bluesky users can choose what content they want to see - including selecting feeds, algorithms, moderation services etc. This situation is intolerable to people who believe that their right-wing views must be forcefully shoved down users' feeds, because not liking and not wanting to see their shitty content is considered an attack on freedom of speech.
What do you mean by ‘obscured’ here? Bluesky users can voluntarily sign up to blocklists (as could Twitter users before Melon broke the API, though they were never a first class feature there). But they’re not _mandatory_?
Like, if you want to consume tedious transphobic ‘jokes’ on bsky, you can. Personally, I’m kind of bored of their one joke, and opt not to.
Right-wingers are so reliably sore winners. X is still comfortably the dominant microblogging platform on the internet, Facebook and Youtube happily boost and feed right-wing content and concerns. Tiktok has been brought to heel. ATproto hasn't found a way to encode communism - just like activitypub could be used for Truth Social - the ATmosphere will turn right once the ecosystem is in anyway relevant politically or commercially. But you could always start quatrechan while we wait
My question was in good faith tbh; I see other protocols (Mastodon, nostr) not being really commercially relevant but being much more politically diverse than bsky. I was wondering why is that - is something inherent to the protocol (e.g. I heard that it's extremely hard to set up your "alternative bsky" if you don't have resources, unlike Mastodon instances, so you're not really incentivized to just do it and see how it goes) or is it just bad luck?
Hrm, I’d have said that Mastodon, if anything, was leftier than bsky (unless you count Trump’s mastodon instance, but as it doesn’t federate you probably shouldn’t). It would certainly have a larger hard-left representation. Nostr, being vaguely crypto-flavoured, is messier.
Given that Twitter has been taken over by a far-right lunatic, one might reasonably expect the alternatives to lean a bit left.
The left-leaning vibe is a historical accident reinforced by user-managed moderation.
Bluesky came at the right moment to pick up lots of people fleeing Twitter after Musk's overbearing edgelord enshittification of Twitter.
Now, Bluesky's robust moderation tools allow users to subscribe to user-curated block lists. Users are empowered to decide they don't want to hear certain viewpoints. You don't want to see cat videos? Subscribe to a block list.
Right wing folks mostly don't care to try Bluesky because they have Twitter, but those that do try don't get much traction because no one sees their posts. Trolling and rage-baiting become unsatisfying when you're talking to yourself.
You might want to answer two questions before we start this discussion:
1. "Censored" by whom, and for whom?
2. "Censored" for which "right of center" views?
P.S. I should also mention that I can see the posts on that account, even if they all have flags for intolerance by the default moderation service (a service you can opt out of by the way).
"Censored" I mean "flagged", sure. In practice, they're all hidden from the casual user. But really, I'm interested on why ATProto was touted as revolutionary while in practice it powers a standalone heavily politically biased social network where moderators are extremely active flagging everything that's on the right. In that respect, Mastodon is more "revolutionary" - you handle your instance, you provide your moderation, you optionally integrate with other instances. Mastodon itself is used, in practice, to moderate a highly diverse ecosystem of social networks, from the gay-friendly ones to Gab. Nostr, although it's not so widely used, is even more tailored against sectarism by default.
From what I see, Bsky is a single instance of one of the most politically aligned social media in existence; in practice, you can achieve that with any proprietary implementation, you don't need ATProto. I honestly thought that the protocol was engineered to prevent an echo chamber, but in reality it powers an enormous standalone echo chamber that is not moving anywhere, so I was wondering what's the difference.
I'm not fully aware of the tech here, are those posts flagged as 'Intolerant' by bsky or by the protocol itself?
1 reply →
What you are describing is, bluntly, not happening.
Bluesky moderators take down abusive and harmful posts. There is a daily uproar on the left about how they do this to "kiwifarms but leftishly" behavior under the guise of being "anti-trans". If right-wing centered posts are getting taken down, it is because they are abusive and harmful.
Bluesky popularized subscriber lists, like blocklists. A large portion of the network mass-mutes or mass-blocks anyone on the big right-wing block lists. This is user behavior, not the platform censoring right wing people.
@phillipcarter: of course it's users (and mods) doing that, but in the end, if you open bsky today you see a single, huge, left-biased social media. If you look at Mastodon, you see at a lot left-leaning trans-and-furry-friendly instances, true, but you also see a bunch of right wing instances plus Gab. What happens with bsky today (single instance, echo chambered) is simply something I don't expect from a "distributed" social network. Why is that?
4 replies →
They made a transphobic joke 3 times and the bluesky users that enabled their intolerance filter never saw it. What exactly is the problem? The posts weren't deleted. Nobody liked the joke because it's a bad joke.
I don't use bluesky, but out of interest is this "intolerance" filter effectively a political filter, or an actual "intolerance" filter?
Like if someone is talking about "white fragility" and being intolerant towards white people, or being xenophobic about American culture, would that be likely to result in them being flagged for intolerance also?
Asking because while I don't mind the concept, I find in practice most of the time platforms add these filters and rules as a way to enforce ideological consensus.
Maybe the only way to figure this out is to try being xenophobic about American culture on there and see if you get censored?
It's dreadfuly simple - Bluesky users can choose what content they want to see - including selecting feeds, algorithms, moderation services etc. This situation is intolerable to people who believe that their right-wing views must be forcefully shoved down users' feeds, because not liking and not wanting to see their shitty content is considered an attack on freedom of speech.
2 replies →
What do you mean by ‘obscured’ here? Bluesky users can voluntarily sign up to blocklists (as could Twitter users before Melon broke the API, though they were never a first class feature there). But they’re not _mandatory_?
Like, if you want to consume tedious transphobic ‘jokes’ on bsky, you can. Personally, I’m kind of bored of their one joke, and opt not to.
'One' joke? It's a satirical website, even a cursory check shows that your tally is off base
Right-wingers are so reliably sore winners. X is still comfortably the dominant microblogging platform on the internet, Facebook and Youtube happily boost and feed right-wing content and concerns. Tiktok has been brought to heel. ATproto hasn't found a way to encode communism - just like activitypub could be used for Truth Social - the ATmosphere will turn right once the ecosystem is in anyway relevant politically or commercially. But you could always start quatrechan while we wait
My question was in good faith tbh; I see other protocols (Mastodon, nostr) not being really commercially relevant but being much more politically diverse than bsky. I was wondering why is that - is something inherent to the protocol (e.g. I heard that it's extremely hard to set up your "alternative bsky" if you don't have resources, unlike Mastodon instances, so you're not really incentivized to just do it and see how it goes) or is it just bad luck?
Hrm, I’d have said that Mastodon, if anything, was leftier than bsky (unless you count Trump’s mastodon instance, but as it doesn’t federate you probably shouldn’t). It would certainly have a larger hard-left representation. Nostr, being vaguely crypto-flavoured, is messier.
Given that Twitter has been taken over by a far-right lunatic, one might reasonably expect the alternatives to lean a bit left.
The left-leaning vibe is a historical accident reinforced by user-managed moderation.
Bluesky came at the right moment to pick up lots of people fleeing Twitter after Musk's overbearing edgelord enshittification of Twitter.
Now, Bluesky's robust moderation tools allow users to subscribe to user-curated block lists. Users are empowered to decide they don't want to hear certain viewpoints. You don't want to see cat videos? Subscribe to a block list.
Right wing folks mostly don't care to try Bluesky because they have Twitter, but those that do try don't get much traction because no one sees their posts. Trolling and rage-baiting become unsatisfying when you're talking to yourself.