← Back to context

Comment by forgotaccount3

3 hours ago

I'm not fully aware of the tech here, are those posts flagged as 'Intolerant' by bsky or by the protocol itself?

3 comments

forgotaccount3

Reply
steveklabnik  2 hours ago

By Bluesky.

The protocol has a notion of moderation accounts, sometimes called "labelers" because they can apply labels to your account. Users generally [1] subscribe to the moderation that they want to see. They can then set those labels to make the application to "show", "warn" (collapse by default, click to expand), or "hide" based on the labels.

1: People using the bluesky app cannot unsubscribe from the bluesky moderation service, but that is a policy choice of the bluesky app, not a protocol level choice, other clients can do as they choose.

  • fwn  1 hour ago

    I'm no expert in atproto but it seems to be far worse than that. Apparently, Bluesky applies country-specific labellers automatically based on your IP address.

    If you register a Bluesky account from Germany, your account is assigned the German moderation labeler with no option to opt out. As soon as I noticed, I created a new account using a US IP address. This fixed it.

    While signing up for moderation sounds very attractive to me, Bluesky's whole layered moderation approach seems designed to maximize algorithmic censorship.

    Compare that to, for example, a mastodon instance (or a forum like HN) where you participate because you align with the general moderation approach cultivated by and within the community.

    edit: I found the following write-up which mirrors my experience https://fediversereport.com/bluesky-censorship-and-country-b...