@mmasnick done by far the best job of chronicling the Twitter/Musk follies and the resulting social media diaspora. His 6-months-later piece, on where we stand in what I hope will be a massive move to decentralized networking, is a must-read: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/28/six-months-in-thoughts-on-the-current-post-twitter-diaspora-options/
@dangillmor @mmasnick I know it makes me finicky, but:
1) boilerplate EULA terms
2) minimal moderation capability
3) no block feature, then rushed out block feature
Suggest to me that Bluesky really is ill-prepared to run a social network. They're going down the usual techbro path of putting 45% effort into engineering, 45% effort into looking cool for a handful of investors, 10% effort into solving known difficult problems of products like theirs.
@maxkennerly @dangillmor that's incorrect. If they didn't have plans to fix all that you'd have a point. But they did all this with plans to fix things. It's a question of timing. They haven't launched yet (only beta testing) because they knew all along that they need these things for launch. Very different from "tech bros" who just don't know any better. The Bluesky team actually understands this stuff.
@mmasnick @dangillmor Sure, Bluesky has a plan for moderation: the 'community' will do it, via server-level moderation and third-party 'community labeling' and so forth.
Which is a plan, I suppose, but it's not operational. Their primary moderation method is not even alpha testing yet. If it's true they know what they're doing, then the takeaway is they don't really care about moderation at all, it's an afterthought.
@maxkennerly @dangillmor not having everything ready to go *pre-launch* is very different than not caring about moderation. This is disingenuous and you know it.
@mmasnick @dangillmor I don't think it's disingenuous to point out that Bluesky (1) isn't ready for moderation at scale and (2) likely won't be ready for moderation at scale anytime soon.
@maxkennerly @dangillmor are you talking about the protocol or the service? Because that's the part people keep confusing.
@mmasnick @maxkennerly @dangillmor When there's only one service on the protocol, what exactly is the distinction?
@mmasnick @maxkennerly @dangillmor I wish projects I worked on were given such a benefit of the doubt.
@LouisIngenthron @maxkennerly @dangillmor ok. The point here is simply that the Bluesky team has been very public about its plans. And people act as if they're winging it. That's the part that is frustrating
We know that a major part of the underlying intentions of Dorsey et al are to try and make a social network that's out of reach of over-bearing governments. This is a noble goal.
I'm cool with giving everyone free speech, even the bad guys. Everyone knows that when governments create rules to target the bad guys, they eventually start using them against the good guys too. So as much as this might piss people on the left off, you kinda have to protect fascist's right, or at least their ability to publish, if you want environmentalists to also keep that ability.
The problem is that their approach to how individuals curate their own experience on bluesky is based on a misunderstanding of what censorship actually is.
People have a right to speak, but people also have a right to not listen.
In the minds of the long termists, decisions like no instance level blocking and forcing users to publicise their personal blocklists are to discourage and to put a black mark against those who would censor others.
In reality, the individual or even a group of individuals choosing not to listen to certain people is not actually what censorship is, and these devices and design patterns which bluesky think are encouraging open debate are actually painting a target on vulnerable people who are under no obligation to listen to fascists whether they have a right to speak or not.
@LouisIngenthron @maxkennerly @dangillmor the question is what are they building? Because that drives the decision making. People are assuming the choices were made out of ignorance rather than with a larger goal in mind.