Do you think this is a systemic problem, or just the happenstance of today? Is there something about Bluesky’s architecture or governance that makes it more resilient against that (particularly in the long term)? Or will they have all the same problems as they gain more users and enable more federation with other servers?
Comment on Blacksky Is Nothing Like Black Twitter—and It Doesn’t Need to Be
SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Mastodon was complicated
and full of racists/white supremacists (still is).
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I mean the fundamental problem is that humans are dicks and moderation is always needed. It should also be paid, and supported with counciling and recovery time when needed. Dealing with toxic content is a job.
Federation isn’t very good at this. The tech is great but everyone is a volunteer and there’s (afaik) no global ban hammer so trolls move from one instance to another. Bluesky currently has venture capital to pay for moderation teams, and centralized ban options.
I don’t know how long this can last without advertising revenue though.
SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Though I’m not human, I’ve been part of many unpaid moderation teams and I agree. It should be paid and with breaks etc.
Something which not afforded us when we tried to ask or push for it many times sadly and so it goes on federated networks, people can only get paid if those using the service pay them and many don’t, won’t or can’t.
Thankfully the instances we are on people do support the mods, from what we are aware, but still, a lot more could be done if people could do these thinfs, fairly though not everyone can due to being poor, but some do help out.
We don’t agree with your assertion that humans (and probably others) are inherently dicks, but they can certainly display horrible behaviour, yeah.
SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 2 months ago
I mean, it is a systemic problem in that society is racist, social media reflects that. It could be the one to change that in part if people cared enough to fix things both online and off. But they don’t, they’re so dedicated to upholding the structures of white supremacy and remaining willfully ignorant that they end up caring just about themselves.
Having said that, whilst Bluesky may or may not care about moderation on a global level (I’ve heard mixed things), I think this kind of community building and user level block lists is a good thing, so it may work out for now.
Like all commercial ventures into anything online I do expect it’ll become enshitified eventually, but for now may it long continue and hopefully drive the devs, moderators and actual users of the fediverse to care and introduce better moderation features or actually care about doing it and stopping the many white supremacists etc on the network through various means.
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Thanks for the info. I was not aware that Bluesky had public, shareable block lists. That is indeed a great feature.
For anyone else like me who was not aware, I found this site with an index of a lot of public block lists: blueskydirectory.com/lists . I was not able to load some of them, but others did load successfully. Maybe some were deleted or are not public? I’m not sure.
I’ve never been heavily invested in microblogging, so my first-hand experience is limited and mostly academic. I have accounts on Mastodon and Bluesky, though. I would not have realized this feature was available in Bluesky if you hadn’t mentioned it and I didn’t find that index site in a web search. It doesn’t seem easily discoverable within Bluesky’s own UI.
tate@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
I don’t see them there.
Best thing about Mastodon is no insidious algorithm forcing stuff on you to specifically make you angry.
SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Well, they exist. Probably because a lot of the harrasment goes on in DMs or in followers only posts (or instances block them or they do dogwhistles etc).
Yes, but people are, regardless, still awful and so it’s not a place me or many others would recommend precisely because not many care enough to do anything about it. Which is exactly why I try to.
Kichae@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Yeah. It’s pretty telling that my entire time on Mastodon has been punctuated by black users complaining about how much racism they’re exposed to on the network, and everyone else going “I don’t see any racism!”
Like, ok, maybe you don’t. I don’t. I’m as white as snow, and don’t post about my experiences as a racialized person (not being one, and all). But it’s pretty clear, just from seeing the same exchange over and over again, that racialized people are experiencing something I’m not, and them expressing as much has Defenders of the Faith circling wagons every time it comes up.
Mastodon being a little more complicated than Twitter wouldn’t have been a major blocker to communities coming over. “Hey, join this site”, rather than “join Mastodon!” is all you need. But no one’s going to be telling black folks, or any other community, to come on over if the social atmosphere is at least as toxic as where they’re coming from.
Now with another alternative, Mastodon also needs to be better than “not being Twitter”. And the people who are there already seem to have zero interest in doing that.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 2 months ago
Like you I’m confused at the continual cries of racism on Mastadon. I’ve been on there for months and never seen it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist but I’m confused as to how it is “full of racists/white supremacists” but I never bump into them or see it.
I don’t want to doubt anyone’s experience but I’m at a loss to explain why my experience is so different from other peoples.
FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 2 months ago
There was definitely a problem at first on mastodon with people buying a server instance for the black community, and then not actually blocking all the standard bad servers.
Basically giving them a server full of targets to harass.
I guess you could say setting up an instance and maintaining a blue sky block list is sort of similar, you’re taking it on yourself to see all the horrible stuff, even seeking it out, to protect others.
The blue sky approach lets people use multiple Blocklists though and masto just has the one of the server you’re on and your personal one. Lots of room for improvement.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Comparing the “racism” present on a federated service to that on a centralized one doesn’t make sense. You can say certain instances of the service fail to adequately moderate racism, but there are so many niche pockets of mastodon that most people are exposed to, and moderated by, completely different groups.
To make a slightly more nerdy analogy, it’s like someone saying “the windows desktop experience is better than Linux”. Well Linux doesn’t come with a desktop interface, so that statement doesn’t make sense. Which of the dozens of windowers/distros are you talking about? I’m sure the criticism is fair, but it doesn’t contain enough information to make any real claim.
So it’s not unreasonable for one person to say “I see racism on Mastodon” and many others to say “I never see it”, and not just because of the races of the people involved. “Mastodon” refers to a protocol, not the various ecosystems that use it.
realitista@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Bluesky also has no algorithm in its “followed” feed. Any algorithm is opt-in.