Bluesky at a crossroads as users petition to ban Jesse Singal | Hacker News Reader

Bluesky at a crossroads as users petition to ban Jesse Singal

techcrunch.com

18 pointsbikbokbak6 comments

I fully support trans rights and LGBTQIA+ rights, but I don’t understand the push for censorship. I’m not familiar with or following Jesse Singal, but if their content isn’t illegal or inciting violence, wouldn’t it be simpler for people to just block them if they disagree? Bluesky has great blocking support. Sometimes I think it’s even healthy for me to see posts from those I strongly disagree with.

could not agree with you more.

It seems to be written by someone who doesn't understand BlueSky. It isn't twitter or Facebook where the posts you see are determined by some hidden algorithm. You get to choose the algorithm that chooses what posts you see. Many of them are open source.

So if you want BlueSky to be a nice safe place without Jesse Signal and his ilk, just choose the right feed. There is no need to ban him.

If your goal isn't to create a safe space for yourself and your friends, but rather to cancel Jesse from the entire internet then yep, demanding BlueSky ban him is the right course of action.

> It seems to be written by someone who doesn't understand BlueSky. It isn't twitter or Facebook where the posts you see are determined by some hidden algorithm. You get to choose the algorithm that chooses what posts you see. Many of them are open source.

The thing is - a lot of OG Bluesky users don't understand BlueSky, since they are ones harassing Trust and Safety team of Bluesky with their demands to ban Jesse Singal. Just read the replies to BlueSky's T&S team post on the matter https://bsky.app/profile/safety.bsky.app/post/3ld7e2hse2e2r

This is misunderstanding the situation, I’m afraid. It’s not about hiding someone’s posts. Singal is “won’t someone rid me of this priest”-style posting accounts to harass offsite and they are getting flooded with death and rape threats, pictures of gore, the whole playbook. Now this would of course still be possible if he was banned, but users are rightfully upset that he gets preferential treatment by site administration while breaking TOS and his goons are free to harass people with little to no recourse.

On the contrary, it is Singal receiving explicit death threats on BlueSky: https://x.com/wesyang/status/1867277074341539886 https://x.com/jessesingal/status/1868378941012275316

They are also posting his address: https://x.com/wesyang/status/1867990271214141783

Singal does nothing of the sort, nor does he encourage his followers to. He reports on a politically charged topic in a fair way, and criticizes bad reporting.

Painting Singal as the perpetrator in this situation is an absurd reversal of what is actually going on.

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