Bluesky Has a Death Threat Problem
thefp.com
thefp.com
This article suggests it was happyness and rainbow thinking: It's not actually funding the oversight needed to keep stupid shit out of the feed.
(not on either X or bluesky: I decided socials aren't good for my mental health and I do HN and limited amounts of other interaction online in basically focussed and curated spaces only)
Between their “federation” and the ability to make your own lists or feeds it sounded a bit like they thought it was up to users to control their experience.
I would hope they would act on death threats and such but it sounded like they wanted to be more “open” and less “censor-y” than old Twitter, which was already a problem place for a great many.
People love to kibbitz about HN, and it is maybe clique-y but at the same time it's not just one or two people reminding everyone "be nice" -pretty well anyone can do it, and they do. Maybe there's some threshold level where that kind of self-policed experience dies against the tides.
I don't think being less censor-y is a good idea. I know thats hugely unpopular with a massive cohort of people. I don't for a minute pretend its defensible against a reductionist hard-core free-speech view of the world. I just think it turns out living in a completely-free speech world is tiresome. Some restraint turns out to be more than just "be nice" to be effective.
"be nice: or else" basically. But "or else" means you're in a permitted space, not an unconstrained space.
He wrote some thoughtful and well-researched articles on medical malpractice, and this mob descended on him with death threats and other abusive and violent vitriol, simply because they didn't like the conclusions he reached from his investigations, and that he was publicly expressing these to a broad audience.
Then again, then someone's entire world view rests on what is fundamentally a lie, perhaps it's not surprising to see such excessive reactions when reality is exposed. Not that this is any excuse of course.
The Economist runs articles that are skeptical of transgenderism, so does The New York Times. That's one thing.
Singal seeks out specific members of the transgender community to harass. His aim, I think, is to provoke transgender people into doing stupid things like making death threats so he can turn around and write articles on another platform about the death threats he gets. Like a schoolyard bully he has one eye on the rules and is careful to not quite cross the line that he gets kicked out. He confuses people by crossing over activities on different platforms, like if you see that blog post he does not show all of the things that he did to provoke people. On X, for instance, he calls for people to dogpile on people at Bluesky, etc.
First I heard about him there were people on Mastodon who said people were leaving Bluesky because Singal hadn't been kicked out. I did see his Bluesky and it was exactly what I expected and I muted him the same way I mute anybody who blames their problems on cis people.
No he doesn't. In some of his work, he reports on what prominent voices of that community have to say. Like any journalist. And sometimes, he responds when they lie about what he's written in his articles, or exhibit abusive behaviors against others.
Here's one example: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/on-alejandra-caraballo-vs...
Now, you might frame this as Singal "harassing" Caraballo, but if you look at what he's written, he's reporting on Caraballo who is the one actually harassing and doxxing.
There are some very, very toxic figures in that community, and the only reason they started to come after Singal is that his journalism challenges their dogma.
The hell he doesn't.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal
Who should I believe? A wiki that links to sources to back its opinions, or some rando on HN?
Oh, and did you create this account just to reply to little old me? I'm flattered.
> He wrote some thoughtful and well-researched articles on medical malpractice
https://glaad.org/gap/jesse-singal/ suggests that his articles were biased, and used rare cases of trans kids who changed their minds while ignoring the vast majority of trans folk who did not regret transitioning.
> this mob descended on him with death threats and other abusive and violent vitriol
You mean the sort of abuse that many people online heap upon trans and autistic folks for fun? You'll have to pardon my lack of sympathy for somebody who, to my knowledge, has yet to have their door kicked down at zero dark thirty by a SWAT team at the behest of a transgender person's false report.
> Then again, then someone's entire world view rests on what is fundamentally a lie, perhaps it's not surprising to see such excessive reactions when reality is exposed. Not that this is any excuse of course.
As far as I'm concerned, this is basically anybody who believes in God, or that biological sex and gender are the same thing.
That wiki is an atrocious source. It's deceptive, uncharitable, openly biased, hate site that exists mostly to vent spleen against anyone that the authors don't like.
Note the paltering all throughout that article on Singal, showing that the authors are clearly intending to mislead.
> https://glaad.org/gap/jesse-singal/ suggests that his articles were biased, and used rare cases of trans kids who changed their minds while ignoring the vast majority of trans folk who did not regret transitioning.
Another opinion piece. Have you actually read any of his articles yourself?
> As far as I'm concerned, this is basically anybody who believes in God
I agree, the gender identity belief system is very cult-like and dogmatic, and accepts no dissent - just like religion.