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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

The blocklists systems can often be over-broad and sneakily include personal beefs, but overall the bluesky norm of "block on sight on first aggressive contact" is having a positive effect against engagement-baiting.

Hostile actors seem to be trying something else: LLM "reply guys", which make superficially plausible conversation in your replies.

Twitter is really the King Log/King Stork parable writ large. It had problems under Jack, as absentee owner, but getting an owner who is interested in making it his personal platform is much worse.

Edit: this post has already been flagged off the front page, lol

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> The blocklists systems can often be over-broad and sneakily include personal beefs, but overall the bluesky norm of "block on sight on first aggressive contact" is having a positive effect against engagement-baiting.

The block system also being being weaponized at the moment. I've personally been added to a "MAGA Trolls", a "Porn Bots", a "Zionist Allies", and a "84 second automobile extravaganza" block-list in the last few days. I even got added to a list because I subscribed to the Listifications [1] service, which is what notifies me about these additions. But all these lists, as well as their creators, have subsequently been banned.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/listifications.app

It's an interesting arms race, where an optimal bot has better chances of surviving than a normal person that will naturally have diverse opinions.

As I pointed out in another comment:

The right can pretend to be antagonizing extremist LGBTs to get more centrists to support their agenda - while undermining the LGBT movement itself also from within.

If you support people who "pretend to" antagonize LGBTs you're not a centrist.

You misunderstood:

I'm saying that right wing activist groups can use botnet to pretend to be LGBT, while being hateful and extreme in their views, to the point that "normal" people (who are indifferent about LGBT) become annoyed with "LGBT" to the point of supporting Trump etc.

I'm saying that LGBT groups need to be aware that there is a serious internal threat of people pretending to be LGBT while harassing people who are not against LGBT, but will be.

An alternative explanation is that LGBT people are just a hateful bunch, but I'm trying to argue against that hypothesis.

Yeah, it's kind of inspiring to see even the common person is getting used to just block trolls on sight, rather than engaging in it. Something we veterans been doing for 2 decades or more, but good to see others are catching up on how to save your sanity :)

That said, the other day I ended up on a "Transphobes, Genocide Enthusiasts, and Crumbums" list for some reason on Bluesky, while I haven't even posted anything about those topics or engaging in anything like that. Makes one wonder how many others on a list like that actually even discussed the supposed topics?

I kind of wish people had to justify additions to lists somehow, like adding a reason or at least linking the post that made you add this user to the list, or something similar.

We still need to resolve a lot of questions about healthy usermod tool usage. The "open market" of usermod tooling -- that is, with low institutional auditing -- does press the community to engage in auditing themselves, for better and for worse.

With that acknowledged, I have to wonder if the listifications bot is solving the problem well. It's catching every list anybody makes, so now trolls are getting more impact. It gives me some questions about the list feature as we wrote it, but listifications is constructed with a default-trust mentality that really shouldn't apply.

Some blocklist maintainers are very trigger happy. You may have been added for following the "wrong" person or following someone who follows the "wrong" person.

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