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Comment by Q6T46nT668w6i3m | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, the change has been positive. I rarely see feuds on Bluesky and when they happen I find them especially embarrassing because it’s so unusual.

I stopped posting on Twitter around the acquisition but kept my account. When I do randomly check my timeline I’m genuinely disturbed by the disinformation and pseudo-science, especially in machine learning.

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In general that's true, but it's because on Bluesky, blocking causes the blocked person's replies to be hidden from everyone who views the original post. It's much easier to block than to engage with a contradictory reply (especially if the reply is correct and you're wrong), so disagreement tends to result in a block.

This behavior is common enough that it creates a chilling effect for anyone who disagrees. Why take the time to craft a reply correcting the poster if it will likely be hidden from everyone? And so you end up with echo chambers.

The effect is quite stunning on some topics. For example: Quite a few people on Bluesky believe the Trump assassination attempt in Pennsylvania was staged[1], that the Charlie Kirk assassin's text messages are fake[2][3], and that the recent ICE shooter was a false flag.[4][5][6] Notice the amount of engagement these posts have. Thousands of likes, with little to no disagreement in the replies. The lack of feuding is what allows people to believe these falsehoods.

1. https://bsky.app/profile/jlyncochran.bsky.social/post/3ldy2f...

2. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyzvxijtmc2f

3. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyz22btupk2k

4. https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lzlxfrqguc2k

5. https://bsky.app/profile/realtexaspaul.com/post/3lzlwg2ueic2...

6. https://bsky.app/profile/gilmored85.bsky.social/post/3lzm53d...

> so disagreement tends to result in a block

And the issue is bigger than it looks since blocking is public, so blocking gets you on lists of users to block so you'll be blocked by people you never interacted with for blocking/disagreeing with someone.

I don't know that I really want to interact with anyone who uses a block list like that, but it definitely would make echo chambers worse.

None of these are related to what the OP is about, scientists communicating with other scientists.

I've seen the same thing happen in smaller discussions among experts on Bluesky, but I didn't link to those because: 1. It's harder for non-experts in that field to judge whether my claims are true. 2. It might reveal my identity.

The incentive structure is the same as larger discussions. If anything, a smaller community makes it easier to create echo chambers, as you need to block fewer people before reaching epistemic closure.

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