> However, as time has gone by, Bluesky’s traffic has declined (X’s has as well) and some of its users have become increasingly upset at its moderation decisions, including allowing U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and anti-trans writer Jesse Singal to remain as users of the platform.
So the expectation is that the vice president of the United States should be banned because he says stuff people don't like? What's the benefit of ignoring reality like this? He's not going to magically disappear if Bluesky bans him - indeed he'll remain VP with all the power that entails.
This is worse than performative activism, it's like some kind of political denialism. You can't change reality by pretending it doesn't exist.
I don’t use bluesky and was never really on Twitter that much if at all but does bluesky not have an ignore feature? If you don’t want to hear from Vance can you not just “ignore” / “unfollow” them? Seems like a pretty basic feature of a communication platform… I think even fark.com allows users to ignore other user’s comments.
Yes, blocking is fully supported. The goal isn't to ignore, it's to silence/de-platform.
Twitter banned the president of the United States in 2020.
I thought that was 2021. Did it happen earlier too?
Correct. Got me by a month.
When speech is violence, allowing someone a platform is akin to being party to and supporting <insert -ism>.
Speech is not violence.
True. People define the speech of others as violence because they think it makes a violent response into self defense. It isn't true and never has been. If you're responding to speech with violence... you're the baddie.
I think packetlost knows that. I think the argument being put forward was that "if you are the kind of person that thinks that speech is violence, then you would believe that allowing someone a platform..."
This was sarcasm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiction
Don't be naive.
Ouch!
What is this for kind of logic. So if you have a store, and you happen to have a client that smashes someone else's head in your shop, then that means in your logic that you as a shop owner are guilty of violence.
But I guess you say you should know the reputation of every person coming into your shop, and if their reputation is deemed inappriopriate by a certain group, they should not be allowed into the shop to prevent them from harassing any other customers.
But how are you gonna regulate that? Who is gonna decide who is inappropriate and who isn't?
I think we already have a fairly well organized system for that: law & order. If someone breaks laws, they are punished for it. So if someone is violent, whether it's inside or outside a shop, they can be punished for it.
And you as a shop owner don't have to also individually take the effort to investigate and punish the individual. Although if you want to you have the freedom to; it's your shop in the end.
Speech is not violence, guilt by association is undemocratic, and this hypothesis of de-platforming as a tactic to limit uncouth ideas was thoroughly tested over the last ~15 years and demonstrably shown to be false: Trump, Alex Jones, and many others were banned across platforms. One of these people now sits in the White House, in part because of backlash to the deplatforming of him and others with similar politics.
It cost $44B to get him unbanned so I think that's actually pretty good evidence it worked.
> One of these people now sits in the White House, in part because of backlash to the deplatforming of him and others with similar politics.
It's not because of anything. Cause and effect doesn't apply to the brain of the median American voter - they live in a world of pure imagination. You could say they thought prices would go back down to 2016 levels, but that makes too much sense. If you look up what they actually think it's like "I voted for Trump because I want to protect abortion".
> It cost $44B to get him unbanned so I think that's actually pretty good evidence it worked.
Good evidence that it worked to do what? Limit his influence and popularity? This is false. His unbanning had little effect besides the right wing giving Musk brownie points, but the initial ban fueled grievance politics and became a huge rallying cry for the right. It was an extraordinary backfire.
> It's not because of anything. Cause and effect doesn't apply to the brain of the median American voter - they live in a world of pure imagination.
I flatly disagree with this. Human beings are endlessly deep and complex. The extremes of the internet cause us to group people together and create 1-dimensional strawmen of them, but if you talk to any American voter -- offline and 1-on-1 -- you will find complexity, nuance, and surprise in their opinions. At least, that has been my experience, with a pretty decent sample size.
Edit: I've been loosely watching the score on these comments, and it's interesting to see how rapidly it fluctuates up and down. For those that disagree, please leave a comment. IMO what I wrote is pretty common sense and moderate, so I'm interested in hearing disagreements.
> and it's interesting to see how rapidly it fluctuates up and down.
I've noticed there are usually wild swings depending on the active timezone. It would be interesting to try to extract a rough sentiment of each longitude, by looking at the timing.
> What's the benefit of ignoring reality like this?
Decreasing the reach of his propaganda. And reality isn't ignored since posts about him and his words/actions aren't removed
All social media moderation is "banning people for saying stuff people don't like". Most people don't like e.g. spam, or death threats, or racism, so social media offer communication platforms where those kinds of speech are restricted, with varying degrees of effort and success. The goal of banning Vance would be to have a social media site that moderates against the kinds of things Vance says.
This makes some sense if Vance was a minor, fringe figure. But he was on a ticket voted for by ~50% of US voters. This is effectively saying that the goal is to have a social media site where half the country is not welcome.
The problem with that is two-fold. One, it neuters any political impact - you're effectively driving away the very voters you need to convince. And two, it creates an echo chamber that distorts reality because everywhere you look people are agreeing with you. Then 2028 rolls around and you're shocked that "the bad guys" won again.
> This is effectively saying that the goal is to have a social media site where half the country is not welcome.
That seems like a good goal. I want to chat with friends about formula one or whatever, not have to have everything messed up by some weirdo who always wants to debate whether minorities have rights.
I don't like Vance at all, but him being on the same social media platform as you isn't the same thing as him showing up uninvited to your formula one conversation.
Sure, but banning him sends a signal to people who do like them that they also aren't welcome.
Exactly the GP's point though, that's essentially sending an indicator to 50% of the population that they're not welcome on the platform. Do you really think a platform that performs actions like that will be successful? In practice, it obviously just creates echo chambers where fringe beliefs are painted as the common majority, because all dissenting views are silenced.
Why wouldn't it be successful? Truth Social seems to be doing pretty well, and no one on the left pretends that they should be allowed post there, the left is happy for those people to fuck off and leave them alone.
Not everyone wants to debate politics all the time. Sometimes they just want to exist as trans people, share posts with their other queer friends and enjoy their day.
> Why wouldn't it be successful? Truth Social seems to be doing pretty well,
Is it? No one I know uses it at all, the only time I even remember it exists is when seeing screenshots of Trump's posts reposted on mainstream media and twitter from his account there. It's essentially the "trump-branded-twitter" and I never even hear of anyone else actually using it.
Compared to twitter, where most people I know still have an account in one way or another, including most notable mainstream figures.
> Not everyone wants to debate politics all the time. Sometimes they just want to exist as trans people, share posts with their other queer friends and enjoy their day.
Well they'd be poorly served by Bluesky, seeing as how someone merely existing on the platform without even breaking any rules has become a hot-button issue.
The whole platform is filled with politics, and people complaining about politics(/political figures). Perhaps politics they agree with are more tolerable than having to see opposing politics on their feed, but I find it hard to believe they truly are attracted to Bluesky for the total lack of politics.
Well, unless they go there for furry porn. There's so much of it for those that seek out such content, perhaps it really goes drown out any semblance of political discussion.
"Someone" in this case being Jesse Singal.
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