It's worse than that, as the linked TC article links to an explanation of his ban-worthy views that, if applied to everyone, would lean to a ban of probably 85% of the US. (Purposefully not referencing them here. The question is not whether those views are right, it's whether those are mainstream.)
Bluesky has a problem of its user base demanding purity, and it will 100% be the death of it.
You'll need to explain this a little bit more, because the TC article seems to indicate the issue is that he is accused of targeted harassment. I doubt you could design a poll to make people vote 85% in favor of targeted harassment.
> he is accused of targeted harassment
yeah but that's an accusation without basis in reality.
oh, there's tons of basis in reality. How could you even say that? Just a cursory google:
https://www.professorwatchlist.org/
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-makes...
https://www.azregents.edu/news-releases/abor-chair-statement
That's for Charlie Kirk et al, not Jesse Singal.
> Bluesky has a problem of its user base demanding purity, and it will 100% be the death of it.
Yup.
As someone who describes themselves as Leftist, I wanted to enjoy Blue Sky, but the purity tests are insane.
To give a concrete example, I was called a Nazi for owning a Tesla Model 3. The fact that I bought the car 6 years ago, long before Elon Musk made his hard-right turn, was irrelevant. They literally expected me to sell the car and take a huge financial loss (Since I need a car and would then need to buy a new one, and the trade-in value of my M3P is shit) just to virtue signal.
Not to mention that it's unreasonable to levy that accusation even to someone who buys a Tesla today. Doing business with someone does not construe agreement with everything that person does. And while it's everyone's right to decide that they, personally, don't wish to buy a Tesla on the basis of Elon's beliefs, it's nobody's right to demand that everyone else must do so or else they're a Nazi.
The _actual_ trouble with Bluesky is that it's just a retread of Twitter with only a few minor tweaks, right down to the inevitable moderation and governance problems from shoving every user into a single shared social space and having a single centralized point of failure.
It's not 2012 anymore, and the modern mainstream social media ecosystem has turned into an utter disaster area. If you're going to do social media in the 2020's, you need something better, not the same tired ideas and empty promises about "We'll do it _right_ this time around, honest."
Mastodon, for all its faults, at the very least was truly and demonstrably decentralized.
> would lean to a ban of probably 85% of the US
A decentralized system would allow for that to happen tbh. That 85% can exist in their bubble but other actors who see them as dangerous and unsafe should have the means to mute/disconnect.
Wouldn't the remaining 15% be the section in a bubble?
Could you rephrase that please, I’m not sure what you mean
Wouldn't the remaining 15% be the portion of the populace that is in a bubble, rather than the 85%?
Even better: the only “evidence” of Singal’s “anti-trans” views are that his work has been quoted by anti-trans politicians and activists. This is an absolute ridiculous bar to have. Anyone who follows him would be hard-pressed to describe him as “anti-trans” unless you think anything less than a full throated endorsement of self ID and medical transition interventions for minors is “anti-trans”.
Indeed, Singal is a journalist you go to when you want to read a thoughtful, data-driven analysis of a controversial issue.
He's exceptionally skilled at taking complex and highly polarized topics and picking them apart in a way that invites readers to consider different perspectives.
Unfortunately, that in itself is a polarizing approach, as many people just want their pre-existing beliefs reinforced.
Speaking of confirmation bias, do you disagree with Singal about anything in particular? What about agreement?
Who else have you read on this 'controversial issue'? Why did you consider them less persuasive than a journalist with no particular expertise?
Why have you not named what the 'issue' is?
Are 'people' an 'issue' to be solved in general, or just in this case?
If we changed topics to 'what should be done about the "autism issue"', does your opinion change? If so, why? There are perfectly valid questions being brought up by heterodox thinkers all the time. We're not even certain that those people experience emotions, there's literally no way to tell, and we shouldn't shy away from hard questions and even harder truths, don't you think?
Do you believe that the executive branch of the federal government is best-suited to dealing with undesirable minorities generally? If so, what national-level 'solutions' currently being discussed in the halls of power are your favorites?
In the spirit of cooperation, I'll go first. Openly trial-ballooning the revocation of the second amendment for trans people is my favorite in terms of pure audacity.
What's with this barrage of questions? Pick one or two if you want a conversation. I'm not interested in an interrogation.
> unless you think anything less than a full throated endorsement
That is absolutely how some of the more "passionate" activist types have been for the past 5+ years on a number of social topics, not just trans.
Which ones? Everyone in this thread is afraid to stand on their beliefs and I find that annoying. Just say what you mean!
First though, a clarifying question, do you think the civil-rights movement, as it existed in history, was 'too passionate'?
If not, in what specific way is the current 'activist' movement worse than those movements of our recent past?
Which civil rights organization has gone too far recently and what is the preferred middle ground that you do accept?
QED
[flagged]
I wanted to give you (and the website you linked) the benefit of the doubt since with all the accusations they make there is a link in there. I thought it was sources of Jesse actually doing any of this stuff (which he didn't but I am willing to be proven wrong) .. but no. Those links are all just internal info dumps and almost nothing of the accusations on the page is sourced .. at all.
Right, the website lists the accusations with links, but the links seem unrelated to the accusations.
For example, I'd expect "criticizing expert medical and scientific consensus on healthcare for our minors" to link to some kind of article describing what Jesse Singal said about this topic and why it's incorrect, but instead it links to a general page about "healthcare providers serving gender diverse youth" that doesn't even mention anything about the accused person or their writings.
> I'm fine with labelling this person "anti trans"
You should probably at least give Jesse the right of reply here: https://unherd.com/2023/11/the-rage-behind-transgender-map/
Why
How dare they write for... The Atlantic!
Why are some people like this?
That's the one thing you pick up?
I had never heard of Singal but I went ahead and started following him. Thanks!
How exciting
>if applied to everyone, would lean to a ban of probably 85%
I'm not American but looking in from the outside i can't figure out anything 85% of you would agree on there right now.
"People who disagree with me should not be allowed to speak" is definitely up there.
Even that only applies to one side of the political aisle
It really really doesn't. If you pay attention, $yourside does it just as much as - possibly even more than - $otherside.
As evidence, consider the fact that from your comment, I literally have absolutely no idea which political side you are on.
Dolly Parton!
Facebook and Twitter no longer bother with moderation, do you think the experience on those platforms is better or worse than 5 years ago?
It used to be common sense to immediately ban creeps of all stripes, especially the obvious ones. Singal certainly qualifies. Putting aside the super annoying 'just asking questions' vitriol that he publishes to national papers, his pdf-file chat log stuff alone would warrant an instant perma from me without a second thought.
Speaking to your broader point about the 'death' of a platform. The people that made bsky what it is now (good and ill) are precisely the people you are blaming for its downfall, which is weird. Normally when you run a business you want your users to remain so that you might profit.
Relatedly, I'm very very tired of the 4chan/crypto/ai gas-leak that has enshittified everything, aren't you?
I've seen bsky users chat casually about their rpe and death-threat ratio before and after leaving twitter, and for that alone, I would choose the 'threat lite' platform for as long as it remained so.
> "The question is not whether those views are right, it's whether those are mainstream."
I don't agree that this is the question, nor do I agree with the your unsupported number. This isn't an election, and popularism is a coward's appeal. Was the Gaza genocide not a genocide until the polls caught up with what we could all see was happening?
I don't even think you believe what your wrote. If the 'views' in question are truly shared by 85%!* of a population that never agrees on anything, then surely there's no problem with sharing them on this forum? A guarantee of 85% positive karma is awaiting you if you just speak your truth. It's the Trump era, and you can say the 'r-word' and the 't-slur' now. What was actually holding you back?
> This isn't an election, and popularism is a coward's appeal.
These platforms were supposed to be the "digital town square". Implicit in that is the idea that anyone and everyone can discuss and share their ideas. When would you remove someone from an actual town square? Only when they are being extremely disruptive or violent.
Further, it cannot be a "town square" if half the town isn't allowed to be there.
"digital town square"
These are privately owned for-profit hundred-billion+ dollar publicly traded advertising companies. These are, almost definitionally, not honest actors! Are you serious, you still believe their marketing copy from 8 years ago verbatim?
What am I witnessing here?
> Facebook and Twitter no longer bother with moderation, do you think the experience on those platforms is better or worse than 5 years ago?
I haven't used FB in years but Twitter is very (stupidly and incoherently, but very actively) moderated. Unless you are being technical and saying that Twitter doesn't exist and so isn't moderated, and the moderated thing is X, but...
X then. By unmoderated I mean it's a cess-pool of pay-boosted groypers, crypto ad accounts, ai accounts, sex accounts, pure scams, ai generated underage girlfriends, and actual CSAM, that go mostly ignored if they shell out 8 USD.
I'm sure some actual humans manage to still get banned from time to time, but you can't be telling me that things haven't changed for the worse right? Do they even have a 'trust and safety' team anymore?
Do you have a source for any of this? I've never seen any of those.
Well, except the groypers, but that's a feature, not a bug, as they otherwise are not breaking the law or platfom rules and therefore deserve to be on the platform just as anyone else does.
> Facebook and Twitter no longer bother with moderation, do you think the experience on those platforms is better or worse than 5 years ago? > It used to be common sense to immediately ban creeps of all stripes, especially the obvious ones. Singal certainly qualifies.
The experience on these platforms is somewhat better than it was five years ago, because the people making moderation decisions for these platforms have been largely replaced by people who are less prone to banning people because someone who dislikes their political speech labels them a creep. There are still serious moderation issues on these platforms, but yeah compared to five years ago there is somewhat more freedom to speak without risking getting arbitrarily banned, and a wider range of topics being talked about.
> Putting aside the super annoying 'just asking questions' vitriol that he publishes to national papers, his pdf-file chat log stuff alone would warrant an instant perma from me without a second thought.
You should be able to perma-ban anyone you want from your own feed for any reason. If it is possible for you to make the platform ban Singal (or anyone else) in a way that affects anyone other than ypu, then that platform is not meaningfully decentralized. I've occasionally read articles by Singal but I don't follow his output closely and don't have a strong opinion about him one way or the other. I should still be able to read what he posts even if you think it is not worth reading.
> Relatedly, I'm very very tired of the 4chan/crypto/ai gas-leak that has enshittified everything, aren't you?
I don't think 4chan, cryptocurrency, or AI have much to do with each other, nor that online discussion related to to these phenomena in some way universally constitutes enshittification or not.
4chan has changed the way that discourse happens online, and it has definitely leaked to X at the very least. Incel lingo especially, you might even use it yourself being completely unaware. I'd call it as a style of reactionary discourse, where the most 'controversial/engaging' thing is elevated and 'ironic' nihilism is the default viewpoint. This is now fully automated, but it needn't be forever so. These companies would do well to learn how to enter the post-exponential phase of their life-cycle.
crypto (and gambling I suppose these days) is a barometer of the advertising/fake user space. There's a fundamentally different vibe to a site trying to trick the gullible into getting 'free' crypto from musk and a site trying to sell you 75% off crocs at Target. You are free to disagree.
AI is the source of a huge wave deeply inauthentic and frankly boring/weird content. This reduces the signal/noise ratio, and thus the perceived value of any website. Again, your are free to disagree, but to me this is all symptomatic of cyclical autophagy.
There was an article about this issue on techcrunch yesterday, and it linked to a long discussion on Bluesky about whether "clanker" was a slur that should be banned. JC. What a waste of time by some people.