this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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Yesterday I read on mastodon that leaving Twitter to go to Bluesky is like quitting smoking to start vaping. Changing a centralized place that lives off your data for another one. Right now Bluesky does not have hate speech like Twitter just because it does not suit the current accounts of its shareholders
I don’t know if hate speech will be able to flourish on Bluesky like on twitter simply because of the moderation tools.
There’s already a giant blocklist of maga idiots who have tried to move over, and if you follow that list you’ll never see their posts. And the unwritten rule of the place is to block anyone who is trying to start stuff or that you simply don’t like. On twitter that felt taboo for some reason, but on Bluesky that’s normal - as it should be, really.
I left Twitter years ago, but I think you could also block whoever you want, whether people do it more or less is independent of the site, the moderation tools are the same. 3
What's more, I am 100% sure that if in a few years Bluesky considers it economically beneficial for its shareholders that these tools "have occasional failures" this will happen without a doubt. This is something that if happens in Mastodon, changing the node you are done
Twitter didn't have block lists. You could block people individually, but not as a group.
Are these details really that important? Is it really that difficult to manually block 50-100 users? I don't know, everything you are telling me are, at best, marginal improvements that do not justify selling all your personal data to a private company seeking profit from those data/contributions.
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It is literally night and day for queer people. Large accounts can’t post about queer subjects on Twitter without harassment anymore due to how the algorithm works, but if you subscribe to a couple of block lists on Bluesky that is GONE. You might run into the odd freak, but community run block lists will keep the tide at bay.
When Mastodon takes user safety practices as seriously as Bluesky does I’ll consider switching.
Ok. You are in a situation of harassment and you believe that giving your data and delegating your security to a private company that responds to economic interests is a viable long-term solution.
There are things that one cannot argue against
I’m not talking about targeted harassment specifically, I mean dozens of accounts leaving bigoted remarks on any post about queer subjects that gets traction (more than a few thousand likes). Melon certainly made the problem worse on Twitter, but there’s a reason prior to that they had an entire department dedicated to dealing with that shit: plenty of people see no problem with it, and it makes social media a nightmare for queer people.
If you don’t have a strong trust and safety team, then you need blocking tools that do the heavy lifting. And having to block 50k bigots manually is why I left Twitter. As long as Mastodon doesn’t have anything that can compete with block lists, it’s going to struggle to attract people who need those features.
All I'm saying is that the moderation tools are NOT the same.
Manually blocking hundreds of people (where those people can still see your posts [how twitter does it]) instead of subscribing to one list isn't the same, and being able to remove your quoted posts from some troll is not the same.
There is an argument to be had about who funding the app and what that means, but there's no denying that Bluesky's moderation tools from the user level are streets ahead of anything twitter has ever done.
Ok, I haven't denied that, the tools are different (I don't even know Twitter's tools very well), I debate whether that is worth enough to accept that it is centralized. If over time they consider that something else is more profitable, they will change the moderation tools, have no doubt.
Coincidentally, the CEO of bluesky posted this infographic today. Maybe some of these things will not hold up in the long run, but we'll see.
https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/113/478/385/983/255/387/original/47310b3e334f918c.jpeg
They have recently said that they are going to have a subscription model for some extra features to curb the need to throw in ads and whatnot. We'll definitely see how that all works. But I do feel like they might be at least trying to set up a business model that doesn't totally suck. All to be determined at this point.
Personally I think that financing a platform like this with premium subscriptions is illusory. I could be wrong but what are they going to offer as a premium?
I think it may be interesting to note that Spotify is closing its first green year in its history this year, for reference.
I think they described some basic-ish stuff you'd get if you subbed, like longer video uploads. There were a couple of perks that I don't remember off the top of my head.
And that may not be the only revenue stream in the end. They may still get financing from somewhere else, which certainly has its issues. But at least trying to figure out something while they are relatively small is probably a better approach than waiting until the walls are falling down and then scrambling.