While I absolutely do agree that Jesse Singal needs to be banned, I also think it’s both wrong and stupid to *threaten and harass* Aaron and the the Bluesky team in return.
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The problem is that not everyone will ignore him. I have him blocked but a lot of people don’t. His followers never will. Meanwhile he’s sharing posts from here on his X account, targeting trans folks here.
Blocking is often useless when there is coordination happening off-site. For example, users who were targeted by these campaigns have woken up to find extreme gore in their inboxes or posted at them after they became a target on here.
2) it's very easy to create accounts very quickly, so ban evasion is trivial and 3) blocks only work on app, because of the underlying protocol, a bad actor could easily just scan the public firehose for your posts.
And finally, if you let one bad actor succeed at working the refs, then it will embolden others, and then the non-bad users will leave, and you'll end up with Twitter.
I believe that if an account is known to engage in TOS-violating harassment behavior, the issue is that a lot of people aren’t going to know that that person is a threat and should be blocked.
And it’s also true it sets a dangerous precedent to allow certain people to get away with violating TOS.
As Faine pointed out below, certain members will bring hoards of followers for targeted harassment campaigns. For the average troll or jerkwad, your approach works. For known harassment organizers like Singal, a more thorough approach is needed to prevent community harm.
A big problem (among others) is he has in the past brought hordes of followers to harass designated targets. Blocking the person directing them doesn't really help.
Right. I would be all in favor of just blocking him if not for the fact that his whole thing is trying to actively bring down harassment mobs upon unsuspecting people.
I have no real issue with people merely having views I despise on here who aren’t actively seeking people to harm. Blocking them is ample protection in those cases - but not in these.
Especially given that the unsuspecting people in question are the ones that made Bluesky cool in the first place. And have a pretty hard time of it in general, everywhere, as far as I can tell.
This whole thing feels at odds with their previous conduct (that I've seen). I wonder if someone Big Stupid is in their ear about it, contributing to their disappointing response.
Like, is someone spinning them, calling this a "free speech" issue when it's straightforwardly another familiar thing?
That's been my ongoing theory, though it gets more ragged around the edges the longer things go on without even some sort of "Yes, we hear you, we're thinking" response. Even a metaphorical loading screen would do.
Plausible. If this is their first rodeo, it might take them way longer to get into gear than you'd normally expect. But, like, c'mon. Your Series A is supposed to buy a law firm that can handle this for you *quickly.*
Threatening & harassing is wrong. But tagging them to point out that someone has violated the terms of service & criticizing them for not taking actions is reasonable. I don’t think criticism equates to harassment. Particularly, if the person being reported is going after vulnerable communities.
I underhand. But the vast majority of the frustration directed against Aaron is not just his lack of action, but failing to address the complaints that have been voiced over the last week. They’ve completely ignored everyone’s concerns, which is only going to make people more frustrated.
This isn’t a minor thing. JS isn’t just some random troll. He is a horrible person who has made tons of innocent people’s lives hell, and this is a site with millions of people on it. It’s one that has become a haven for vulnerable communities.
That’s just standing up for people. If a group of people on here are being attacked, by say a guy with the initials, JS, pointing that out to the people who run the site and asking them to take action is not harassment.
Can we please not stoop to Singal's level? Just one goddamn thing to ask heh.
Also I'm not sure how many of the people who are "politely asking" Aaron to do things realise exactly how deafening it is to have thousands of people doing the same at once.
Except, when he or anyone at Bluesky refuses to communicate (which this is NOT the first time they’ve taken this tactic of going radio silent when there’s controversy), it’s only going to cause frustration and the amount of people demanding a response will increase
Like, are we seriously telling people to stop calling on Bluesky and him to follow their TOS because it’s too many people? When there’s no other option for recourse?
I’m just not sure what exactly the “correct” way to voice complaints is for people when there’s been a complete refusal to even acknowledge the growing anger of a sizable portion of active Bluesky users.
The thing is, I don’t know if there is a “correct” way at this point—if you think of the admins as people with however many million followers, it doesn’t actually matter how stuff is phrased at this point. There’s simply too many comments for any given human to parse them all.
There's a public petition about to go out, there are people pledging not to buy bsky+, and there are people emailing with concrete evidence of Singal breaking ToS to [email protected]
A great deal of the trouble seems to be people expecting this to resolve in hours or days, when it’s probably more of a “consult three lawyers over two weeks” issue. They’ve got to send memos up the chain of command and then back down again.
They could be doing everything up to preparing for years of court cases, or they could be doing nothing, no communication means we can't know and vulnerable people ran out of goodwill to give a long time ago
The problem is that the first thing a lawyer is going to tell them is “don’t make a statement until you have a strategy”. There are a lot of ways even the most benign words can be misinterpreted. Its frightening and alienating for people being harassed by a bad actor. But there’s no instafix either.
They’ve clearly got intra-office coordination, which is a good sign for a company scaling up so rapidly. I’m hopeful they come to the correct decision even if it takes some time.
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Because I've seen a few "This is death for bluesky" posts already and those kinds of dramatics don't really add much to any argument.
What about just ignoring or individually muting/blocking problematic accounts?
Back on Xitter, my policy was: insta-block for anyone who came in w insults, hatred, porno, Russian/MAGA bot behavior, etc.
Genuine question about need for system-wide response here. Tks
And it’s also true it sets a dangerous precedent to allow certain people to get away with violating TOS.
https://bsky.app/profile/faineg.bsky.social/post/3ld2w5fyzrs2n
Other accounts like LoTT did that and were suspended, but not until they did and were reported for it.
And he’s working on it. Posting unredacted screenshots of the threats he’s getting.
That’s a lot to block. And for people already in a vulnerable state with the election can cause mental harm.
Like, is someone spinning them, calling this a "free speech" issue when it's straightforwardly another familiar thing?
anything else: no
Also I'm not sure how many of the people who are "politely asking" Aaron to do things realise exactly how deafening it is to have thousands of people doing the same at once.
And if radio silence is bluesky’s answer to the harassment of the trans community, we may need to do the same thing.
Instead, it's radio silence (with the occasional snarky rejoinder) which doesn't read to most people as 'we're taking this seriously'.
A post saying something like "We see the problem and we're 1/
https://bsky.app/profile/julieofthespirits.bsky.social/post/3ld2ri5o54s2r
Oh, there will be bans, but it won’t be Singal.
Aaron did briefly follow someone linked to Protasia. Guy had T&S in his bio. Unfollowed when he realized who it was.