When Bluesky first popped up, no one thought much about it.
Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s announcement seemed nothing more than a tech visionary CEO opining on the future of social media, something that’s happened 100,000 times over.
He spoke of a grandiose vision about decentralized protocols moving away from algorithmic recommendations that would foster a healthy exchange of ideas and fix trouble with content moderation.
At the time though, it was pegged to a real matter. In the back half of the first Trump administration, President-elect Donald Trump set his sights on Section 230 of the Communications Act. CEOs like Dorsey and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg were being hauled before Congress to answer for their alleged bias on their platforms and whether they restricted conservative voices.
Read in that context, it’s clear Dorsey wanted to build something that escaped those concerns altogether, as the very profitable future of social media was being threatened.
Maybe it was ideals, but lawsuits were also piling up and Trump was raring to blow up the dam holding them back.
Now, as liberals flee to Bluesky in the wake of Elon Musk’s complete takeover of X and Trump’s 2024 victory, despite, uh, hating Dorsey for the better part of a decade, conservatives are bemoaning that his utopian dream of a better social media experience that has now been betrayed to make a safe space for liberals.
A recent piece on Substack by Jordan Schachtel furthered the idea that the site booting off conservatives for committing “wrongthink” has committed a grievous injustice.
In the essay “I got banned from BlueSky for committing wrongthink,” Schachtel reveals… well, you can guess.
The history of the site he cites is a little off.
“BlueSky was intended to act as a censorship-resistant and decentralized protocol to accommodate those upset with Twitter’s hyper-censorious woke mafia. Those who were on X/Twitter during the Covid hysteria days are all too familiar with the reality that the old guard of Twitter was quick to banish and shadowban voices critical of popular narratives.”
That take seems highly dubious given at the time of the “hyper-censorious woke mafia” Dorsey was still Twitter’s CEO, and in 2019, when Bluesky was announced, COVID had yet to happen.
But Dorsey did address content moderation in his announcement, saying that, “centralized enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people.”
Read one way, that’s pressure on moderators and companies struggling to do their best. Read another, it’s pressure on people to self-censor their true beliefs to maintain their accounts. Read a third way, Trump was about to let Twitter be sued into oblivion.
Schactel’s essay gained traction on Gab, Bluesky’s evil twin sister, with numerous users roasting the site as a safe space for liberals who couldn’t handle comments like “there are only two genders,” which is what Schactel said got him banned.
“Aaah bluesky! Proud record holder of getting banned for congratulation Trump, 5 minutes after the account creation,” wrote one poster, without sharing evidence of any ban.
““Bann3d on BIueSky after ONE post. Wrote TeoAnon17, echoing the false claim now circulating that Bluesky was a new haven for liberal evils.
“Thinking I need to get on BlueSky and see how long it takes me to be suspended,” wrote someone named fluffycatattack.
“know 17 people who got banned from #bluesky for posting pretty mild conservative memes (not even trump)," wrote @CoreyAdamComedy.
Other users flagged a list of 30 terms that Bluesky was supposedly booting people off the site for saying.
“Battle-tested things that can get you instantly banned on Bluesky. Courtesy of some anon on 4Chan (not me).” wrote an account.
Among the terms were standard issue far-right fodder like “Trump is the greatest president,” “Back the blue,” “Jobs for Americans first,” and statements on abortion, vaccines, and religion.
Bluesky recently announced it was ramping up moderation due to its influx of users. A simple search of those terms shows that while people aren’t kicking users who praise Trump, posts around gender have been flagged for “intolerance.”
Dorsey ditched Bluesky years ago, citing its decision to implement moderation tools.
“Little by little, [users] started asking [CEO] and the team for moderation tools, and to kick people off. And unfortunately they followed through with it,” he said in an interview.
But hopping on any old site to troll, with the intention of banning, isn’t the kind of “healthy conversation” Dorsey may want. And if Dorsey, again the new champion of free speech left the company, who cares what it’s doing? Bemoaning Dorsey fucking up a modern-day agora is lamenting the Buffalo Bills losing in the playoffs. He’s done it before.
Dorsey is now working on Nostr, “a simple open protocol that enables global, decentralized, and censorship resistant social media.”
Sounds like he’ll do it again.
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