Your BlueSky Feed Is Porn You Didn’t Ask For Because Your Friends Are Gooners With a Severe Porn Addiction

A common complaint I see people make on Bluesky is: why am I being served so much porn or things I am not interested in? They will incorrectly believe that the algorithm is broken. It’s not broken. You didn’t know the people you knew as well as you thought you did. Porn addiction is a thing, and porn addiction is especially common with weebs. You’re seeing deranged shit because people you follow have porn addictions and are into deranged shit. So, though you may not be consuming porn, people in your network are. That activity kicks into your feeds.

The issue I have with that is that it essentially normalizes being sex pests in a space on the Internet. That sets the expectation that it is good—attractive, even—to act like that elsewhere. That expectation alienates relationships. Bluesky creates a cultural space that offers an unrealistic, bizarre representation of social relationships, which isolates and alienates the users who stay on there consuming erotica and porn like they do.

So, user repos in Bluesky have a property for likes. Bluesky’s underlying AT Protocol stores likes as first-class structured records in each user’s AT Protocol repository. In the AT Protocol lexicon, a like is an app.bsky.feed.like record type. Unlike a simple boolean flag on a post, it is its own record with a creation timestamp and a subject field that holds a strong reference to the liked record.

That strong reference is composed of an AT-URI and a CID. The AT-URI identifies the exact record in the network by DID, collection, and record key. The CID is a cryptographic content identifier that uniquely identifies the exact content of that liked record.

These like records exist under the app.bsky.feed.like namespace in the user’s repo. Bluesky’s repo model is built so that these repos are hosted on a user’s Personal Data Server and are publicly readable through the AT Protocol APIs. Because of that, the like record and its fields can be fetched, indexed, and used by any client or service that can query the protocol.

The protocol exposes operations like getLikes. This returns all of the like records tied to a particular subject’s AT-URI and CID. It also exposes getActorLikes. This returns all of the subject references a given actor has liked. Those API calls return structured like objects with timestamps and subject references directly from the public repository data.

Various feeds hosted by different PDSs use the likes property to construct the feeds that you see. Since the likes of people you follow are included in your social graph, along with your own likes, you’re going to get served the porn they are consuming. Because likes are public and anyone can write an algorithm to see everyone’s likes, you can clearly see just how much porn people are consuming.

Honestly, what started to turn my stomach about the people on Bluesky is how they behave across different contexts. If you look through the records of the posts they interact with, you’ll see them engaging with political posts in the replies like a normal person. Then, when you look through their AT Protocol records, you see hours and hours of them interacting with every kind of porn imaginable. I am not exaggerating. Hours of likes for porn posts within 1–10 minutes of each other. Am I sex-negative? A prude? No, this site is filled with furry, gay bara porn, lol. You can have a drink without being an alcoholic. The problem with these people is like people who can’t have one drink without drinking the whole fucking day; they can’t consume porn in healthy ways.

I think people assume that their feed is customized for them and based on their likes. No—feeds are generalized based on what everyone likes and then served to your subgraph. It’s not just about who you follow; it’s about who they follow. So if you follow someone who follows a lot of people with porn addictions, you will see porn. Bluesky isn’t weighting the algorithm to do this. Basically, it’s the people in your social network with furry, hentai, or trans porn addictions who are driving it.

The Virulent Infection of BlueSky by Extremely Online, Brain-Rotten Zombies from X Continues

So, it appears a new migration from Twitter to Bluesky is underway. It appears to be some of the most virulent former 4chan users possible. Yep, I got off Bluesky just in time, lol. I’ve been keeping tabs on a particularly virulent and toxic subgraph on Twitter for years. It pretty much stayed off Bluesky because they couldn’t act like abusive dumpster fires there. Welp, looks like they’re becoming more active on Bluesky. It’s not looking good over there.

That they are on the move says something. It’s sort of like how the US is suddenly a place that is hospitable to measles. It was all but eradicated here.

My husband likes to say that you can tell where not to be by where I am looking from somewhere else. I like fires. So if I am observing your platform or community from a distance, you probably don’t want to be there.

Edit:

I had originally posted the above on a now-defunct federated blog. It got blasted to Mastodon. Someone replied and asked what I think is causing this. I debated actually answering, then decided that I’ve had enough of the dumpster fire that is social media. I decided not to wade through social media tech discourse into what will mostly likely be an Internet argument with a complete stranger. I am a techie dragon, and I engage with things to learn how they work so I can tinker with them. I only engaged with tech discourse to get my hands on how the tech works. There’s nothing in it for me to be part of larger conversations. Arguing with random strangers on social media is not an epistemically useful format. I do think I should answer, though. Just on my blog.

I treat social media like I do an addictive substance. I do not believe in abstinence, but I do believe in harm-reduction paradigms, so when I see everyone overdosing on social media, I pull back and shut down a lot of accounts. The Fediverse instance where the first part of this blog post was posted has been taken down, moved to this blog, and this section appended to it.

I often use the word weeb pejoratively. Here, I am using it categorically. There really isn’t an “official” name outside of otaku or weeb culture. I am at the fringes and intersections of it as a furry. My husband is a millennial weeb. With that being said—

The migration is in large part because Bluesky is capturing the otaku/weeb niche of X. X hosted networks that were ecosystems of “anime fans.” These included anime and manga artists, doujin and hentai artists, VTuber fans, NSFW illustrators, fandom shitposters, niche fetish communities, and other chronically and extremely online content creators and influencers. That culture relied heavily on timelines, informal networks, and discovery through reposts, replies, and algorithmic amplification.

Elon Musk pretty much destabilized X’s ecosystems and social networks from multiple directions at once. Algorithm changes made reach inconsistent. Moderation created anxiety and uncertainty about what would get suppressed or unintentionally “viral”. Bots, engagement farming, and blue-check reply spam actively poisoned fandom conversations.

Bluesky is the memetic and cultural progeny of early imageboard cultures. I conducted a phylogenetic analysis of the memetics, which you can check out here:

Bluesky is a competitor of X for otaku and fandom communities. Bluesky has a lot of the aspects of old Twitter dynamics around which fandom culture evolved. Recently, Bluesky introduced something big in those communities: going live. Since X is no longer habitable for weebs, they are moving to Bluesky.

For example, the AT protocol already has PinkSea:

https://pinksea.art

And, of course, there is WAFRN:

https://app.wafrn.net

I cope and deal with issues via personal, private sublimation and not so much exhibitionism of my art or consumption of art. So, while I do make comic books and do a shit ton of weeby art, it’s for the purpose of sublimation, so I’m not too interested in being a part of a community. That’s a large reason I am not active in those spaces. I’m quite cynical, in general, so I am suspicious of any community — and I mean any community, at all. Honestly, I am mildly contemptuous of mass participation or any sense of belonging. So, my art stays private, because it is created for me – and just me.

Bluesky is An Ontological Space for Sadomasochism, Trolling, & Schadenfreude

So, during the initial exodus from Twitter after it became X following Elon Musk’s purchase, many people left but kept their accounts, purposefully to bully, surveil, antagonize, and troll others. People—including me—moved to Bluesky, Mastodon, or both, and used their Twitter accounts purely for harassment and similar behavior. Essentially, X became the place you went to act like a dumpster fire. Because most people within occult niches are highly toxic, I tend to not only block them but also block anyone they follow for reasons I’m about to explain.

I really only use that account to criticize occulture, post nudes, or share YouTube videos. Since I’m aware of fed posting, I avoid commenting on political topics or anarchist discourse on the Clearnet. Keep that in mind. If you scroll through my profile, you’ll see me poking fun at chaotes, posting nudes, gushing about or complaining about my husband, sharing dating horror story YouTube videos, or pet grooming videos. If you look at my likes, you’ll only see gay porn, mathematics papers, engineering papers, etc. There’s no mention of anything political, especially genocides.

There was a person I’d never interacted with who was part of a starter pack for occultists. I blocked them. Then I woke up this morning to find I was added to this list:

Chomsky Honks
Genocide apologist posting cringe from a Starbucks as it burns down around them

So, with all that in mind, these occultists I’ve never interacted with added me to a list. I am neither invested in Bluesky nor strongly connected to their network, primarily because I block almost everyone on it and don’t ever look at any feeds whatsoever, including the Home, followers, or Discover feeds. Therefore, the posts I do interact with are from pockets of people way outside my network. It’s kind of like driving to the bathhouse in Atlanta from a small town in Bubbafuck, Georgia, because everyone in your small town is garbage. Same idea, ontologically.

Honestly, I don’t care, because I’ve mostly moved back to Mastodon and blog more.

What they’ve done is implicitly a form of defamation, because they feel slighted and justified in defaming someone they don’t know, simply because a stranger they’ve never spoken to blocked them. I tend to do a basic block on anyone who blocks me, because if you’ve decided you don’t want to see me, there’s probably no good-faith reason for us to engage in the future. It’s likely there’s some malicious intent later on. As you can see with this, I was correct.

So, in order for them to know I blocked them, they had to continuously check who had blocked them, and they believe people who block them should be punished through bullying. Since the description of the list doesn’t fit me, they retaliated out of malice. The idea behind these cliques is pretty simple: they feel threatened by anyone who rejects their normative statements because it means they are being rejected, and they view any form of dissent as an existential threat. As a result, they believe people who reject them, set boundaries, or dissent from the consensus of their culture need to be punished, and the AT protocol provides convenient tools for brigading. Ironically, these people are anti-fascist yet have a very Christian-like evangelical way of viewing the world. The lack of insight is pretty funny.

I’m the child of cult leaders and members with Cluster B personalities, so I’m not clutching my pearls, especially since I’m already set up elsewhere outside of Bluesky. They do not have the means to impose significant consequences on me, so I find it amusing. I genuinely find it funny how they eat each other. I’m not calling anyone to action—I’m just enjoying the fire.

This person wasn’t aware of who I was. We never interacted, and being added to a list that defames me happened directly after I blocked them without any prior interaction. I saw their account from the firehose and wasn’t algorithmically presented with it, meaning we’re not even in the same clique. Now, if they had said something like “spams hashtags, trolls, makes alts,” that would make sense.

When you look at it for what it is, they wanted to defame, disparage, and brigade—punitive actions because they interpreted a boundary as hostile. This is projection, as they are weaponizing a mechanism to enforce boundaries. Do I care? No. I’m just pointing out how it turned its predecessor, X, into what it is now. It became a place for people to harass others, not a space for genuine, good-faith discussions, connections, or even debates. That is not my interpretation.

Well, to anyone who knows, you might ask: Did they block you because you have a particular reputation? No. I am a Web 1.0 mage, so the networks I’m known in have roots and associations in the old forums. The occulture people who have fixated on me for years go all the way back to Wizard Forums, the psionics forums, the unsolved mystery forums, etc., from the early 2000s. If you’re a circa 2016 social media influencer mage, you probably wouldn’t know me—primarily because the moment I see you, I’ll block you. There’s also a moderation block list just for me and my alts.

This behavior is typical of the culture on Bluesky, so much so that it’s a common complaint people now have—many no longer view block lists as legitimate moderation tools. People are being advised to be skeptical of lists with a large number of people.

Oh, I’m not playing the victim here. I don’t care, because I could easily get back at them. I’m infamously vindictive and petty. More importantly, it supports my point and vindicates me. I’m not signaling victimhood; rather, I’m pointing out a culture, albeit one I participate in. Tying this back to my initial point: part of what signaled the death of Twitter as a serious forum and its transformation into X was the bullying. A while ago, I did a phylogenetic memetic analysis that basically showed how the culture on Bluesky is highly derivative of image boards. But don’t you bully and troll people? Yes, yes, I do – on Bluesky, and the lack of moderation and culture enable it. That’s my point.

Bluesky is an accelerationist and reactionary platform that gives you the tools to surveil and harass people. The developers of Bluesky and the AT Protocol have explicitly said they are technological accelerationists and libertarians. I’m not virtue signaling here; rather, I am saying Bluesky is a reactionary platform, so its culture should be understood as performative, hostile, and adversarial—not cooperative or collaborative. Just like Twitter. You can’t do what I do on Bluesky on the fediverse, because the culture won’t allow it.

You saw this type of behavior on Tumblr, where the population carrying the memetics of that culture migrated to Twitter and now Bluesky. Essentially, Bluesky became a place where malice, bullying, and hostile behavior became so normalized that I’m not even upset about lists being weaponized like this. For example, I’m not posting this on Bluesky, and I, myself, have bullied people on Bluesky. But I behave myself on Mastodon. I am using myself as an example. The trolling is happening on Bluesky. The thoughtful posts are happening on Mastodon. The blog this will be posted on is federated, so this is being posted to the fediverse.

That’s what happened to Twitter. It started normalizing hostile, toxic behavior, so that people left the platform and only returned to Twitter for schadenfreude. I have my own WordPress fediverse instance. I am just on Bluesky for the schadenfreude.

What’s a good alternative for #Imgur? I’ve been scrolling their native feed for years now. It was quite the nice and open community, posting funny memes and videos. But it got smaller and smaller. Now their software also gets more wacky every day.
I reckon everyoneTM is just swiping through #TikTok nowadays. But is there any other friendly image board alternative?

#imageboards #imgurians #socialmedia #socialnetwork #memes

so i have a list of forums, image boards and similar. they are 1) primarily in english and 2) relatively general or music/tech based

https://godteeth.com/misc/forums

i'm curious if there are others i should check out, let me know if there are any you don't see that you like!!!

#forums #oldweb #web2 #imageboards #textboards #4chan #delphiforums #erowid #craigslist