Dan GillmorApr 30, 2023
@mmasnick done by far the best job of chronicling the Twitter/Musk follies and the resulting social media diaspora. His 6-months-later piece, on where we stand in what I hope will be a massive move to decentralized networking, is a must-read: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/28/six-months-in-thoughts-on-the-current-post-twitter-diaspora-options/
Six Months In: Thoughts On The Current Post-Twitter Diaspora Options

Today is six months since Elon took over Twitter and began this bizarre speedrun of the content moderation learning curve in which he seems to repeatedly… not learn a damn thing. Over and over agai…

Techdirt
Show threadErin Conroy

Generally appreciate Mike, but this is clearly a lot of BS from Jay & Bluesky, & Mike's totally uncritical take leaves me skeptical of the value of the whole discussion of #Bluesky.

"No no, the lack of blocking has nothing to do with not prioritizing it, don't be stupid! We're just being thoughtful & it's so super complicated! But also one white dude got trolled, so we prioritized it & voila, here it is 24h later! p.s. let's not ask any questions about Jay's candor or competence"

Apr 30, 2023 at 8:21amWeb
Show threadGrouchyHydraApr 30, 2023
@chargrille as soon as a White Guy has to be accountable for being a bigot blocking is suddenly a thing, but at least half the pictures i see of that place is people calling each other racial slurs.
Show threadflere-imsaho 🇺🇦Apr 30, 2023
@chargrille
yeah, and he ignores (as in “i'm muting this thread now”) any voices that tell him that not all is as the bluesky people claim.
Show threadDefiance!Apr 30, 2023
@mawhrin @chargrille His cheerleading really undermines his credibility
Show threadSpicewallaApr 30, 2023

@chargrille

Its reminiscent of the way ronald dump does some crazy shit; all his sycophants rush in to defend it as not being what it seems to be; and then the next day he throws them under the bus, proudly announcing that it is exactly what it seemed to be and he's a genius for doing it.

Show threadPelayoApr 30, 2023
@chargrille idk much about coding, but 4 years into the development of a social network protocol is a bit late to start "figuring stuff out" on features as basic as blocking people.
Show threadCraigApr 30, 2023
@chargrille My working assumption is that blocking still doesn’t exist at the protocol level, but they panicked and bodged it in as a kind of “instance-level block” that works only because bsky is (at the moment) a protocol running on a single instance. Federated blocks are a hard problem, as Mastodon demonstrates; it’s something they probably thought they could defer, but running a platform brings different challenges than designing a protocol.
Show threadJohan Pelck OlsenApr 30, 2023
@craigm @chargrille I’ve heard about the reasons why this is a hard problem, but I’m actually not sure how Mastodon solves it? Any simple explanations for an ignorant in federated social media protocols?
Show threadCraigApr 30, 2023
@jpelckolsen @chargrille Basically, it’s just because you go from the platform problem of you can’t trust the client” to the protocol problem of “you can’t trust any of the servers.” Your home server can enforce certain things on foreign accounts (e.g., you can filter out posts from a blocked account or try to prevent blocked accounts from interacting with you), but any motivated bad actor server can find ways around that.
Show threadCraigApr 30, 2023
@jpelckolsen Mastodon can enforce “real” blocks on local accounts, but remote blocks are more like mutes plus some restrictions on interactions. But since remote servers can lie about what they’re doing, you end up just either hoping they’re acting in good faith, or aggressively blocking entire servers.
Show threadErin ConroyApr 30, 2023

@craigm

Thank you, & I agree. Of course Graber & Dorsey knew #Bluesky would be single instance when they launched and none of that touches the basic point people were making that a) they could/should have prioritized blocking as a basic safety feature for said single instance (especially since the engineering costs were plainly negligible enough that they could scramble to push the code over a 24 hour period), but b) they didn't, & c) offered BS excuses that show quite shallow design thinking.

Show threadCraigApr 30, 2023
@chargrille I figure Dorsey assumed that bsky would go off and design the protocol, then Twitter would incorporate it into their platform (as a kind of central index and algorithm). Now that Dorsey is off doing that Nostr blockchain thing instead, bsky seems to be fending for itself, and (as you point out) their handful of protocol geeks are not remotely ready for dealing with all the trust and safety aspects of running an actual grown-up social media platform.
Show threadCraigApr 30, 2023
@chargrille And this … does not leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling that the handful of protocol geeks are going to effectively deal with all the trust and safety aspects of running said actual grown-up social media platform.
https://sfba.social/@williampietri/110288822630493238
William Pietri (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image This, via @[email protected], is a #bluesky gobsmacker. First there's the breathtaking confidence that this this exciting AI thing will solve the problem. As if Twitter didn't have literally hundreds of ML engineers working on this for years. YEARS. Then there's the notion that you could possibly create AI magic without doing enough of the manual work to really understand it. Nope! Third, there's apparently a belief that a magic technical solution exists to social problems that are so complex that they're demoralizing and hard to deal with. Fourth, I see no recognition that they should have had at least some starter solutions before letting users on at all. Lastly, there's the lack of recognition that anti-abuse work, hard though it is, is not nearly as hard as dealing with the abuse.

SFBA.social
Show threadc3141mtdApr 30, 2023
@craigm @chargrille I don't understand how anyone can think it's a great idea to code and release a beta for an app when you haven't even finished designing the protocol or even come up with basic specifications and requirements for how things should work. This is not how professional software development works.
Show threadErin ConroyApr 30, 2023
@c3141mtd Not any professional software development I've ever had a window into, that's for sure. It's sketchy, and Dorsey is beyond sketchy. I'm not about to memory-hole my decade+ experience with his management of Twitter just because someone is spreading rumors that he's "not involved" in a company he started, invested millions (or in Twitter's case, $1 billion) in, & sits on the Board. That's irrational. And how about some transparency on who owns how much of Bluesky?
Show threadCraigApr 30, 2023
@c3141mtd @chargrille Left to their own devices, I really don’t think they ever would have finalized the protocol; I think they would eternally be choosing colors for the bikeshed. But between the birdsite hellspiral, Jack losing interest, and all the new entrants in the space, I think they figured they needed to make their reference server into an actual product ASAP. Unlike spoutible and whatnot, though, they don’t have the time to grow into maturity.
Show threadErin ConroyApr 30, 2023
@craigm Like, this is just *very* unimpressive design. I wouldn't hire a software architect responsible for it. They've had a year & given how it ties into Jack's "blind spots" on the racist (sexist, bigoted) use of social media platforms that he "somehow" has never managed to correct or be accountable for, it doesn't make sense to assume mere incompetence is the sole cause. It's not reasonable to think the failure to listen to Black test users calling for block features is an accident.
Show threadCraigApr 30, 2023
@chargrille It’s terrible product ownership on top of a promising protocol; the problem is the people who own the product are really only interested in the sexy chain-of-trust and schema interop stuff, and are in over their heads running the circus. (Compare to Mastodon, which built a pretty good product on top of a really crappy protocol!)
Show threadCraigApr 30, 2023
@chargrille My overall take, for what it’s worth, is that Graber is smart and decent, board member Jeremie Miller (of XMPP fame) is smart and decent, neither one has any sense of what it means to run a social media platform at scale, and right now they’re only at about 2% of their waitlist, so they’re probably doomed, since they lack the funding or revenue to make bsky itself large *and* not a toxic dumping ground.