Mastodawn

Elena Rossini ⁂Nov 25, 2024

A PSA for people active on #Bluesky: your block list is PUBLIC information.

A website that tracks Bluesky stats – which I am not naming here on purpose – makes this job super easy: you can enter *any* username and see the accounts a user has blocked.

(Yes I tested it with my account and was horrified)

I'm alarmed by this because the information could be weaponized for abuse.

Muting may be the safer choice then?

Please read up about Bluesky here: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ (by @cwebber)

How decentralized is Bluesky really? -- Dustycloud Brainstorms

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John Carlsen 🇺🇸🇳🇱🇪🇺

@_elena @cwebber

That's a black eye for Bluesky.

It's like publishing the names and addresses of crime victims.

"Unlike on other centralized platforms, blocks on Bluesky are public and enumerable data, because all servers across the network need to know that they exist in order to respect the user’s request."

https://docs.bsky.app/blog/block-implementation

Why are blocks on Bluesky public? | Bluesky

The technical implementation of public blocks and some possibilities for more privacy preserving block implementations — an area of active research and experimentation.