Comment on Delusions of a Protocol
General_Effort@lemmy.world 5 days ago
This does raise a question relevant to the Fediverse. Some Bluesky users are lobbying to have Jesse Singal banned, whoever that is. Of course, a hallmark of a decentralized network is that there is no central authority that could actually do that. Implicitly, this demand is a rejection of the very concept of decentralization.
Once people find out what decentralization means, are they even willing to tolerate it?
Of course, a hallmark of a decentralized network is that there is no central authority that could actually do that. Implicitly, this demand is a rejection of the very concept of decentralization.
What, you can absolutely ban people on a decentralised network. You may not be able to expunge someone from a part of the network they control themselves, but you can expunge them from the part you control. Bluesky has this power and has used it in the past.
Yes, but that doesn’t seem sufficient for some. Conservatives certainly would like to remove trans people from the public completely. Aside: It’s foolish for trans people to copy these tactics, assuming this comes organically from the trans community. These people are certainly acting like the heels in some right-wing propaganda play.
Bluesky offers several ways in which users can remove unwanted content from their experience. Easiest is for users to block Singal; banning him from their personal part of the network. Blocklists can be shared easily. Users can also spin up their own moderation service.
I probably shouldn’t go into the details of what Bluesky can do on a technical level. Incidentally, that blog post contains errors.
In short: On a technical level, the Bluesky company can greatly reduce the visibility of someone. But they would likely run into legal problems if they used that on Singal. The EU regulates what can be done quite strictly. Maybe they could benefit from some industry friendly “loopholes”. I’d have to look that up.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 5 days ago
If you’re the kind of person who wants a particular person banned, you probably want to be on the kind of instance that would ban them, and then from your perspective, they’d be banned, so you’d never have to see their posts. It still being possible to interact with them from other instances isn’t any more of a big deal than it being possible to interact with them on an entirely different website after they’re banned from regular social media - no one can ban someone from the whole Internet.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yes. On Bluesky, they could be individually muted or blocked. You can make and share blocklists, make your own custom feeds that exclude such posters, or even create your own moderation service that removes (or blurs, …) posts for your subscribers. Obviously, that is not satisfactory for some people.