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No, I don’t expect them to ban anyone from the government.

So, you would be OK with a newspaper accepting ads and publishing an opinion column from Gestapo or SS? They were official government organizations after all.

And, no, I don’t think it would be wise to do it: verifying the account does not mean they are supporting it, it just means they are making sure that whatever crap ICE is saying can not go around without accountability.

You are once again presenting a false dichotomy. Banning ICE would not let them post Nazi propaganda on their platform at all.

That’s how decentralized systems work. Bluesky does not control who I get to see.

Bluesky is centralized, they operate the only full-network indexer of their network, they get to control what accounts can post to all frontends
They are hosting the ICE account on their own server and domain. They definitely can control that, even if there were other indexers available

So not only would be OK with a newspaper publishing an opinion column from SS, you would even buy that newspaper because you can just skip that page and read the other interesting stuff.

ICE or any other institution can not buy its way into manufacturing propaganda.

They literally can. Except in this case they didn’t even have to pay, the corporate overlords of bluesky will let them post propaganda for free.

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rglullis@communick.news ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

So, you would be OK with a newspaper accepting ads

What I am “OK with” has no impact whatsoever in “what actually gets to happen”. I rather not waste my energy on the things that I can not control.

Banning ICE would not let them post Nazi propaganda

It would. They would just do it from unverified accounts. Worse still, they would be able to post it and completely deny it if confronted about it.

the corporate overlords of bluesky will let them post propaganda for free.

Spammers also get to send millions of messages every day for “free”, but we mostly ignore it because we are able to filter them out. Sure, it would be great to completely get rid of spam and the phishing industry… but there is no way to completely get rid of them that does not involve increasing the surveillance aparattus and given more power to a centralized enforcer, so if I have to choose between spammers and corporate-controlled communicatioins, I will take the spammers any day.

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- balsoft@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  What I am “OK with” has no impact whatsoever in “what actually gets to happen”. I rather not waste my energy on the things that I can not control.
  
  You are in control of which social media you use, and even more so in control about which companies you choose to support or defend. You are currently spending your energy defending a company that is hosting a de-facto nazi account on their servers.
  
  Let me rephrase the question. If a newspaper you enjoy reading started publishing a column from Gestapo, what would you do? Would you boycott and complain? Would you just complain and keep buying it? Or would you keep buying it and defend their actions by “well I can just skip that page with the nazi propaganda on it”?
  
  It would. They would just do it from unverified accounts. Worse still, they would be able to post it and completely deny it if confronted about it.
  
  There is literally nothing stopping them from doing it now. Having a verified account does not impede their ability to create fake unverified accounts in any way.
  
  Spammers also get to send millions of messages every day for “free”, but we mostly ignore it because we are able to filter them out. Sure, it would be great to completely get rid of spam and the phishing industry… but there is no way to completely get rid of them that does not involve increasing the surveillance aparattus and given more power to a centralized enforcer, so if I have to choose between spammers and corporate-controlled communicatioins, I will take the spammers any day.
  
  I would agree with this (except bluesky is also corporate-controlled). There is no way to completely cut out spam, including nazi spam.
  
  But in this case someone from Bluesky looked at this account which self-identifies as a nazi organization, and hasn’t banned it. It is clearly different.
  
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  - rglullis@communick.news ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    you are in control of which social media you use
    
    I don’t use or support Bluesky.
    
    You are currently spending your energy defending a company
    
    I’m not defending anyone. I am just looking at a stated claim (Bluesky is as bad as Twitter because they verified ICE) and evaluating if it has merits. I don’t think it does.
    
    If a newspaper you enjoy reading
    
    The “newspaper I enjoy reading” is the WWW. The reason that I don’t buy newspapers is because I want to keep the power to curate the information that I receive. As long as I am reasonably in control of the information that I can access, I see no point in complaining about it.
    
    If you want to make a parallel to Reddit: despite it being 99% filled with crap that I don’t care about, I could use it just fine and ignore all the drama. But when they decided to change the terms of the API and they were trying to force the specific channel to use to access it, then I immediately “stopped enjoying it” and went on to work on a solution to be back in control.
    
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    balsoft@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    I’m not defending anyone. I am just looking at a stated claim (Bluesky is as bad as Twitter because they verified ICE) and evaluating if it has merits.
    
    I don’t think that’s the claim, at least that’s not the way I’m reading it.
    
    Bluesky is knowingly hosting nazis. The verification here just displays the mens rea: rather than them just not noticing the account, they know about it and still haven’t banned it.
    
    I don’t think Bluesky is as bad as Twitter right now, neither is the OP. However, what we recognize is that this is the quintessential beginning of a Nazi bar, which means it will eventually become as bad as Twitter.
    
    As long as I am reasonably in control of the information that I can access, I see no point in complaining about it.
    
    I think there is a significant problem in platforming nazis. It gives this vile ideology a voice and a means to spread. Especially given the state of media literacy and critical thinking in the West, a lot of people don’t know how to control which information they see, and makes them susceptible to this manipulation. Fascism is rising through social media misinfo right now, as we discuss this, so it is very important to complain about it as loud as possible.
    
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