[deleted]
Bluesky just verified ICE
Submitted 3 weeks ago by geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/76096330-81dc-4488-9a6e-cb784ff3b4b2.jpeg
Comments
stabby_cicada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Too many people thought that Twitters Blue Checkmark meant you were special. That attitude carries over to Bluesky and being verified.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So?
Any place Nazis are allowed is not a place I want to be. At least on any Lemmy server I’d not block, Nazis get banned
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I get why this would bug people.
It’s a small act of legitimizing the domestic Gestapo.
architect@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Pretty sure American tax dollars are what legitimized ice, unfortunately.
herrvogel@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean they are a legitimate government office. Trump didn’t found them, they’ve existed for over two decades. It’s only their abuse that’s recent.
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Publishing posts is exactly the act of endorsing their posts.
ripcord@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Which no one will read because bluesky has a really great block system
merdaverse@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Most of the White House accounts were boosted by freshly created accounts. They got flagged in multiple lists immediately after joining and their engagement went to hell. After that, they got bored and went back to the nazi platform. Good moderation tools for the community helps.
rglullis@communick.news 3 weeks ago
It’s a good thing they get verified. It means they can not take back anything they post and they have to take accountability for the account.
Do you think it would be better if they didn’t verify it and let them spread misinformation and propaganda with plausible deniability?
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Yeah I really don’t see why everyone is upset about this. Should be upset that ICE exists but not but they have an official bluesky account. This is basically the same as going “yep they’re real”.
This is just more weird Mastodon elitism.
flamingos@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
They completely deindexed Link (spacelawshitpost.me) for not showing appropriate reverence for Charlie Kirk after he died by pointing to their TOS policy on promoting violence, but an organisation that only exists to exert violence on non-white people gets a pass.
hansolo@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
I look forward to them being confronted with views they can’t just ask Elon to delete.
But, let’s be real here, this is rage bait to track people using their first amendment rights in a way they don’t love. BSKY doesn’t need to give up anything on users. Users accessing BSKY ip addresses given up by their ISP will be more than enough for Palintir to find. A few links with trackers provide browser fingerprinting. Easy day for them.
Be careful, y’all.
balsoft@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
It’s better if the nazis were permabanned from their indexer thingy. Otherwise it’s just a nazi bar.
Imagine if in the 30s, some american newspaper allowed the Gestapo to run ads and write an opinion column. Would you be defending them?
rglullis@communick.news 3 weeks ago
Labeling the account as verified and excluding/not excluding from the AppView are two separate actions.
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
take accountability
[Citation needed]
lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
It would be better if they wouldn’t even be platformed at all. We don’t need no federation with Nazis.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So, trying to parse what’s going on here.
Bluesky has verified that an account claiming to belong to the US government agency ICE really is controlled by that agency. Somehow that shows that Mastodon is better. Because Trump has his own Mastodon instance and doesn’t need anyone to vouch for his goons?
Looking at the comments, maybe the issue is rather that the Bluesky company provides services to ICE. Tech companies should refuse service. Huh. I guess there is more diversity of opinion on Lemmy than I had thought, regarding the power of tech companies, democracy, and law.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Bluesky is a centralized platform and their mods don’t ban Nazis.
Trump being able to clone Mastodon is not the same as letting Trump on Mastodon.social
beerman595692@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Every Mastodon instance can choose to defederate with truth social
BlueSky can choose to kick ICE off their platform
It’s that simple
General_Effort@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Trump being able to clone Mastodon is not the same as letting Trump on Mastodon.social
The Mastodon devs made a choice in releasing it as open source. They could have decided to pick and chose who is allowed to use it. It was completely foreseeable, that the software would be used for something like Gab or Truth.Social. When they release update, they know that these will also be used by such services.
This is merely a statement of fact, not criticism. They chose not to exercise power or become arbiters of good and evil. That is laudable.
Bluesky is a centralized platform and their mods don’t ban Nazis.
I get it. You feel that tech companies should deny service to bad people. For example, to a government agency acting on behalf of a president elected by a solid majority of the popular vote.
I agree that the voters got it wrong, but I don’t think that the rich and powerful vetoing voters will lead to good outcomes. Look at medieval Europe. Life got better with democracy, not with a supposedly more just king.
The tech lord most in line with your ideas is Elon Musk, except that he’s kinda nazi. So, on a purely practical note, it doesn’t seem very likely that tech companies being more political would lessen racism.
Do you think it would be better if all the billionaires, who are probably mostly non-nazi, were activist like him?
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
It’s just all emotion and no rational thought now. People just go into outrage mode when certain topics are mentioned.
Really it opens a channel to criticize ICE without needing to logon to X to do so. But that’s bad because preventing communication is good?
Of course I doubt ICE will care about criticism directed towards their account on bluesky. But that means things said on the internet don’t have much of an effect on things, which means it doesn’t matter whether they’re on bluesky (or any other forum).
Mostly it’s about some weird belief by some about controlling what is being said on the internet gains power. You’d think the events that have happened would have proven this wrong, but still people continue to be upset about things being said on the internet and want some power over those things.
Really words on the internet don’t matter as much as people think, and the idea of blocking unwanted information is annoying at best and can lead to ignorance. What matters is the horrible acts ICE is doing. We should want more light being shown on them, and welcome any potential channel of discussion.
Wanting to prevent discussion indicates you feel you’re in the wrong. ICE is indicating they want discussion, while those that are outraged by ICE being on bluesky are indicating they don’t want discussion on ICE. Why would anyone want to make is seem ICE is in the right while they’re in the wrong? It’s people not thinking and only reacting emotionally and handing ICE a W because they are raging instead of thinking.
architect@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Yep. Better to have these assholes than not.
Also verification isn’t complicated. Anyone can do it.
thax@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Yeah, the reactive group signaling stuff does more harm than good, just further perpetuating the conditions that allow propaganda to proliferate. This includes intentionally using the wrong words, for dramatic effect. Wholly agree that more, rational conversation and LESS insularity is the best path forward.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
To me, this feels like school politics.
OMG! Jaden invited ICE to his birthday party! I’m never talking to him again!
Oh No! ICE nabbed Julio! I’m telling the teacher and they will get suspended!
Probably a good number of these people are actual children. I know there are adults who have broadly similar ideas. For someone living a very sheltered and privileged life, being trolled on the internet is the absolute worst form of aggression they ever experience. Particularly in Europe, activists and politicians talk about “digital violence”, which tells you that they have no sense of proportion.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
it’s called guilt by assocation. it’s shitty and lame type of logical fallacy
if you live on the same street as a nazi, you must be a nazi. because apparently you have to sell your home and move away if a nazi moves in.
of course, if you do this and it’s a non-white person you are racist… and a bad person, but if you do it for a nazi you’re a good person.
it’s not as if the logic of the thing is what at’s fault.
deltaspawn0040@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I would like an explanation as to exactly why a Nazi and a non-white person are comparable categories of people.
Zink@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
I’m not sure where to start here, so here are two equally important building blocks.
First, aside from other reasons the Nazi/minority is wrong, you are comparing a label somebody gets for existing the way they were born with a label somebody gets for actions they take that harm other people.
Second, some kind of mishmash of the terms “social contract” and “paradox of tolerance.”
pirate2377@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Does a verification equate to an endorsement now? I’m strongly against ICE, but as long as ICE exists, then it makes sense to verify their official account. That’s all verification is to me at least, just something to let you know it’s the real _ account rather than an imposter.
W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yes, I think it’s an especially good idea to verify them right now. I don’t want some imposter escalating a war.
Do I want them in my spaces? Fuck no. But, that’s the reality of the world.
7101334@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes, platforming Nazis is a bad idea. The correct response would be to ban the account and any similar accounts.
pirate2377@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Normally I’d agree, but ICE is a government organization and since people get their news on social media these days, it makes sense that ICE doesn’t get banned as long as they follow ToS.
massi1008@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The only thing I love more than government censoring my internet is corporations censoring my internet 🥰
(You, apparently)
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Does a verification equate to an endorsement now?
Never been the case, tho many do interpret it to be that way.
DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
You can verify yourself on Mastodon by including a piece of HTML code in your site’s header.
Literally everyone can do that, even government agencies. I have it on my blog.
teolan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If ICE where to join a fediverse instance they would most likely get insta-banned or their instanced would be defederated from large portions of the fediverse very quick.
Prior_Industry@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
TBF users on bluesky are pretty quick to block out the Nazis also. They don’t tend to get much traction at least for now.
Syndication@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Isn’t the whole point of the verification checkmark is to make sure nobody impersonate well known people/organizations? I know Twitter eventually turned it into a whole cash grab subscription and ruined the concept, but on most other platforms it isn’t treated like some premium subscription and is just a means of knowing who is who.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Not a new debate at all… xkcd.com/1914/ and the context for that was yahoo.com/…/twitter-suspends-verifying-accounts-g…
I agree that if “verification” is going to be a thing, it should only mean the person or organization is who they claim to be, not imply endorsement of any of their activities.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I don’t think anyone impersonating gestapo would post anything worse than they already do, so there’s no damage there
damnedfurry@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You haven’t been on the Internet very long, huh?
joyjoy@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Bluesky has a great self-verification system, no checkmark involved. In case someone hasn’t noticed, your username is a domain name, but only nerds use it.
Borger@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Not that big of a deal IMHO; it’s what verification is for, unlike X’s blue check model.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Everyone responding here and confused why this matters seem not get the point. This post is just a warning that the types of people most of us don’t want to associate with are now on that platform. The problem is not that they are verified, it’s that they exist there at all.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
If it’s an official govt agency I think it makes sense for them to be allowed on communications platforms and to be verified, so that people can see what they’re saying and know that it’s an official statement.
Then people can see the post and make their own judgements about it, knowing it’s an official agency statement.
Having twitter style factcheck for blatant misinformation is also important for this, though.TrickDacy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, I can see that perspective too, but at the same time it’s Nazi propaganda they’re posting. There aren’t really any good options.
andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Personally, I do want a common communication platform for people I despise because I want to be able to keep tabs on their public announcements.
I do not want to share close proximity to them on a network graph, or regularly engage with their supporters, though. So I agree that federation is crucial. But to be clear, it’s not because I want to ban them from a platform, it’s because I want managed distance and better moderation.
I don’t mind Bluesky verifying them, but I’m glad that on Mastodon I don’t have to share the same giant server as them.
ripcord@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They have always been on there. There have been waves of brigading and trolling, etc. BlueSky’s blocking tools and options for no algorithm dramatically limit their visibility, and they eventually have no impact and get bored and eventually go away.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
No, that’s exactly what I thought, and I’m still confused as why this is bad? Do people want baby’s first echo chamber again?
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s not hard to understand that people want Nazi ideology to be rejected.
reabsorbthelight@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
We also want to ensure that conservatives are repeatedly alienated so they build their own networks and never see other points of view! /s
Dojan@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
The new corporate platform is just as problematic as the old corporate platform made by the same person? Wow, what a revelation.
irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Jack Dorsey has little involvement in bluesky.
He rage quit the board of directors after they started moderating content.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Literally every post they make is going to have a thousand people telling them to go fuck themselves
Minimac@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I deleted my account on BlueSky since last Sept. BlueSky is pretty trash
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
BlueSky - because maybe we can go back to the way things were?
lorski@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Block them. I think if they did not, the government would find someone to buy them or shut them down. Use your heads here.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I prefer the instance blocking Nazis instead of users manually having to do so.
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 3 weeks ago
Why are people so max about this?
krashmo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because they want corporations to do their job for them of holding the government accountable.
shaggyb@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This makes ICE much easier to block.
SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
How about kick them off the platform? Make a big deal about doing it. Tell them to fuck off. Stop tolerating intolerance.
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
On paper it’s a government agency which would normally be allowed to have verification.
However it is a government agency right now very inimical to the concept and idea of civil rights (already enshrined as law), and hostile to diversity and social justice; with absolutely no regulation of its activities, it is an agency mandated directly by the executive to remove anyone who is not white and Christian.
super_user_do@feddit.it 2 weeks ago
The thing is that I kinda dont like the idea of stopping people from freely expressing themselves, but I do agree to the fact that allowing them to be verified might be another small piece of legitimizaiton. We shoudl all be defending democracy, but when does tollerating intollerants become harmfui?
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
I … don’t understand? Are they bad because they verified them? Why the “welcome” comment, that’s not what Verification is? Are they “platforming” them? I don’t get what is the preferred outcomes?
bappity@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
why is this such an issue?? it just shows everyone who to clown on more?
auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
As they should. You only get a ban after you break their rules.
saylesss88@eviltoast.org 2 weeks ago
The claim that Bluesky “verifies Nazis” because ICE got a blue check is peak absurdity—it’s a government agency enforcing immigration law, not goose-stepping brownshirts.
Verification confirms identity/authenticity (anti-impersonation), not endorsement, letting users freely mute/block ICE while spotting fakes (pro/anti-ICE sock puppets).
To the history blind people comparing ICE to Nazis, If ICE were “Nazis,” 2025 inauguration riots get crushed Day 1 with tanks, not due process.
Reality: routine deportations ≠ death camps.
El_guapazo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I welcome another way to let them know how unpopular they are.
Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 3 weeks ago
(Not American here)
While i agree fediverse is then solution and i don’t use bluesky, i don’t see the issue is recognizing ICE as verified.
After all ice is a government agency of the USA whether you like it or not, and should be verified if there is a procedure to do so.
No i don’t like ice and i do not condone what they do, but that doesn’t change the above statement.
Dojan@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
You know that the problem isn’t that they’re verifying the gestapo, it’s that they’re platforming and subsequently legitimising them.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Eh. I don’t use bsky, and think most current ICE staff should be imprisoned for terrorism for the rest of their lives, but I don’t want any communications services to decide which entities should and shouldn’t be verified.
The goal should be an open protocol where users/orgs can sign messages cryptographically (like PGP) and every other user can decide which users, feeds, or algos they subscribe to without censorship. Like, if I subscribe to my friends and family, or friends of friends, I don’t want any form of moderation between them and me, but the freedom to sub to moderated topics is also necessary for public feeds/comms.
Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 3 weeks ago
Wake up. Ice, being government, it’s already legitimized enough in real life.
What difference would it make in the social media. Better if they are out in the open in social media instead, at least they get responsible for what they post, officially.
damnedfurry@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You could make that argument about them being allowed to have an account at all, but simply marking that account in such a way that informs the userbase that it’s not a troll/parody account or something, but the actual organization?
That doesn’t “platform” them, they’re already on the platform at the time this happened. And confirming that something asserted to be true, is in fact true, is a good thing.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
If ICE tried to verify their account on Lemmy it would be permabanned instantly
photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
The nature of FOSS allows anyone to use free software like Lemmy and Mastodon. ICE could therefore join by making their own instance or joining a friendly one but it’d be defederated by most others.
The great thing about fediverse is that everyone gets a voice and we can choose who to listen to.
LordXDnl@literature.cafe 3 weeks ago
I wonder if that is acutally better though
Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 3 weeks ago
I don’t ban anyone or any instance in my own instance, so no they cannot be “parammanned” from Lemmy. That’s not how it works and why i like Lemmy and its principles.
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Might depend what instance. They wouldn’t try to verify on db0 because yes, they would be banned instantly with prejudice. They would probably just hop on Lemmy.world or something.
Furthermore, it would be better if the US Government just put up their own instance. Let each instance decide whether or not to federate with them, and let users decide if they want to follow them or not.
hanrahan@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Probbly not at the mgtow Lemmy instance.