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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.
Cool story what do you think about Elon Musk
Bold of you to assume this person thinks
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.
Yes, platforming Nazis is a bad idea. The correct response would be to ban the account and any similar accounts.
The only thing I love more than government censoring my internet is corporations censoring my internet 🥰
(You, apparently)
I don’t really give a shit who censors Nazis as long as it gets done.
I also would never use Bluesky though.
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.
“Normally I’d agree, but slave catchers are government agents and since people get their news from newspapers these days, it makes sense that my local newspaper allow them to run segments about why black people don’t deserve freedom”
ok liberal
Thus why I mentioned that they must follow the ToS. If they actually did start to post discriminatory content or hate speech on Bluesky, then they should by all means become banned like everyone else would since that would be breaking ToS. Those “gotta catch em all” posts on Twitter is not going to be tolerated by Bluesky…at least I hope. If not, then I suppose you’re right, Mastodon is the only place that won’t platform fascist propaganda…at least not on the main instance
ICE’s mere existence is discriminatory and providing them with any platform whatsoever, including a platform where they’re forced to feign some degree of legitimacy, furthers that fundamental goal. You are defending the right for Nazis to do Nazi shit. Hope that helps.
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.
Does a verification equate to an endorsement now?
Never been the case, tho many do interpret it to be that way.
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? A tolerant society shouldn’t tolerate intolerant people
People can freely express themselves. Giving a domestic terror organization run by the government extra legitimacy by “verifying” them has nothing to do with free speech. It amplifies their message over the speech of actual people.
Yeah, so? Verification just means they are who they say they are. It doesn’t mean the app approves of what they post.
The White House has a verified Bluesky account, too. They haven’t posted anything in months, though, presumably because of all the ratio-ing.
Too many people thought that Twitters Blue Checkmark meant you were special. That attitude carries over to Bluesky and being verified.
Lol, yeah. If I saw an account labeled “American Nazi Party” with a blue check mark, I wouldn’t think “wow, Bluesky endorses Nazis” - I’d think “wow, this isn’t a satire account, these are actual Nazis, imma block them.”
Lol, yeah. If I saw an account labeled “American Nazi Party” with a blue check mark, I wouldn’t think “wow, Bluesky endorses Nazis” - I’d think “wow, this isn’t a satire account, these are actual Nazis, imma block them.”
I’d think “wow they let Nazis on here. Like they know about them and are cool with that. This place is trash”
yeah but you have at least half a brain.
most internet users barely have 1/10 of one. and demand other users be banned for not sharing their opinions, but would be outraged if they were banned for their objectionable opinions.
And miss out on all the juicy trolling opportunities?
Yes, driving Nazis from society is more important than including them so you can then performatively dunk on them.
I get why this would bug people.
It’s a small act of legitimizing the domestic Gestapo, but we’ve already seen that the corporate social media is a-okay with platforming terrorists, Nazis, and the worst.
That’s why we’re on Lemmy instead.
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.
Pretty sure American tax dollars are what legitimized ice, unfortunately.
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
Are they banned in Mastodon? Lmao
There is no Mastodon for them to be blocked on in the sense you’re talking about.
Mastodon is similar in setup to Lemmy in that nobody owns it and anyone can run it. I am absolutely positive they are banned on tons of Mastodon servers and not banned on tons of others. If the server you are on is federated with even one server with one that isn’t banned, you could potentially see their posts, at which point you can either report those posts to your and their admins, or block them yourself.
So the mastodon service supports Nazis.
nobody owns it and anyone can run it
They could have chosen a license that forbid usage for spreading hate. They put “free software” and “open source” above blocking hate speech.
They’re providing software to Nazis, and I don’t really see how that makes them better than providing a place to post.I do see your point and I’ll actually upvote you here. But I do think there’s a meaningful difference.
Software is just an idea written down rigorously. Various societies created various conventions and social contracts to control dissemination and usage of ideas, both in their pure and written down forms. Capitalist societies generally defer to the author of the idea for how they want it handled (at least for the first few decades), so that the author can earn some money from it (of course, even ideas are monetized under capitalism) - this is patent and copyright law.
The free software movement is just a novel application of the copyright law. By sharing ideas freely but with a license that forces everyone using the idea to share their derivative ideas freely as well, it is attempting to destroy the spirit of copyright law by using the letter of copyright law.
With all this in mind, let’s examine what it would mean to add the “don’t be evil” clause to an otherwise FOSS license.
- In ideal circumstances, a society’s system of laws and social norms should incorporate “don’t be evil” in it already. Hate speech and nazism should be prohibited and punished.
- In ordinary circumstances, such as neoliberal capitalism, there are agencies that will be acting in bad faith but will stand above any laws, be it geneva conventions, hate speech laws or (boring) copyright law. You won’t be able to enforce a “don’t be evil” clause against the CIA or ICE. They can just take your software and use it. This is partially applicable to our current situation.
- In extraordinary circumstances, such as capitalism in advanced decay a.k.a fascism, the law will be ignored by most evil actors anyways. Law is just a social contract and fascism is deliberately breaking all social contracts. Nobody will enforce copyright law in favor of an individual FOSS developer, especially against someone who’s on the side of the regime. This is also applicable to our situation.
There is some edge-cases in the middle where a “don’t be evil” clause might make a bit of sense. If the contract law (which includes copyright law) is still well-respected, but the social contract itself is falling apart around it, it might be used to prevent some nazis somewhere from using your software for a short while, but that situation is always unstable and does not last. In any case nazis are known for ignoring all social contracts, including court orders, so even this is questionable.
There are also downsides in any “don’t be evil” clause, because it requires you to rigorously define what you mean by “evil”. This is actually really hard to do well without relying on existing laws (which ruins the point), and will usually either leave nazis leeway to get away with using it, or harm legitimate users, or both - especially because legitimate users are less likely to try pushing the boundaries.
This is explicitly different from what Bluesky is doing. They are hosting known nazis. Nothing is stopping them from banning ICE and making it into a point of pride, it is really easy. There is no downside, no legitimate user hurt. It’s as easy of a decision as one can make.
To reiterate,
So the mastodon service supports Nazis.
Mastodon-the-service doesn’t really exist (unless you count mastodon.social). But the fediverse in general is not supporting nazis. Nazis are banned and defederated.
Mastodon-the-software may “support” nazis in the same way as printed books or the idea of how a gun works supported nazis.
They’re providing software to Nazis, and I don’t really see how that makes them better than providing a place to post.
Bluesky is categorically worse because it doesn’t have the “don’t be evil” clause in the software licenses either, and it is hosting nazis directly on the platform they run.
So for the first part, I don’t disagree at all. I just don’t think the logistics or theoretical necessity is a bearing on the symbolic-ness of it. Same for the effectiveness of it. Even if it changed literally nothing and no one would ever know I still wouldn’t shake hands with someone I considered evil.
I don’t see defining a subset of what you consider evil, like dissemination of hate speech, to be a downside.
There’s a lot of complex questions around a platform curating ideological content which could possibly make them loose certain platform protections. Right now most platforms are roughly content neutral because it allows them to be viewed as platforms, rather than publishers. This is more a response to the claim that there’s no reason for them not to remove ice. It may or may not be compelling, but it’s a real reason.
As for the use of the word “service”, sometimes my hands type slower than my brain thinks. My intent was to convey “those who develop and control the mastodon license”. Hopefully my original statement makes more sense in that context.
Those are the people providing the printing press schematic analog. Obviously an idea can’t support an ideology in that sense.I’m not of the opinion either supports them in a way that’s worth getting angry over.
We also aren’t talking about being angry at ISPs for being willing to deliver packets to and from ice or Nazis, or any of the other entities that do less then the most they could possibly do to distance themselves.
There is no Mastodon service. Its an application anyone can download and run. I understand your frustration, but it seems like you’re mad at the universe they exist in for its role in housing them.
No, you’re not understanding what I’m saying. I’m not the person you were replying to.
Mastodon is a piece of software. It has a license, just like bluesky or any other. You can put a clause in the license saying the software cannot be used for the dissemination of hate speech. The open source community has discussed this and decided it goes against the principles of free software and open source.If you’re mad at one and not the other, you’re applying different standards because being part of the fediverse weighs more.
Personally I hold platforms to a different standard and so I’m neither mad at mastodon nor bluesky. I just think it’s hypocritical to be mad at someone for publishing a fascists letter but not be mad at the person who gave the same fascist a printing press.
You can put a clause in the license saying the software cannot be used for the dissemination of hate speech. The open source community has discussed this and decided it goes against the principles of free software and open source.
Says who? How can you authoritatively say the open source community has decided something collectively on this subject? That categorically doesn’t make sense on multiple different dimensions.
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.
A private group publishing posts for another group is exactly the act of endorsing their posts.
Which no one will read because bluesky has a really great block system
Yeap. This is a provocative, reactive take that doesn’t consider much.
It’s not, though. Do you think that the admins of reddthat.com endorse everything you post? Creating a public forum for people (including the representatives of organizations) to post on doesn’t imply that the forum endorses any of the content those people post on it.
I wouldn’t call it “endorsing”, but I would call it “platforming”. blahaj.zone is platforming you, lemmy.ml is platforming me, bluesky is platforming nazis.
(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.
You know that the problem isn’t that they’re verifying the gestapo, it’s that they’re platforming and subsequently legitimising them.
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.
On one hand I see your point. On t’other, we’ve tried complete neutrality and it failed, maybe it’s time for a communications platform where we hold people to a standard?
We haven’t, really. Our “complete neutrality” is infested with troll farms, where people are employed to make hundreds of accounts to spread propaganda.
I’m thinking the answer is to implement a huge barrier for troll farms, but a small speed bump for real people.
It could be oauth with Steam or your cell provider, where you can make an account if you’ve spent over $250 with them. Actual credit history would work. You can combine these and allow any of them, which might let one person make 3-4 accounts, maybe, but that’s still limited enough to make things difficult for troll farms.
There is an issue where billionaires that want to influence us have absolutely absurd resources, and maybe paying $1000 per account isn’t enough of a barrier for them. But at least it gives us a chance for the bans to stick significantly more than they do now.
Nah balls to that. This is simple paradox of tolerance shit, anti-social ideology doesn’t get a platform in the marketplace of ideas.
simple paradox of tolerance shit
Nah, misinterpretation. Censorship doesn’t stop shit. Suppression of intolerance means stopping it through coercion or criminalization.
we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force
we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal
Moreover, intolerance doesn’t mean the baby-brained notion on the internet of espousing offensive, exclusionary views. The nonviolent & noncoercive are still tolerant. Intolerance means rejection of rational discourse through appeal to force: coercive/violent action or incitement of it to overthrow a tolerant society.
for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols
Karl Popper opposed censorship/argued for free inquiry & open discourse.
I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
Censorship (or willfully blinding ourselves to information) plays no part in suppressing authoritarianism, and it’s extremely moronic to pretend it does.
Well that’s fucking stupid when we know deplatforming works. Also you’re using specific definitions to deliberately misunderstand the paradox of tolerance so this is a stupid argument in the first place. If you allow those that break the social contract to remain in society, they will cause society to break down as that is their express and explicit goal. A fucking high school intellect wrote that garbage article. Also, fuck pacifism, that’s a tool of fascists.
as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion
Yeah we’re well past that point and have been definitely since alternative facts got normalized in discourse. This is a post-truth society. And next time use your own words instead of a gpt.
So you want a Nazi bar. Ok.
That’s a nice strawman you’ve built for yourself. What’s their name?
BlueSky
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.
What difference would it make in the social media.
Apparently you slept through a fascist dictator rising to power by manipulating desperate people, specifically on social media.
Apparently you slept through the part where mainstream social media did try to censor, ban, and deplatform that dictator’s supporters, and it backfired.
I mean, Twitter literally banned Donald Trump, and he just started his own Twitter clone. Mainstream social media banned COVID disinformation and now we have an anti-vaxxer running the US Department of Health. Probably hundreds of thousands of people got deplatformed for claiming the 2020 elections were stolen, and more people now believe Trump won in 2020 then they did in 2021.
Biden pressured big social media to censor ideas he didn’t want spreading. The ideas spread anyway. All Biden did was show he was afraid of those ideas and make some of the worst people in the world look like martyrs.
I really can’t think of a better example of how “deplatforming Nazis” doesn’t work than the last five years of American history.
I see what you’re saying and you make a good point honestly.
Like the white house, department of homeland security, and others before them, the account will get no traction and be ignored. It is currently working really well on bluesky.
When they mandate visibility a la Twitter, that is the problem. But they don’t.
they’re platforming and subsequently legitimising them.
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.
If ICE tried to verify their account on Lemmy it would be permabanned instantly
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.
Truth Social is running Mastodon under the hood. But nobody considers it a part of the fediverse, because even if it had federation turned on it would instantly be defederated by 99% of instances.
I’m sure there are nazi lemmy instances out there, but they are all defederated from the lemmyverse. This is the correct approach, decentralized platforms are somehow doing a better job at this then the de-facto centralized bsky.
As is GAB
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.
I wonder if that is acutally better though
It is a lot better. If you let Nazis join your platform, your platform is now a Nazi bar. Ban them, don’t let them spread their propaganda.
They still can’t post shit against the general instance rules. So they’d have to be very careful of get the nuisance of getting their posts constantly removed, and eventually banned. No need to make individual distinctions when the general rules already work.
Nazis are quite good at bending or evading rules to further their agenda. They will push the boundaries of what’s acceptable by using creative allegories or dogwhistles. Moderators are supposed to moderate assuming goodwill from participants, this should not be the case here because ICE is not operating in good faith; a good mod will know to just ban self-identified nazis straight away. Even if the mods are hesitant to ban without any activity, me thinks a job ad to join the modern Gestapo (which is already in ICE’s profile) should be grounds for a ban.
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.
Find out how long your Lemmy instance stays federated with the rest of the big instances once you start hosting Nazis
You don’t get it: I am and will remain the only user of my instance…
Do you even now how Lemmy works? Did I say I was going to let ICE people create users on my instance? I only said I don’t defederate any instance.
If you turned off registration then you are not allowing ICE on your platform so problem solved?
Probbly not at the mgtow Lemmy instance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Every Mastodon instance can choose to defederate with truth social
BlueSky can choose to kick ICE off their platform
It’s that simple
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?
solid majority of the popular vote
narrow plurality
It’s worth pointing out that “lesser of two evils” reasoning is used by both parties. White privileged “libertarians” voted fascist because they felt unrepresented too.
Every single elected official who isn’t explicitly against FPTP was OK with this outcome. They know about the spoiler effect.
Even then it’s highly dubious that it was even a plurality. Vote counts in swing states were HIGHLY irregular and 100% controlled by Musk.
I think that tech companies taking a stand on what their employees and/or users believe in is a reasonable thing.
Idk what the employees of bluesky believe, but I’m fairly familiar with the bay area tech scene and I think that there is a decent chance that the employees would like to take a stand by not providing services to ICE.
That being said, idk if simply allowing them to have an account is providing services. I think it’s probably better to have govt agencies have verified accounts so people know when things are official statements, even if you disagree with the agency.
I think that tech companies taking a stand on what their employees and/or users believe in is a reasonable thing.
How would that actually work? Like, you’d have pro-Trump and anti-Trump companies that only employ pro- and anti-Trump employees and only serve pro- and anti-Trump customers? What happens when someone who is basically pro-Trump thinks that ICE goes too far?
i mean, this is how it works in practice.
it’s just that the company is on whomevers side that’s in power. they donate to both campaigns usually.
It’s illegal to hire people or refuse to hire people based on political beliefs or affiliation, so you’re not gonna have companies that only employ Trump supporters or employ no Trump supporters. Politics is considered a protected group wrt employment law in the USA and many countries.
But how would it actually work?
It’s not like it’s difficult to gauge employee sentiment about ICE. If your employees are strongly against it, then you simply don’t enter the competition for ICE contracts, or you choose to not renew the contracts when they expire.
taking a stand on what their employees and/or users believe in is a reasonable thing.
The majority of USA citizens voted for Trump. Why should Bluesky take a stand on what a minority believe in?
Even if that was true, which it isn’t, a company should reflect the beliefs of its employees and community.
Actually, less than a quarter of citizens voted for him. Less than a 3rd or registered voters.
Not even half of a half of citizens said they wanted this.
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.
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.
Yep. Better to have these assholes than not.
Also verification isn’t complicated. Anyone can do it.
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.
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.
I would like an explanation as to exactly why a Nazi and a non-white person are comparable categories of people.
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.”
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
Labeling the account as verified and excluding/not excluding from the AppView are two separate actions.
It is a clear indication that they don’t intend to ban the account, they have verified it on their own server. They are two separate actions, but one implies that the other will not be done.
And in any case, I’m pointing out that the dichotomy between “verify ICE and let them post nazi propaganda officially” and “let ICE post nazi propaganda with plausible deniability” is false, they can (should) just ban them.
but one implies that the other will not be done.
This is false.
Do you expect bsky to ban ICE? They already have a job posting to join the Gestapo in their profile, do you think that’s not enough of a reason to ban them?
I don’t know how else to say it: you keep falling into the same non-sequitur.
No, I don’t expect them to ban anyone from the government. 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.
If you don’t want to see their shitty posts, now you can simply filter it out. And thanks to verification, you can share your filters to others. That’s how decentralized systems work. Bluesky does not control who I get to see. ICE or any other institution can not buy its way into manufacturing propaganda.
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.
take accountability
[Citation needed]
It would be better if they wouldn’t even be platformed at all. We don’t need no federation with Nazis.
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.
Not a new debate at all… https://xkcd.com/1914/ and the context for that was https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-suspends-verifying-accounts-giving-154625015.html
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.
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.
I don’t think anyone impersonating gestapo would post anything worse than they already do, so there’s no damage there
You haven’t been on the Internet very long, huh?
What ICE is doing is way worse than what happens on the internet…?
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
Yeah, but at the same time it’s kinda good for people to be able to see the kind of shit they’re posting for themselves.
It is propaganda, but it’s not good propaganda, and that’s what the community fact checking thing is meant to counter, imo.
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?
It’s not hard to understand that people want Nazi ideology to be rejected.
I do. But… how will that happen if they are not verified…?
Yeah, I wasn’t the clearest here. I thought they shouldn’t be allowed on there at all, but I’m rethinking it now.
Like, if they post a nazi thing they can be admonished and punished and shown for what they are, but if they just are ignored, what’s the platform for? We want to expose and ridicule them as much as possible
We also want to ensure that conservatives are repeatedly alienated so they build their own networks and never see other points of view! /s
But mostly just don’t want to see points of view that we disagree with.
Echo chamber in different words
How the tf would them being verified make them “on the platform” as opposed to them literally being on the platform but not verified. Total cope comment from someone who tried to back rationalise their initial reaction.
Reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit. What about my statement means that them being there before was okay? I assume most people upset about it didn’t have a fucking clue they were there before. Not that it matters since it’s clear from your tone you’re a troll.
The original post explicitly calls them out specifically for being verified, not being on the platform. Then you walk in dick swinging saying “ummm ackchully it’s about them being on the platform not being verified. And you’re illiterate for being able to read and thinking otherwise 😏” yeah okay buddy keep coping
If you actually read the thread like I did you might get it. But yeah I’m weirdly macho and also wrong or something
If you actually read the post like I did you might get it, but yeah I’m weirdly illiterate and also wrong or something
deleted by creator
realisation that their own argument wasn’t consistent with what they previously commented moment
I deleted my account on BlueSky since last Sept. BlueSky is pretty trash
BlueSky - because maybe we can go back to the way things were?
Not that big of a deal IMHO; it’s what verification is for, unlike X’s blue check model.
Obligatory fuck ICE.
Literally every post they make is going to have a thousand people telling them to go fuck themselves
The new corporate platform is just as problematic as the old corporate platform made by the same person? Wow, what a revelation.
Jack Dorsey has little involvement in bluesky.
He rage quit the board of directors after they started moderating content.
Why are people so max about this?
Because they want corporations to do their job for them of holding the government accountable.
