Azhdarchid: So, if you're online poisoned like me, you may have noticed that Bluesky CEO Jay Graber has been having sort of a slow motion, low-key public meltdown for the past several weeks. [...]
For the record: I think Jay Graber is a transphobe; I think there's just too much evidence in her behavior to not read that into her actions at this point. No normal person would go out of their way to court Jesse Singal. A lot of this stuff feels motivated by a glaring animus towards the userbase that Bluesky has attracted; and because this userbase formed around people who simply couldn't justify being on Twitter any more, said userbase is full of highly visible trans users.
But, we can also view it as just run of the mill stuff for any kind of corporate social media platform; you expect them to be unaccountable, to have vague policies that are enforced with no consistency, and so on. What distinguishes the Bluesky case, though, is that Bluesky has a very particular ideology that Graber and her cohorts push, which is that they are 'stewards of the AT Protocol'. She has repeatedly made this point: you can take your ball and go home.
Graber posts something like this basically every other day. So, let's examine her claim a little bit. [...]
ATProto's complicated architecture more or less puts running an alternative app into the realm of well-funded nonprofits and startups, as opposed to Mastodon instances which can easily be run by hobbyists on their own domestic hardware. [...]
AT Proto decentralization doesn't exist as a practical reality, and if it ever does it won't be for years. Most of the work driving effective decentralization is being done by third parties, who have limited guarantees about future compatibility with possible breaking changes on Bluesky's end.
Bluesky inc isn't really making 'a protocol', they're making Bluesky, the monolithic (to within a rounding error) social network that they operate. [...] at this point, AT Proto has become essentially a sort of ideological vaporware; a way for Jay Graber et al to run a social media platform while claiming they don't run a social media platform. [...]
As it stands, for users using Bluesky's app view -- which is to say nearly everybody -- alternate moderation services can only ever be additive. Which is to say, you can never see posts that Bluesky doesn't want you to see, but you're free to ban more posts or users beyond what Bluesky will ban. This system means that Bluesky inc retains the power to use their effective monopoly to suppress speech Graber finds distasteful or ban porn that the moderators think is gross.
But at the same time they can hide behind these third-party 'labelers' as an excuse when called out on their neglect in dealing with figures like Singal, a serial harasser and all-around scumbag.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
