they could essentially create an account on mastodon and self verify. I guess the bad part is that bsky pro actively has to verify and they did.
The moment the US Gov would have any instance on Mastodon, it would be blocked into oblivion.
TBF Bluesky users would send this account to blocko land quickly via block lists etc
It’s useful for them to have a presence because it helps drum up anger at them. Did you see the shit on twitter where the official twitter of DSHS posted a pic of a tropical paradise with the caption America after 100 million deportations? Notably nobody believes there are 100M undocumented immigrants or even 100M immigrants period. 100M is the number of non-white people in America.
They literally said America will be great after we implement the final solution to the brown people problem. Hard to beat them calling themselves nazis. I say let them speak. Let people hear their hate so nobody has any illusions about who we are up against.
I can’t find icegov on Bsky
Must already be on a moderation list I’m subscribed to
EDIT: Yep. It is.
Its getting harder and harder to find a bar not full of Nazis
If you think about it, the USA is a Nazi bar.
It’s not though
Host your own, connect with others that you like, block those you don’t, filter your own bubble, live with the consequences.
ICE could easily make an account on Mastodon, would they get pissed if that happened too?
They could, however…
Mastodon is made of lots of instances, nobody wants to be the instance with ICE on it. If they make their own instance or the government makes their own, they can be defederated by whatever instances wish to.
That’s the difference, you can kick Ice out of your federated servers. You can’t do that with bsky.
In theory yes. In practice? Say ice gets on the big main instance (like 90% of the users does anyway, would be my guess). The admins on this big main instance will allow the ice account to exist. Now what? Everyone defed with the big main instance? It will blow up the entire fediverse or nothing will happen and the last 10% will sit in their small fedi silos being tankies and talk about how America is a pedo nazi state (sorry about that last rant but jesus christ everything turns political on Lemmy from the first comment on nearly every post).
Individuals could still block them, no?
yes
At least I don’t want to spend much of my brain power deciding what individuals to block. I prefer there’s a moderator who thinks roughly the same way about things things as I do. It’s better not to be overzealous with the moderation: I am okay with a little bit of manual curating of my feed, but the things most obviously unacceptable to me should be banned by the instance.
Also: If a lot of people see the messages of ICE, I am not really likely to ban them either, because I want to know what is going on in the world around me. But if I know they are being banned by a lot of people because whole largish instances are banning them, they no longer are goin on in my part of the world. At that point it becomes more of a choice to want to hear them.
“echo chamber as a service”
That’s why you pay attention when choosing what instance to be on.
Lemmy is an echo chamber as a service. Way less diversity in opinions on there - yes, even across instances
I guess that’s where you and I differ. I see it as somewhat of a downside, letting a single or a few individuals dictate what everyone on the instance should or shouldn’t see. I much prefer individuals having the choice to block what they don’t wish to see.
An instance can be federated over a single unity and then people wouldn’t be able to access many other communities that were neutral/okay on that instance.
This is such a virtue signalling to me… “Oh no, instance XYZ has account PQR on it, for shame!” - well, you’re still using the app, the platform, you’re still seeing the content. Unless you block them, which you can also do on TT/BSky.
It’s just weird to me.
Defederation “blocks” that instance for all users. Not really the same thing as monolithic bsky or twitter. You are not even aware of the instances yours has defederated with.
Ye, ye, nothing says “freedom of speech” as much as collective punishment!
Especially now, with Fediverse being barely understood by its own users and those outside the bubble having no clue what any of that means. People signing up to random servers just to be able to get off of Reddit getting slapped with an instance ban will surely boost Fediverse numbers!
This comment is such virtue signalling to me “oh no, I don’t understand how federation works and so I’ll invent a strawman argument so I can pretend to be clever, for shame!” - well, you’re still not understanding the app, the platform, you’re still inventing the strawman. Unless you bother to research even slightly them, which you can also do on the internet.
It’s just weird to me.
Unless you bother to research even slightly them, which you can also do on the internet.
Right, so you just don’t want Fediverse to ever replace things like Reddit or Twitter? Remain within a margin of error in their user count? Got it. My bad for assuming we, the early adopters, were trying to get this thing off the ground and become an actual threat to the capitalist pigs.
Big difference here, admins can ban them, for everyone
Ye, ye, nothing says “freedom of speech” as much as collective punishment!
Especially now, with Fediverse being barely understood by its own users and those outside the bubble having no clue what any of that means. People signing up to random servers just to be able to get off of Reddit getting slapped with an instance ban will surely boost Fediverse numbers!
deleted by creator
Mastodon can have instancewide ban, I am pretty sure any instance which allowed ICE would get the whole instance banned, and with it all the users leaving to any other one
I could never get used to that sort of app. Be it Twitter, bsky, or even mastodon. If I follow people, my feed gets so much content that I consider spam.
Say, there is a person that is awesome and occasionally posts interesting things. But also posts random spammy stuff, like “just took a shower. I feel so clean!”. Why am I wasting my time reading that sort of content?? I think there are 0 people in the world from which I want to read 100% of their content. Maybe very very very few. So, it doesn’t make much sense to follow people, and then waste hours scrolling content about which I don’t care.
I could follow tags, but they still get so much spam and so I still have to scroll and scroll…
It is just not for me.
Hasn’t these microblog services not just become an outlet for famous people i.e. actors, singers, models, politicians, influencers etc. and even government to post stuff? In some countries even the police use these platforms to communicate to the public even before using other outlets.
You can put your follows onto lists you can group by category on mastodon. My feed is literally my own posts and Technology Connections. If I want to see anyone else I follow I have to manually visit the lists.
I do the same on Lemmy. Smaller comms I’ll subscribe to, but busy ones (esp meme ones) I just add to favourites so I can check them manually and I don’t have an everlasting feed.
Same. Seems like a ton of people would actually like being cursed with telepathy that you can’t turn off, being forced to share and receive every thought that crosses the mind.
Are y’all me? I never did Twitter, tried blue sky, got followed by someone pretty famous, but I really couldn’t give a fuck less about it. Like you said, I don’t want to know someone’s every thought and action. Shit just isn’t important to me.
I think it’s the whole parasocial relationship thing, where you think you’re close friends with someone who doesn’t know your name.
What’s the issue with them being verified…?
Yeah, this just allows people to know that their content is really from the US government. Not verifying them seems like a worse alternative for everyone.
Yea i don’t get it either, all it means is that they checked and it’s run by actual ICE. It’s not xitter, they don’t get special privileges from it.
Agreed
I instantly know this really a treasonous post and I can downvote and ignore.
It saves me the step reading trying to decide if it is a parody account or something.
It’s not about verification per se. Since anyone can create an account directly, no BlueSky accounts are necessarily reviewed by BlueSky. Someone could create an account for Nazi pedos who drink blood and you wouldn’t blame BlueSky for that immediately. But if BlueSky came along and said “hm, yes, you are verified” then they have in an explicit way endorsed the account’s ability to exist. Basically the account passed moderation. Since many consider ICE to be an illegally deployed terror force on American soil, it’s you know, a little disappointing to see anyone treat them as a legitimate entity on any level. A democratic president worth his salt will disband the organization on day 1 and sponsor legislation to prevent them ever coming back.
I have trouble with the word endorsed. It’s not as if being verified does anything other than provide a guarantee that the people are who they’re claiming to be.
Personally I think it’s great that they are so willingly publicly verified. It will be useful evidence that their trials.
I understand what you are saying. Verification is just about identity - it’s not validation.
Except it’s about validation on one very basic level. I’ve seen the inside of large social media moderation operations and you are missing one thing. These companies will not verify an account for The Islamic State, no matter how readily they can prove that they are who they say they are. They will not just sit there as a neutral party and say Osama Bin Laden? Looks real to me! They will ban and block and log and report.
ICE are in open warfare against American civilians and BlueSky just said “yep your id checks out.” They could have said “we will not be a megaphone for a rogue agency waging war on Minneapolis.” As for gathering evidence to hang them with later… their BlueSky tweets are not going to add much to the video footage we have of them killing people in the streets.
You mean whats the issue with giving them a platform?
No I mean what’s the issue with them being verified
Nazis and their allies should not have a platform.
When blueksy verifies them, it tells you that bluesky is aware of their presence on their (private, centralized) platform and accepts it.
Thus, the verification requires allowing them to have a platform.
Since they should not have a platform, they should not be verified.
So it’s not the verification itself that’s a problem, but rather the platforming
You do not platform Nazis, let alone legitimise them with “verification”.
Yes. And verification requires platforming, so transitively they shouldn’t be verified.
They have a platform. It’s a podium in the white house. It’s having thousands of thugs pillaging, and likely soon raping in your neighborhoods.
Knowing what they say is relevant.
And you can go see what they say there, you don’t invite them into your house to do it.
I don’t wanna go to Twitter, ever, if I can help it.
You said the white house, not twitter. That content will already be distributed through traditional media.
Block and move on.
I subscribe to a bunch of blocklists so I’m pretty sure I won’t be seeing their “content” anyway.
You don’t block Nazis on the system you own, you ban them outright.
These people are responsible for the death and murder of many and your response is to pretend they’re not there next to you and let them spread their propaganda?? What the fuck is wrong with you.
Shadow banning works better than banning even in games
Let them in, put them in a room that nobody visits and let them rant there. Tell everyone that the room contains a crazy person.
It’s the United States government. The platform is implied and given by the people of the United States.
Until that ends… I’m not sure banning them from everywhere but x will make sense?
Any no government entity refusing to enable them is good.
Just because an account got verified doesn’t mean Bluesky agrees with them
Who the fuck cares if “they” agree with them or not.
ICE is a fascist appendage and should not be allowed on any “public discourse” platform.
It means that a little more than it means they disagree with them.
ICE are masked jackboot thugs illegally deployed to our streets by a psychopathic rapist to punish people who don’t vote for him. If there is ever a time to resist tyranny….
“Welcome. Let’s see what you have to say” is not an appropriate reaction to their presence.
They shouldn’t be allowed onto the platform at all. Don’t verify them, ban them.
I’d rather the platform not be in charge of who’s allowed to use it. Yeah ICE sucks, but that’s not for the platform to decide.
If they break the rules of the platform, that’s a different story.
The platform is always in charge of who’s allowed to use it. They already ban people and censor certain types of speech. This is a discussion about where the line is, not if its been drawn at all.
They ban people for actions they take outside the platform?
Go and post about your plans to grab a few of your armed buddies and go terrorize, beat, and even kill some minorities and see if you’re allowed to keep your account.
That’s not how any of this works. Bluesky isn’t an agnostic protocol like http or a piece of paper. It’s a private platform, with arbitrary rules. Arbitrary rules that apparently do not prohibit ice.
Verify it, then put a warning along the lines of
“This is the official profile of a fascistic terrorist organization. Beware.”Yeah, that makes sense. But why just verify? What non-evil is there that you achieve with that?
But why just verify? What non-evil is there that you achieve with that?
It gives those who’re gonna have a field day with those cunts when they start lying, a legit target, and that it’s not some asshat that is pretending to be ICE. I’m on bluesky and somewhat delighted they’re going to have a presence. I’m gonna have fun ripping them new assholes.
What kind of zinger are you planning to drop that will make the intern running the ice account recoil and quit their job?
Oh, just general nastiness that befits America’s homegrown brownshirts. It won’t be for them so much as for anyone else reading their posts… You just get in front of the lies and call them all out.
The verification doesn’t work like on Twitter, it’s just proving the identity, it’s not some flag of prominence.
There’s even multiple organizations who can issue verifications on bluesky, for example newspapers can act as verifiers of their own staff;
I did understand that :)
But still: Verifying means you officially acknowledge their existence. And they are horrible pieces of shit; thereby acknowledging their existence should automatically include making the facts visible. There’s no reason not to call evil evil.
EDIT: Also, your comment was well-written and I have no need to actually argue against you. So, do not worry. I do not completely agree with you, but my disagreement is not terribly strong either :)
When I’m showing people the kind of shit this administration posts as an argument against them, I want to know it’s real.
And I don’t want to have to be on Nazi Twitter to do that any more than I have to.
You know what sends a message you don’t agree with someone? Banning their arses.
You know what implicitly shows you agree with someone? Not stopping them, and ensuring they’re legitimised by your system.
What BlueSky is now is a
NaziICE bar.Yes it does. It means they are okay enough with them to not ban them.
Surely there are some things that warrant a ban on bluesky. There’s some sort of line beyond which you are not welcome. We can infer from this verification that ice is on the safe side of the line.
I’m sure there’s at least one marxist that’s verified on bsky, does that mean jack dorsey is a communist?
It would mean that communism is acceptable to him. What’s tripping you up here?
So does that mean Dorsey is a nazbol since he agrees with both communists and fascists? There are neoliberals on bluesky as well, how does that affect our triangulation of his beliefs? I’m not saying you have to agree with how the company moderates its platform, but clearly as far as bluesky is concerned allowing someone to use the platform is not an endorsement of their views. It can’t be, because they allow people with diametrically opposing ideologies to use their platform.
Allowing them on the platform doesn’t mean a full endorsement of the belief. It means that he (or whoever makes the decision) finds the belief acceptable enough to platform.
There is likely some line which is too far, and not allowed on the platform. Perhaps “eating live babies”? “Kicking puppies”? Something that is so unacceptable, it would not be allowed. This argument is that ICE and Nazi stuff belongs on the far side. That as a platform owner, you can say “that’s not allowed here”.
Allowing one person to say “I think the NY Yankees are the best” and another to say “I think the NY mets are the best” on your platform (eg: website, newspaper, bulletin board) doesn’t mean that you personally believe both. But if you let someone post “I think white people are best” and just leave that up, that’s saying that’s an acceptable message to say. Just harmless like talking about baseball.
This argument is some positions, like what ICE is doing, is outside the range of acceptable. The platform (a website in this case) should say they have to take that elsewhere.
I have zero disagreements with this comment. My read of the top level comment was pretty literal, which is a tendency I have that gets me into trouble sometimes.
Just a quick side-note: Dorsey is no longer in charge of Bluesky
Jay Graber is
clearly my commitment to showing my entire ass online is easy for me to stick to
Narrator: in fact they did agree with them, for the money was green and did flow and in the end that was what mattered to them
You mean Jack Dorsey? He left in 2024 and deleted his account. He still gave Trump and Musk a platform, though so I have no doubt he would have approved this if he still was with Bluesky today.
Jack Dorsey is an example of how the dumbest man can fall upwards by being backstabby as fuck.
If they can backstab their way to the top, I wouldn’t call them dumb. I’m sure there’s plenty of subtleness and tact wrapped up in that.
odd that their username is
@icegov.bsky.socialinstead of@ice.gov… i guess nobody on their social media team knows how to configure a DNS record or create a.well-knowntextfile.Has anyone been able to get bluesky to work on something other than their server?
I seem to remember a mention of something like “blacksky” being a small instance that’s technically on a different server or…however bluesky actually works. It was mentioned briefly in an article titled something to the effect of “The Myth of a Protocol” where they were going over all the ways the bluesky isn’t actually a federated social media form in practice, even if it could technically be described as one.
I don’t know what the back end looks like, but I see accounts hosted from unique servers fairly frequently. My favorite is @yeag.gay
That’s probably not a different server. The ATproto allows users to use their website’s URL as their handle by essentially adding a text file on their website to prove ownership, but their account is still hosted on the Bluesky servers.
If it’s connected to the rest of BlueSky, all of its data to any other servers goes through that of BlueSky’s. Even if user on private server A communicates with a used on private server B, the message is routed so that BlueSky’s main moderation team can always affect it – they can block it or they could technically even add to it if they wanted to.
No other servers on BlueSky have that right. Except servers that are completely detached from all servers connected to that of BlueSky. And their separate network has their own central server, then.
So ICE can’t get an account on Mastodon?
Not on any public-facing instances.
They can and should make their own instance. And we can defederate them.
Isn’t Truth Social running Mastodon?
Its a fork. So its the codebase which they’ve modified so it’s the technology of mastodon but not actually mastodon. Think of it as a drink that someone has put posion in. The drink itself is harmless and maybe even healthy and nutritious but the poison changes it entirely
I’ve read somewhere they originally took the Mastodon server codebase, but it’s been heavily modified since and not compatible with ActivityPub.
Isn’t Mastadon AGPL? So legally if that was the case they would have to share sources (if Trump cared about the law)
Yes, and they have “shared” it. After repeat requests, they sent a zip out, and it was posted here:
https://codeberg.org/TruthSocial/truth-social
Certainly out of date by now though.
I doubt they care about the law.
Of course they don’t its Trump, if there was even a sliver of a chance that he could get sued he would pass a law banning copyleft liscenses and retroactively applying it to himself
Yes, but without federation
Yes, that was my point
There’s an entire howling void of unspeakable instances nobody will federate with, presumably sieg-heiling, shouting slurs and/or trading CSAM among themselves in the darkness. One more won’t change things.
“We” being individual mastodon admins who each choose if they think the server should be defederated or not? That sounds good.
As for bluesky, what they’re doing makes sense for a global non-federated site. Allow anyone to make an account, and allow them to post as long as they don’t break the rules. If a user doesn’t like that organization they’re free to block or mute them. Anything else and you’re asking bluesky to draw an arbitrary line somewhere. If they forbid ICE from creating an account, which government entities are allowed? FBI? National Weather Service? FDA? POTUS? Supreme Court? Federal Reserve?
I would bet if you say bluesky should ban “problematic” accounts and asked 100 people which accounts should be banned, you’d get 100 completely different answers. Just use your own judgment and your own block button.
There’s a difference between “they can publish a book” and “this specific publisher will publish their book”
That account is not visible on Bluesky now.
What? Gone so soon?
They were added to block lists if you subscribe to any of those.
That’s actually a great solution. This way I can still verify firsthand what they’ve posted, if and only if I’m actually looking for it.
Which ones?
For me it’s the “Trump Enablers” moderation list that I’m subscribed to
Good question, probably this one: @skywatch.blue
Thanks!
NP :)
A gov accounts mute / block list, for example
It should say fediverse, not mastodon. Other than that, yeah, expecting a billionaire to suddenly care about people is a fool’s errand
Genuinely, what billionaire? Who are you referring to?
Bluesky’s CEO is Jay Graber who also owns 40% of the company, the largest ownership share. She has a net worth of $5million.
So again, who is this ”billionaire” that you and everyone else in the comments is referring to?
Lots of people think Jack Dorsey owns Bluesky
All to further the regimes’ propaganda.
Such a fan of @Grutjes ♥️
