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If you have millions of people on a social network, and you go looking for toxic shit there, you will find it.
Well, on Mastodon, you might not because by default it doesn’t have a useful text search feature. If you’re on a server running a modified version, or something else with decent text search, you might. My self-hosted server was on a relay that briefly pulled in content from a famously toxic server. At first, I didn’t see it because I didn’t follow those accounts, but later, I added an improved search feature and tried searching for some terms of abuse. I did find a few absolutely vile posts.
Bluesky has had a working search from early on. Turning off some of the default moderation filters and searching for terms of abuse does, in fact find people using terms of abuse.
Two thoughts come to mind:
- If it’s there and you aren’t having it shoved down your throat, then that’s still a VAST improvement over Twitter, which has gone from shitty social media to blatant hate indoctrination platform.
and
- Did you just now discover that most people are shitty? I always assumed most people figured that out at 13 or 14.
Did you just now discover that most people are shitty? I always assumed most people figured that out at 13 or 14.
Still haven’t, screw misanthropy
A quick scroll of his account on Bluesky ( https://bsky.app/profile/urlyman.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy ) makes it pretty clear why his Discover sucks. The algorithm on Bluesky sorta works like a mirror, you get out what you put in. My feed is all art posts and wholesome memes because I follow artists, creators, and comic pages, so it sounds like he’s trained his algorithm to be full of political complaining and toxic people like him. He should probably look into the Mute Words feature and start blocking stuff he thinks is toxic!
There has also been an influx of toxic people whose only joy is getting a reaction out of others that are joining because the people they’d normally target on X are leaving. I’ve seen them trying to get the same type of engagement they used to get and also a lot of other people calling them out as “Hey, this person is an ass, you can block them/add them to the MAGA Trolls list”. That could seem like a flood of toxicity to some.
I noticed that for the first time yesterday.
Today, I don’t see them. I guess maybe moderation and/or blocking is working.
But, why won’t everyone join Mastadon instead?!?
Thank goodness they go to BS.
Also they only follow a single person??
Like how do they expect their feed to be customised and filled with stuff they enjoy, when all they do is follow 1 person and make political posts and posts such as “bluesky sucks, mastodon is best”.
If you’re toxic and you mute toxic words, will it hide your own posts?
I tested it with “cat” and it blocks me from seeing things I’ve reposted with the word “cat” in it, so yeah it might! :)
Reminds me of those conservative men who complained on xitter or insta that TikTok is sexualizing girls. They showed their TikTok feed and it is full of young girls dancing in cheerleader outfits. These people don’t understand how the feed works and they were basically outing themselves.
Dude needs to learn about blocklists if that’s what his feed looks like. There definitely is a cesspool but it’s pretty isolated.
There are exceptions of course but IMHO, you shouldn’t block toxic contents, you call them out instead. Doing so basically puts a red flag to any would-be readers that this person and the associated content is harmful and dangerous.
Calling out bad actors gives them an audience. Nine of your readers will agree that this person is a piece of shit but the tenth will think “hmm maybe there’s some truth to this” and follow that bad actor. And that’s how it propagates. No, nothing but blocks and silent treatment to people feeding on outrage.
In public sure, but this is the internet, where the Streisand effect is the unifying order of the week. It’s why the age old saying “bad press is better than no press” exists
Haven’t seen a single bit of toxic stuff yet, my feed is all cute art and photography.
I read that at first as “cute art and pornography”
There’s definitely some of that in there too haha
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Honestly I want to believe this but I’ve had 0 bigoted accounts ever come into my bluesky replies, when on twitter this would be a daily occurrence.
I’ve met one tankie, and blocked them, but that’s it, and I have 1.7k bluesky posts and 8k followers.
In my time in mastodon, I didn’t experience bigots either, but neither have I in bluesky, and I’m an easy target, I’m disabled and my face looks deformed, it’s my profile picture, while on twitter I’d get snide remarks every day, it’s never been the case on bluesky, and I had one mastodon user make a joke (but that’s just one user).
It’s just a question of time. Every platform will devolve into either obscurity or cesspool.
perhaps. but the open source moderation list feature seems pretty cool, hopefully it’ll help.
What’s your handle and is it bridged to fedi?
I am bridged, but I prefer not to share my handle as my Mastodon and Bluesky accounts are have full name, while I want to keep the lemmy ones anonymous.
Ah pity. Well maybe you can post to your 8K followers to follow the brid.gy account as well so we can find them. Sadly the locked-down-PMs of bluesky means most people don’t even get the invite.
That’s a good shout. I think I’ll do that in the coming weeks :).
I moved over to Bluesky basically the minute I could get an invite, because I could see the writing on the wall for Twitter; and there is SOME toxicity for sure, but you control how much.
Bluesky has a completely chronological feed composed singularly of accounts you follow. If you don’t follow shit-stirrers, you will not see any shit.
Having said that, they can still show up in the “comments” of skeets you’ll see, but the block system is so effective, that they are not usually showing up anyways.
To me, that is the difference between Bluesky’s moderation and other websites. Bluesky has very little official moderation, but has extremely powerful blocking tools (their blocks server connections between subskeet, there are curated block lists, atomic blocking, etc). If you subscribe to trusted and vetted block lists, you will probably never see a chud on Bluesky in your life. You do need to verify the trustworthiness of the list in advance, though…
subskeet
lol
Does the post strike anyone else as “off”?
Like why is this person giving a full elevator pitch of who they are before they drop the bomb of “bluesky is toxic”?
You only need to look at the many BlueSky posts here to see that many people view BlueSky as an attack on federation. It’s only natural to see people on Mastodon shitting on BlueSky for taking what they see as their success away from them.
because bluesky has had a collective struggle session recently with the twitter posters migrating over and realising they’re not actually being welcomed in open arms, usually when they out themselves with shit like genocide denial and transphobia.
I think he is saying nobody is sending him threats and calling him slurs because he isn’t a minority, but still acknowledges the problem of others.
Critical mass of users on social media platforms.
Back on Usenet decades ago they called it the “Eternal September”.
It used to be that every September, fresh University students would gain access to Usenet for the first time, and there would be a rough adjustment period where they don’t yet know the ropes, the lingo, the etiquette, the unspoken rules, and the expectant decorum, etc. Then one year, home internet service providers made Usenet accessible to ANYONE who subscribed… And from that day forward, it was like September every day, all year round.
Now the general riffraff are flocking to bsky because even THEY see that Twitter is sinking. This surge of new users have brought all their bad habits with them. Bsky must adapt or it too will fall.
When I looked at bsky it seemed to be about 60% pointing out stupid shit that Trumpists have recently said and done, and 30% self-congratulatory talk about how popular bluesky is this week.
30% self-congratulatory talk about how popular bluesky is this week.
TBF, Mastodon was the same when I joined. I just muted all mention of “mastodon” + variations, Bob’s your uncle. Navel gazing meta discourse is the least exciting updates on any platform.
It is still funny to visit random egg profiles on there and see they only tooted once, two years ago, saying “so this is mastodon, wonder how this works” and then never again.
Lemmy was like this too
Oh, still is.
“Lemmy is terrible!”
“Have you tried kbin?”
“kbin isn’t developed, try mbin”
“I tried mbin, but piefed is better”
“I only use the comments section of federated Wordpress blogs, by email”
“Zomg you guys, somebody launched qbin”
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I just mute “Trump” and “Elon”, cleans up the feed quite nicely
It’s the eternal cycle:
- Small platform has quality experience because most users are genuine and engaged, and user base is too small to be “worth it” for corporations and trolls
- Platform grows slowly until it reaches tipping point of popularity and network effect
- The platform has explosive growth, drawing interest of corporations and trolls
- Corporations enshittify while trolls crank out misinformation and rage bait
- Users reach tipping point and leave large platform to smaller platforms that don’t have corporate interests and trolls
- Repeat due to network effect
For a lot of Twitter users, this is their first collapse and migration. Usually these events make people more mobile in the future.
I wonder if and when they’ll start moving on from Bluesky? What event will trigger it next time? How much the experience will have to fall apart before they pack up and move? My money is on ‘way less than last time’.
I hope you’re right, but I feel like you’re putting too much faith in the average person.
I mean, it’s still going to be years. But maybe when it happens, it won’t be so damn sticky next time.
Here’s hoping you’re right.
Has been happening for three decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
No because Bluesky has block lists so all that stuff is so easily filtered. It’s honestly really lovely.
Sounds like just repeating an inherent truth to me? You can find toxicity anywhere on the internet that is not tightly regulated by a BDFL. That said, I would not adscribe any undue weight to this kind of statement. It’s like saying sky is blue. Intentions don’t matter, mass of users vs limited work of volunteer admins does.
It’s like saying sky is blue.
lol, didn’t even notice it when I wrote it. Good catch!
Every platform has its own Eternal September
For many platforms it’s even just the original user base that’s toxic
Seen very little of it on either Bluesky or Mastodon to be honest. Maybe it’s the type of searches or activities followed.
There is no real safe place. You need a platform that allows you to moderate it down to a place you can live with.
