Bluesky just verified ICE
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(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.
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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.
I don't think anyone impersonating gestapo would post anything worse than they already do, so there's no damage there
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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.
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Do you expect bsky to ban ICE? They already have a job posting to join the Gestapo in their profile, is that not enough?
Someone at bsky verification team looked at this, and instead of flagging the account to be reviewed and removed, they pressed the "verify" button. If you give them the benefit of doubt, this was a mistake from someone on the verification team, but realistically speaking a corporate platform turning into a Nazi bar is quite natural nowadays.
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. It's not ideal, but it's better than any of the existing alternatives.
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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.
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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?
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.
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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. It's not ideal, but it's better than any of the existing alternatives.
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. The choice is not only between "verify" and "not verify", there is also the option to "ban". 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 de-facto centralized, they operate the only full-network indexer, they get to control what accounts can post to all frontends
- They are hosting the ICE account on their own server and domain (bsky.social), and make it available through their own frontend (bsky.app). They definitely can control that, even if there were other indexers available
There is no excuse for bluesky to be hosting nazis. They have the choice, they are making that choice, fuck em.
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.
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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?
take accountability
[Citation needed]
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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.
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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. The choice is not only between "verify" and "not verify", there is also the option to "ban". 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 de-facto centralized, they operate the only full-network indexer, they get to control what accounts can post to all frontends
- They are hosting the ICE account on their own server and domain (bsky.social), and make it available through their own frontend (bsky.app). They definitely can control that, even if there were other indexers available
There is no excuse for bluesky to be hosting nazis. They have the choice, they are making that choice, fuck em.
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.
So, you would be OK with a newspaper accepting ads
What I am "OK with" has no impact whatsoever in "what actually gets to happen". I rather not waste my energy on the things that I can not control.
Banning ICE would not let them post Nazi propaganda
It would. They would just do it from unverified accounts. Worse still, they would be able to post it and completely deny it if confronted about it.
the corporate overlords of bluesky will let them post propaganda for free.
Spammers also get to send millions of messages every day for "free", but we mostly ignore it because we are able to filter them out. Sure, it would be great to completely get rid of spam and the phishing industry... but there is no way to completely get rid of them that does not involve increasing the surveillance aparattus and given more power to a centralized enforcer, so if I have to choose between spammers and corporate-controlled communicatioins, I will take the spammers any day.
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As they should. You only get a ban after you break their rules.
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So, you would be OK with a newspaper accepting ads
What I am "OK with" has no impact whatsoever in "what actually gets to happen". I rather not waste my energy on the things that I can not control.
Banning ICE would not let them post Nazi propaganda
It would. They would just do it from unverified accounts. Worse still, they would be able to post it and completely deny it if confronted about it.
the corporate overlords of bluesky will let them post propaganda for free.
Spammers also get to send millions of messages every day for "free", but we mostly ignore it because we are able to filter them out. Sure, it would be great to completely get rid of spam and the phishing industry... but there is no way to completely get rid of them that does not involve increasing the surveillance aparattus and given more power to a centralized enforcer, so if I have to choose between spammers and corporate-controlled communicatioins, I will take the spammers any day.
What I am “OK with” has no impact whatsoever in “what actually gets to happen”. I rather not waste my energy on the things that I can not control.
You are in control of which social media you use, and even more so in control about which companies you choose to support or defend. You are currently spending your energy defending a company that is hosting a de-facto nazi account on their servers.
Let me rephrase the question. If a newspaper you enjoy reading started publishing a column from Gestapo, what would you do? Would you boycott and complain? Would you just complain and keep buying it? Or would you keep buying it and defend their actions by "well I can just skip that page with the nazi propaganda on it"?
It would. They would just do it from unverified accounts.
Well, yeah, but that would take effort in creating&advertising new accounts. Why make their nazi jobs easier?
Worse still, they would be able to post it and completely deny it if confronted about it.
There is literally nothing stopping them from doing it now. Having a verified account does not impede their ability to create fake unverified accounts in any way.
Spammers also get to send millions of messages every day for “free”, but we mostly ignore it because we are able to filter them out. Sure, it would be great to completely get rid of spam and the phishing industry… but there is no way to completely get rid of them that does not involve increasing the surveillance aparattus and given more power to a centralized enforcer, so if I have to choose between spammers and corporate-controlled communicatioins, I will take the spammers any day.
I would agree with this (except bluesky is also corporate-controlled). There is no way to completely cut out spam, including nazi spam.
But in this case someone from Bluesky looked at this account which self-identifies as a nazi organization, verified that it belongs to a nazi organization, and hasn't banned it. It is clearly different.
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Literally every post they make is going to have a thousand people telling them to go fuck themselves
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What I am “OK with” has no impact whatsoever in “what actually gets to happen”. I rather not waste my energy on the things that I can not control.
You are in control of which social media you use, and even more so in control about which companies you choose to support or defend. You are currently spending your energy defending a company that is hosting a de-facto nazi account on their servers.
Let me rephrase the question. If a newspaper you enjoy reading started publishing a column from Gestapo, what would you do? Would you boycott and complain? Would you just complain and keep buying it? Or would you keep buying it and defend their actions by "well I can just skip that page with the nazi propaganda on it"?
It would. They would just do it from unverified accounts.
Well, yeah, but that would take effort in creating&advertising new accounts. Why make their nazi jobs easier?
Worse still, they would be able to post it and completely deny it if confronted about it.
There is literally nothing stopping them from doing it now. Having a verified account does not impede their ability to create fake unverified accounts in any way.
Spammers also get to send millions of messages every day for “free”, but we mostly ignore it because we are able to filter them out. Sure, it would be great to completely get rid of spam and the phishing industry… but there is no way to completely get rid of them that does not involve increasing the surveillance aparattus and given more power to a centralized enforcer, so if I have to choose between spammers and corporate-controlled communicatioins, I will take the spammers any day.
I would agree with this (except bluesky is also corporate-controlled). There is no way to completely cut out spam, including nazi spam.
But in this case someone from Bluesky looked at this account which self-identifies as a nazi organization, verified that it belongs to a nazi organization, and hasn't banned it. It is clearly different.
you are in control of which social media you use
I don't use or support Bluesky.
You are currently spending your energy defending a company
I'm not defending anyone. I am just looking at a stated claim (Bluesky is as bad as Twitter because they verified ICE) and evaluating if it has merits. I don't think it does.
If a newspaper you enjoy reading
The "newspaper I enjoy reading" is the WWW. The reason that I don't buy newspapers is because I want to keep the power to curate the information that I receive. As long as I am reasonably in control of the information that I can access, I see no point in complaining about it.
If you want to make a parallel to Reddit: despite it being 99% filled with crap that I don't care about, I could use it just fine and ignore all the drama. But when they decided to change the terms of the API and they were trying to force the specific channel to use to access it, then I immediately "stopped enjoying it" and went on to work on a solution to be back in control.
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If ICE tried to verify their account on Lemmy it would be permabanned instantly
Probbly not at the mgtow Lemmy instance.
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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
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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. That's how you end up with power-tripping mods, propaganda bubbles, and censorship (exactly what fascists are doing with X, fb, tiktok, etc).
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 (trusted sources), 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 (untrusted sources) feeds/comms.
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This makes ICE much easier to block.
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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. That's how you end up with power-tripping mods, propaganda bubbles, and censorship (exactly what fascists are doing with X, fb, tiktok, etc).
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 (trusted sources), 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 (untrusted sources) 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?
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This makes ICE much easier to block.
The block log is public. It's basically giving uncle Sam a list of targets to hit next.
Instead burn the bridge connecting to bsky, or ignore the account clientside which is not public.
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