Fediverse Report - #117

Hi {name},

What starts off discourse on a social network? Bluesky is a social network that tends to have regular rounds of discourse that are site-wide. A number of Bluesky accounts also see any posts made by a large account as an opportunity to yell in the replies about things that are, at best, vaguely related. This creates a situation where it can be fairly predictable what things people will get mad at. Generative AI is a good example; speaking positively about the capabilities of LLMs is currently a good way to get yelled at on Bluesky.

Wired had an interview with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber this week, and the editors gave the interview a provocative title: "Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social Internet". The Wired editors are skilled at their craft, this is one of those titles that people just have to react to. Reading through the comments as well as quote posts of the Wired's Bluesky post, and this is what people are all commenting on.

Graber was forthcoming in the conversation, and interviewer Kate Knibbs did not limit herself to the easy questions. She asked Graber point blank: "Would you welcome President Trump?" Graber was clear in her answer: "Yeah—Bluesky’s for everyone, and we think that over time, the broader public conversation needs to be on an open protocol. That lets people choose their own moderation preferences. We think that it’s flexible enough to serve every use case and everyone."

You do not have to be particularly well-versed in Bluesky culture to realise that this is quite the controversial answer. Last winter, a significant part of Bluesky's user base got upset that the company did not ban Jesse Singal. The criticism was not so much regarding what Singal had said on Bluesky, but had said before on other platforms, and how his presence on Bluesky made the network unsafer for various minorities including trans people.

Donald Trump is famously not very well regarded within the Bluesky community, and the idea that he is welcome on the platform does not seem to line up with the convictions of a significant part of the user base. So in that context, it confused me that this quote by Graber has not started any major site-wide discourse. Nor on the fediverse for that matter, where there is a part of the community that loves to take any opportunity to criticise Bluesky. I'm not entirely sure why this is. Maybe the simple answer is that nobody reads articles anymore (hello person who made it this far!), especially not if they're paywalled. Or maybe this is just the random nature of how discourse happens on social networks: sometimes subjects arbitrarily take off and become popular for no real reason. This might just be the reverse of that effect, where explosive statements ripe for discourse just arbitrarily do not become popular for no clear reason either.

Regardless, Knibbs followed up by asking Graber's perspective on how her answer of the platform being for everyone relates to this current time period where free speech is under threat. For Graber, allowing Trump on the network is a matter of speech versus reach, as well as separating protocol and platform. Graber and Bluesky PBC cannot prevent Trump, or anyone else, from using the infrastructure of AT Protocol and join the network. This is the freedom of speech part. The freedom of reach part is that Bluesky PBC can prevent Trump from using Bluesky's app, and get access to their 35 million users. Graber draws an analogy with how the internet works in the same way, saying: "Anyone can do the equivalent of standing up a new blog. Then sites like Bluesky get to decide how to prioritize reach."

Some additional thoughts on Graber's answer of allowing Trump on the network:

The first is that this is a political answer: any answer that suggests Bluesky PBC might ban Trump runs a real risk of ire by the Trump administration. Wired ran an article just a few weeks ago with the headline that makes the stakes clear: "Brendan Carr Is Turning the FCC Into MAGA’s Censoring Machine". Carr has consistently promised to stop the "censorship cartel" across social media. In that context, any answer by a US-based social networking platform that is not "Trump is welcome on our platform" is highly risky and asking for trouble. Especially considering that Trump seems perfectly happy on his own platform, and the question seems to be largely speculative anyway.

Secondly, Graber's answers also imply fairly neat boundaries between different places on ATProto, even though one key feature of the protocol is that boundaries between spaces get blurred. Graber says: "If you want to change the rules, you can build your own thing or find another space that serves you. Within the parameters of Bluesky, we’re setting the rules." The only other ATProto products that Graber mentions in the interview are Skylight and Flashes. Flashes and Skylight are Bluesky clients, that use Bluesky's moderation infrastructure. So if people disagree with Bluesky's rules and want to follow up Graber's remarks to find another space, going to the spaces that Graber mentions in the interview will have no impact.

This blurring of boundaries between spaces on ATProto also works in the other direction: deer.social is a Bluesky client that allows its users to turn off Bluesky's moderation system. So even people who perceive themselves to be in the same digital space can have different experiences regarding moderation. This is likely to get even more complicated as people start building other apps that interoperate with Bluesky with their own moderation infrastructure.

That's all for this week, with reflections on discourse that did not actually happen. Thanks for reading!