You must log in or register to comment.
Yeah, so? Verification just means they are who they say they are. It doesn’t mean Bluesky endorses their posts.
The White House has a verified Bluesky account, too. They haven’t posted anything in months, though, presumably because of all the ratio-ing.
Why are people so max about this?
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 bake, or ignore the account clientside which is not public.
(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.
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, 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 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?
So you want a Nazi bar. Ok.
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.
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
I wonder if that is acutally better though, or just as problematic in the other direction
It is a lot better. If you let Nazis join your platform, your platform is now a Nazi bar. Ban them, don’t let them spread their propaganda.
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.
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?
It would be better if they wouldn’t even be platformed at all. We don’t need no federation with Nazis.
Yeah I really don’t see why everyone is upset about this. Should be upset that ICE exists but not but they have an official bluesky account. This is basically the same as going “yep they’re real”.
This is just more weird Mastodon elitism.
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.
I look forward to them being confronted with views they can’t just ask Elon to delete.
But, let’s be real here, this is rage bait to track people using their first amendment rights in a way they don’t love. BSKY doesn’t need to give up anything on users. Users accessing BSKY ip addresses given up by their ISP will be more than enough for Palintir to find. A few links with trackers provide browser fingerprinting. Easy day for them.
Be careful, y’all.
It’s better if the nazis were permabanned from their indexer thingy. Otherwise it’s just a nazi bar.
Imagine if in the 30s, some newspaper allowed the Gestapo to run ads and write an opinion column. Would you be defending them?
Labeling the account as verified and excluding/not excluding from the AppView are two separate actions.
It is a clear indication that they don’t intend to ban the account, they have verified it on their own server. They are two separate actions, but one implies that the other will not be done.
And in any case, I’m pointing out that the dichotomy between “verify ICE and let them post nazi propaganda officially” and “let ICE post nazi propaganda with plausible deniability” is false, they can (should) just ban them.
but one implies that the other will not be done.
This is false.
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.
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
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.
take accountability
[Citation needed]
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.
Not a new debate at all… https://xkcd.com/1914/ and the context for that was https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-suspends-verifying-accounts-giving-154625015.html
I agree that if “verification” is going to be a thing, it should only mean the person or organization is who they claim to be, not imply endorsement of any of their activities.
Literally every post they make is going to have a thousand people telling them to go fuck themselves
Not that big of a deal IMHO; it’s what verification is for, unlike X’s blue check model.
The new corporate platform is just as problematic as the old corporate platform made by the same person? Wow, what a revelation.
How about kick them off the platform? Make a big deal about doing it. Tell them to fuck off. Stop tolerating intolerance. I don’t know how blue sky works, but surely there is a way to kick them off of the platform.
Bsky is actually quite centralized. Bluesky the company owns the only full-network indexer (I think they call it a “relay” or something), which collects posts from all other servers and allows those posts to be rendered by various apps (e.g. bsky.app, but all other frontends use the same indexer). They could just ban them at indexer level.
But even that is moot, because they are letting them host their account on a server Bluesky the company owns, bsky.social.
Does Mastodon even have the verification feature?
Yes, though it works a bit differently.
In your mastodon bio you link to your other precenses on the web (webpage, twitter, GitHub, whatever)
On those profiles you add an (invisible) link to your mastodon profile. Mastodon can then verify that your mastodon profile and your other sites are controlled by the same entity, and get a blue tick.
What’s stopping ICE from verifying on Mastodon?
The will to do so.
Finding an instance to register on that won’t ban them for
No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies
(Rule 3 on mastodon.social)
Then what is the point of what the OP is saying? How is Mastodon any different? If anything it looks like it’s worse because ICE just have a basic link to their website and it’s done.
As they should. You only get a ban after you break their rules.
