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
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.
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.
Yes and lots of quips in meme text format. I didn't really enjoy it, but it was better than what has become of Twitter.
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'.
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.
the original post strikes me as shit stirring. I just opened blue sky for the first time and there was nothing "toxic" it was mostly landscape photos, memes, cat pics and news.
Yes. It enforces a bubble by its very nature. There is no main feed, by default you see people you follow and posts they interact with. I don't have a problem with that. I wouldn't go into a pub with racists, and xenophobes, so I shouldn't have to do it online.
Anyway, first thing I did was sign up for a couple of blocks lists, and what saw was awful people.
Also, if you look a the moderation settings, there is a lot of objectional content that is or can be hidden basic of topic flags. This is content that on any sane networks should be banned and the users suspended. But of Bluesky its just hidden from view.
It's basically a microcosm of the Internet. It's not the Good Place for sure, and anyone who thinks that is deluded.
There is no real safe place. You need a platform that allows you to moderate it down to a place you can live with.
just because the middle aged white guy with terrible opinions isn't catered to on platforms where the first users were ones fed up with middle aged white guys with terrible opinions, doesn't mean there's a problem, if anything it indicates federated social media is resistant to bullshit
This is called "virtue signalling".
The worst part of non-fascist Xitter.
Nobody sees racism or gets more offended by it more than white people on Twitter.
Nope. Not true.
This is the most correct.
I have seen an uptick in posts saying "block this maga/Nazi/etc" but I haven't personally directly seen any. I use the Following feed so I only see posts from the people I've specifically asked to.
The trolls and fascists do not exist on Twitter to hang out with other trolls and fascists. They're there hunting for liberal tears. When their prey leaves, they follow.
Bluekky has been open about not moderating their platform. They've provided users tools to not see the shit they're letting through the door -- which, yes, is currently better than Twitter, where the current ownership believes that 'free speech' is deserving of a captive audience -- but if the bsky algorithm thinks you have something -- anything, really -- in common with the Nazis, they'll get shunted into your timeline, leaving you to play wack-a-mole.
This person is a liar and just wants the Mastodon pat on the back. For some reason people on the fediverse can’t just enjoy their platforms and work to make them better. They have to lie about Bluesky and Nostr. I’ve been on Bluesky since the beginning. I’ve seen significantly more toxic people and content on fedi than I’ve ever have on Bluesky. People are happy to be away from X, they’re trying to promote a positive and supportive culture. There’s tonnes of minorities on Bluesky
I had the same experience. I rarely see any toxic shit on Mastodon compared to what I kept seeing on BlueSky, even after using custom feeds.
I guess it depends on what "toxic" means to everybody. I certainly saw a ton of self-centered hostility towards people who saw the platform differently when I was using Masto more. This place is pretty chill and the one bit of Fedi I still use.
My experience on BS was generally fine so far. Some people really block-happy, which I'm fine with, and during the last migration some of the trolls came over to troll and found themselves summarily banlisted almost universally. I don't expect them to last super long in there.
But as always with social media, experiences are more variable than anybody intuitively thinks.
The hell is masto? Mastocytosis? Mastopexy?
Mastodon, the Fediverse replacement for Twitter, like how Lemmy is the Fediverse replacement for Reddit.
Yet another case in point of how shitty mastodon's name is. Even its abbreviations are trash. The best time to change its name was before it started. The second best time is NOW. And the longer they go without fixing this, the worse it will be. As long as mastodon never rebrands, it is doomed to fall behind scummy oligarch controlled trash like threads.
I haven't really seen any toxicity on there yet, and I'd wager both are less toxic than here regardless.
All I saw were furries and dicks, and no way to filter them other than blocking all 18+ posts. And apparently everyone and their mother is a findom expert there, or just abusive in nature. Luckily I still don't understand those type of self centered narcissistic social media platforms and what to do on them.
I...haven't seen a single one of those. Any of it.
No.
Also, it’s so toxic yet he’s using the account still and bridged his fediverse account. If I encountered next level toxicity that’s not what I’d be doing
It has more people thus a more proportional selection of the population. Hence ur specific echo chamber will be challenged.
Every social media is collective of thousands of social bubbles.
While I advocating for federated SNS, I personally rarely encounter any toxicity on internet except when I interact with westerner (especially Americans). I carefully choose who I follow and interact, and the algorithm are trained with my interaction to put content that not toxic and relevant to me.
On fediverse alone, I have multiple account that delivers entirely different social experience. My English mastodon.social account that just slightly touch Western politics are thousands times toxic. Even my personal regional political discourse feed on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook are not as toxic as Western politics on fediverse.
Why the heck isn't he hosting his own Mastodon instance?
