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461 points GavinAnderegg | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.268s | source
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PaulHoule ◴[] No.42151244[source]
My take is that Bluesky is a nicer place than Mastodon.

Personally I think politics are terrible on microblogging platforms for the reason that you can't say very much in 140 characters or even 1400 characters.

A common kind of profile on that kind of platform is: "There are good people and bad people and I'm one of the good people"

It is very easy to other people and share memes that build group cohesion while driving other people away. Really making progress requires in politics a lot of "I agree with you about 90% but there is 10% that I don't" or "Well, I negotiated something in the backroom that you'd really hate but headed off a situation you would have thought was catastrophic but you won't appreciate that I did it so you and I are both better off if I don't tell you" and other sorts of nuance, you don't want to see how the sausage is made, etc.

To stand Mastodon (where you would have thought fascists were taking over the world a year ago if you believed what you read) I have to have about 20 or so block rules.

I see some people with the same kind of profiles on Bluesky but see a lot less othering in my feed because the "Discover" feed on Bluesky filters out a lot of angry content. My rough estimate is that it removes about 75% of the divisive political junk. That

(1) Immediately improves my feed, but also

(2) Reduces the amount of re-posted angry political content (it's like adding some boron to the coolant in a nuclear reactor) and

(3) Since angry political memes don't work anymore people find a different game to play

My guess is the X-odus folks are less agreeable than average for the same reason why people who "left California" to go to Colorado or someplace else are less agreeable. Those who go are less agreeable than those who stay. On the other hand, a certain amount of suppression of negativity could stop it from spreading and might not even be noticed as "censorship".

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mandmandam[dead post] ◴[] No.42151452[source]
[flagged]
parl_match ◴[] No.42151488[source]
See, your post is exactly what OP is talking about.
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philosopher1234 ◴[] No.42151554[source]
Making an argument that fascists are taking over the world may indeed be what gp doesn’t like.

But gp (and yourself, presumably) not liking it doesn’t make it untrue, and certainly doesn’t mean the argument should be censored.

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parl_match ◴[] No.42151833[source]
Being censored is not the same as not being amplified.
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blackeyeblitzar ◴[] No.42153501[source]
Providing different amplification to messages based on their political viewpoint is effectively censorship.
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blackqueeriroh ◴[] No.42155218[source]
This is incorrect. Censorship is eliminating someone’s voice. Amplifying views you like is called running your own social network.
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1. mandmandam ◴[] No.42155681[source]
Nope.

> censorship, the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed subversive of the common good.

(Brittanica) - note 'changing' and 'suppression', rather than 'elimination'.

> Any regime or context in which the content of what is publically expressed, exhibited, published, broadcast, or otherwise distributed is regulated or in which the circulation of information is controlled.

> The practice and process of suppression or any particular instance of this. This may involve the partial or total suppression of any text or the entire output of an individual or organization on a limited or permanent basis.

(Oxford) - note 'regulated' and 'controlled', and explicitly, 'partial or total', rather than elimination.

> Amplifying views you like

Ie, literally de facto censorship.

When every social network is owned by the yacht class, and they are "amplifying" everything except political views calling for a more equitable and less genocidal system, that's censorship. Definitevily.