In fact I believe that the present day situation boils down to one thing only: the prioritization of engagement at the cost of all else.
That’s what set us down this road. It incentivizes inflammatory posting that eschews nuance and context and twists and exaggerates the subject matter in order to provoke emotional responses — whether they be angry replies, “dunk” quote-posts, reposts, or even spending a couple extra seconds with the post on screen. Anything to steal away more of your attention and mindshare. Over time, this has polarized people to ever further extremes and normalized disrespect and bickering (as opposed to discussion).
It would be an interesting experiment to see the effects of effectively the polar opposite of twitter, where ragebait and other attention-seeking behaviors are actively punished, with the content that’s most readily surfaced instead being that which is thoughtful, candid, and not emotionally charged.
Added to that is user choice over moderation and algorithms.
That’s what’s truly interesting about BlueSky. It allows for side A and B to both exist, with people who want to be more isolated in a safe space (so to speak) to do so. That’s a really great property. If I want to engage with content I severely disagree with, I can put it in a feed I check infrequently so that it doesn’t impact my life.
Humans aren’t good at coping with a constant barrage of disagreeable (for one’s personal definition of disagreeable) or inflammatory content.
On “safe spaces”, as you hint at I think many of us don’t want to be shielded entirely from opposing or otherwise differing lines of thought. Speaking personally, I welcome it if there’s actual discussion to be had. Good faith discussions and exchange of perspectives is great, but I have no patience for trolls, circular logic, insults, “debate” that wouldn’t even pass for high school level, etc.
Then you need to choose the safe space option. Under no circumstances should you opt to advertise removing content for others. Because your justification with "circular logic" could mean anything. This is the safe space option.
That more free platforms employ spam protection is no excuse.
I think circular logic is fairly well defined (from Wikipedia, “Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with. Circular reasoning is not a formal logical fallacy, but a pragmatic defect in an argument whereby the premises are just as much in need of proof or evidence as the conclusion.”)
That said, yes it’s not grounds for a ban. I wouldn’t block over it either unless the person in question is being obnoxious and e.g. following me around between threads and trying to stir up argument about the subject of contention or resorts to personal insults or something like that.
You will never have an agreement on it. Some see statements as axioms and others do not. Without premises, every form of reasoning can be regarded as circular.
You can have an authority on it that determines something as circular or not. But then you will inevitably end up with dogmatism.
Someone once said that circular reasoning works if the circle is large enough. Knowing the fallacy might help you detect faulty reasoning in your own thoughts. It doesn't allow for much more practical applications.
Maybe, though that suggests that there can be no such thing as a ground truth, which seems kinda shakey to me since it can be used to justify practically any viewpoint imaginable, regardless of how divorced from reality or lacking in verifiable proof it may be.
I would love to see a respectful debate starter pack on bluesy get started. Maybe controled by a bot that looks for words that are insults like “troll” “don’t melt snowflake”, etc and will boot you if you get caught. I like political debate, sharing of trustable sources, etc. I don’t like someone telling me I’m just a melting snowflake or cuck, when I bring in a link from a scientific journal to cite as part of my argument
I've just started using Bluesky. How does it compare to Reddit? There are dedicated subreddits for the conservatives and the liberals, and every subreddit has moderation rules. I use the right and left-focused subreddits to keep track of what's going on in different universes. However, I must mention that you won't find a reasonable discussion of left vs right ideologies on the main sub-reddits, as Reddit users are predominantly left-leaning. But at least there are smaller forums where these two groups meet and interact, and there is some debate.
Bluesky is a lot more like old, early algorithm twitter.
Reddit is a cluster of independently operated communities that occasionally get signal blasted onto the main feed. The top moderator of a subreddit owns it and sets any standard they like.
With Bluesky there are no defined communities outside of collective engagement with particular topics or hashtags or networks of follows. There is also a "Show me [more/less] of this" button every post, and so far it seems like the platform is pretty solid at respecting your preferences. They also seem to be actively moderating the really open bad behaviour off the platform.
I don't think Bluesky is as good as a well-moderated subreddit for long form discussion, but if you spend a little time curating your feed I think you might enjoy it.
The move to Bluesky encompasses much more than leftists and came as a result of increasing numbers of trolls and bots and decreasing quality of interaction, both of which hit an inflection point following the election. You don’t have to belong to a particular political leaning to get tired of those things.
As an example, a lot of artists moved because they wanted to post their work and talk with other artists in peace, which had become increasingly difficult on X.
I think your logic is a bit silly in the sense that bringing up dissatisfaction over any subject can be brushed off as “screaming that they’re being oppressed”.
Sometimes people are being oppressed. Sometimes it’s people you don’t like, and would like to see oppressed.
> It would be an interesting experiment to see the effects of effectively the polar opposite of twitter, where ragebait and other attention-seeking behaviors are actively punished, with the content that’s most readily surfaced instead being that which is thoughtful, candid, and not emotionally charged.
Who would read it? The same people who already avoid twitter - not journalists, and therefore not celebs/politicians.
Presumably, normal people who want to interact with people they already know? interaction with journalists and politicians is valuable in an entirely different manner.
Their advertising model certainly is a problem. But it isn't the only one, there are more and more users that demand other users be removed because of their opinion. When social networks started to listen to a few of them, they made themselves hostages to more demands. Platforms like Twitter or reddit certainly suffered from this.
I agree that ads are basically controlling most of the internet and public discourse now. Like you can't even use normal words in youtube videos anymore, because your video will be less visible/removed.
On the other hand, there are way too many people/accounts/bots out there that don't actually want to talk or discuss something, but spread false information and incite rage and anger. Those need to be moderated even harder than they already are, i think.
Overt support or advocacy for known hate/supremacist groups should fall under the scope of “needs moderation” as well. That sort of content has seen a sharp uptick on X which is one of the reasons why people are now jumping ship.
You can say just about whatever you want on bsky as long as you’re civil. I think you will probably get kicked if you start hate-ons for issues like trans, LGBTQ, women, etc that are uncivil. It’s one thing to debate gender, it’s another to say “quit crying qu*r”. That’s likely get you reported and banned or on some blacklists. I think you would probably have to be civil in discussions on groups that are likely protected under say the civil rights act, and modern take on that as to which groups should have been added but haven’t like LGBTQ. Just my take, it’s not the law of the land :). It seems like dems/magas/libertarians aren’t considered protected groups on there and I’ve seen some heated”discussions” that didn’t seem to get cut.
In fact I believe that the present day situation boils down to one thing only: the prioritization of engagement at the cost of all else.
That’s what set us down this road. It incentivizes inflammatory posting that eschews nuance and context and twists and exaggerates the subject matter in order to provoke emotional responses — whether they be angry replies, “dunk” quote-posts, reposts, or even spending a couple extra seconds with the post on screen. Anything to steal away more of your attention and mindshare. Over time, this has polarized people to ever further extremes and normalized disrespect and bickering (as opposed to discussion).
It would be an interesting experiment to see the effects of effectively the polar opposite of twitter, where ragebait and other attention-seeking behaviors are actively punished, with the content that’s most readily surfaced instead being that which is thoughtful, candid, and not emotionally charged.