[GloomyBoots]

Every time I've opened the bluesky homepage it's been highly political. Not even in the sense of "here's a topic I feel strongly about". It's just "fuck conservatives" over and over. At the same time, even the most mild conservative opinions result in a ban. That's not a platform that one goes to for an escape from toxicity. It's a platform that one goes to so that they can burn strawmen with like-minded toxic people without worrying about getting blowback for it.

[daveed]

I'm opening up my app right now, and I see none of this. Granted I'm a recent installer (this week), and all I've followed are tech/ml based lists. But it is a much quieter place than twitter.

The major accounts from twitter are not on bluesky, but I don't care for vitriol or meme replies (all of which are much higher on twitter). That being said, twitter still has a lot of interesting people, who are the main reason to continue using the site.

[krapp]

>Every time I've opened the bluesky homepage it's been highly political. Not even in the sense of "here's a topic I feel strongly about". It's just "fuck conservatives" over and over.

Odd. My homepage looks nothing like that. I wonder what I'm doing wrong?

[GloomyBoots]

I'm not signed in. Maybe that's why.

Right now I opened the home page, paged down through the top 20 or so bloots or whatever they're called, and got:

- An MSNBC video about fighting back against conservatives

- A post celebrating that a "right-wing lawsuit" to review voter rolls failed

- That BrooklynDad dude complaining about Trump supporters

- A post comparing conservatives to the Empire from Star Wars

- A post chastising White people for having opinions on some controversy involving Black celebrities

A lot of whiny us-against-them rhetoric, but it's not toxic because they are conservatives. In between those, there are cat pictures, some shower thoughts type posts, landscape photos, and comics. This was a marked improvement over the page when I opened it yesterday.

[ruthmarx]

It's because we've reached a point where the average conservative rhetoric is toxic, harmful and generally flat out incorrect. Political lines are now about acknowledging facts or not, and being bigoted or not. Places like Bluesky that don't allow misinformation or bigotry are of course going to be harsh on the political party that thrives on both.

[GloomyBoots]

> It's because we've reached a point where the average conservative rhetoric is toxic, harmful and generally flat out incorrect.

Yes, but not particularly.

> Political lines are now about acknowledging facts or not

Political lines are about which facts you accept. On many of the social issues of today, which are far more contentious than economic ones, liberal "facts" are often two lies and a half-truth wearing a trench coat. What liberals[1] want is a monopoly over which facts are on the table, and for all discussion to take place within that framing. And accusations of toxicity, harm, disinformation, and bigotry, are employed as rhetorical tools to preserve that monopoly.

[1]: By "liberals" here I don't mean average liberal voters, but politicians, pundits, influencers, and the class of affluent, politically-engaged people who tend to set the tone generally.

[ruthmarx]

> Yes, but not particularly.

Not particularly what?

> Political lines are about which facts you accept.

Right, one side outright makes up lies and denies things.

> liberal "facts" are often two lies and a half-truth wearing a trench coat.

I see your footnote, it's still nonsense. Conservatives outright lie, Trump an JD outright admitted to making up the story about Haitians eating pets which did incredible harm to a community, and conservatives lapped it up and asked for seconds instead of, you know, holding them accountable.

[latentcall]

I see plenty of conservatives on Bluesky and they aren’t banned? However I have seen conservatives who act rudely get banned so maybe that’s what you mean? But my point stands I see conservative discussion on there near daily and it isn’t banned.

[rsynnott]

They get mass-blocked a lot; this appears to make them furious, but is not the same as being banned. Generally, Bluesky mostly bans people over stuff in their profile, which has much stricter rules than posts.

[GloomyBoots]

What I saw were claims (and screen recordings) of being instabanned, not mass-blocked, for statements like “there are only two genders” which is a pretty basic conservative stance. One of the sources was that End Wokeness account, so not exactly an unbiased source.

I did make an account to test the waters with such statements, and wasn’t immediately banned, so maybe it’s not true.

[rsynnott]

I would wonder if they put something insane in their bio. There are lots of transphobes on Bluesky; eg this list seems to have thousands of people: https://bsky.app/profile/hedgehogsafety.bsky.social/lists/3l...

[pohl]

All this means is that you poorly curated your follows.

[GloomyBoots]

I’m not logged in. This is based on what I see as a potential user checking out the site for the first time.