[curtisblaine]

"Censored" I mean "flagged", sure. In practice, they're all hidden from the casual user. But really, I'm interested on why ATProto was touted as revolutionary while in practice it powers a standalone heavily politically biased social network where moderators are extremely active flagging everything that's on the right. In that respect, Mastodon is more "revolutionary" - you handle your instance, you provide your moderation, you optionally integrate with other instances. Mastodon itself is used, in practice, to moderate a highly diverse ecosystem of social networks, from the gay-friendly ones to Gab. Nostr, although it's not so widely used, is even more tailored against sectarism by default.

From what I see, Bsky is a single instance of one of the most politically aligned social media in existence; in practice, you can achieve that with any proprietary implementation, you don't need ATProto. I honestly thought that the protocol was engineered to prevent an echo chamber, but in reality it powers an enormous standalone echo chamber that is not moving anywhere, so I was wondering what's the difference.

[forgotaccount3]

I'm not fully aware of the tech here, are those posts flagged as 'Intolerant' by bsky or by the protocol itself?

[steveklabnik]

By Bluesky.

The protocol has a notion of moderation accounts, sometimes called "labelers" because they can apply labels to your account. Users generally [1] subscribe to the moderation that they want to see. They can then set those labels to make the application to "show", "warn" (collapse by default, click to expand), or "hide" based on the labels.

1: People using the bluesky app cannot unsubscribe from the bluesky moderation service, but that is a policy choice of the bluesky app, not a protocol level choice, other clients can do as they choose.

[fwn]

I'm no expert in atproto but it seems to be far worse than that. Apparently, Bluesky applies country-specific labellers automatically based on your IP address.

If you register a Bluesky account from Germany, your account is assigned the German moderation labeler with no option to opt out. As soon as I noticed, I created a new account using a US IP address. This fixed it.

While signing up for moderation sounds very attractive to me, Bluesky's whole layered moderation approach seems designed to maximize algorithmic censorship.

Compare that to, for example, a mastodon instance (or a forum like HN) where you participate because you align with the general moderation approach cultivated by and within the community.

edit: I found the following write-up which mirrors my experience https://fediversereport.com/bluesky-censorship-and-country-b...

[steveklabnik]

That is part of my (1). This is Bluesky specific. This is also repeated in your link.

[fwn]

Yes, it is specific to Bluesky. It is not dependent on the official app, though: Both the app and the website are subject to this kind of censorship.

There seem to be loopholes [1] through some third-party apps, but that does not change much about the overall problem. Defaults matter a lot.

I have a hard time understanding why the Bluesky authors came up with an idea like that in the first place. Not to mention actually creating it. The internet (or social media) probably does not benefit from even more granular censorship tools for governments all over the world.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/23/government-censorship-come...

[steveklabnik]

Neither "the app" nor "the website" (they're the same thing) are the protocol, which is what matters.

Other applications using the protocol is not "a loophole," it's how protocols work.

[curtisblaine]

@phillipcarter: of course it's users (and mods) doing that, but in the end, if you open bsky today you see a single, huge, left-biased social media. If you look at Mastodon, you see at a lot left-leaning trans-and-furry-friendly instances, true, but you also see a bunch of right wing instances plus Gab. What happens with bsky today (single instance, echo chambered) is simply something I don't expect from a "distributed" social network. Why is that?

[rsynnott]

Gab doesn’t federate, so isn’t really part of the fediverse. They’re just using the software; they’re their own thing, not part of a distributed social network. One could make an atproto island that didn’t federate, I suppose, but it would be a lot of work for no obvious reason.

(There are a few other far-right mastodon instances, but then there are pockets of the far-right on bsky, too)

[stereolambda]

Isn't the answer kind of obvious - much more weight of the developers in comparison to the random people from open source community. Also timing: Mastodon and ActivityPub appeared in the tail end/transitional period when there was still some common public square mindset (at least among random people not radicalized in any way), and tech inclined people had protocols vs. centrally managed platforms in relatively fresh memory. So in the mid-2010s you'd get all sorts of people flocking to the promise of free internet.

When Bluesky was taking traction, the cultural expectation among its audience was already for the platform to heavily shape the narrative. Paradoxically, AFAIK the Bluesky devs themselves are pretty serious about it being an open standard, though I'm basing this on what I heard. So I mostly believe people that the echo chambering you mention is structured in a way that it's technically not centralized. Though in practice, it's way easier to amplify left wing messages on closed websites like YouTube, Facebook, X (I'm basing this on algorithmic recommendations I'm getting and experience of people I know) than the other way around on Bluesky. But this is just the weight distribution of the audience.

Even then non-left supervised Mastodon ecosystem is something of a deep cut. I mean you're right it exists and now I recall hearing about some drama years ago, but not a part of the front and center info about them, for any common person. So I'm not fully buying the contrast you're trying to build here.

[steveklabnik]

> AFAIK the Bluesky devs themselves are pretty serious about it being an open standard, though I'm basing this on what I heard

https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group

[hungryhobbit]

"Why is that?"

Elon Musk took over Twitter and made it rabidly right-wing. As a result, a lot of left-wing people went to Blue Sky.

Social networks are just groups of people: if such a network starts with a core group that leans heavily on a particular end of the political spectrum, the network will also (even with zero bias from the network itself) lean that way.

[phillipcarter]

What you are describing is, bluntly, not happening.

Bluesky moderators take down abusive and harmful posts. There is a daily uproar on the left about how they do this to "kiwifarms but leftishly" behavior under the guise of being "anti-trans". If right-wing centered posts are getting taken down, it is because they are abusive and harmful.

Bluesky popularized subscriber lists, like blocklists. A large portion of the network mass-mutes or mass-blocks anyone on the big right-wing block lists. This is user behavior, not the platform censoring right wing people.