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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack
@bellack.com
490 followers 210 following 260 posts
Author of the Platformocracy newsletter, Advisory Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, 30-year Internet veteran, Xoogler, grilling/smoking, an old house, and many, many comic books.
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · Jun 6
I love almost everything about @bsky.app. I don’t love that despite an admirable layer of open moderation, the company retains final power over setting and enforcing rules on its app. I propose separating @safety.bsky.app & @moderation.bsky.app from the Bluesky company, under community control.
Bluesky trust and safety is too important to be left to Bluesky
Bluesky is open about almost everything, except setting and enforcing their community guidelines. They have an opportunity to lead the Internet forward with a democratic alternative.
www.platformocracy.com
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Reposted by Jonathan Bellack
julietshen.bsky.social
boo-liet shen 👻 @julietshen.bsky.social · 1d
Rudy is the GOAT

and this kind of collective pluralism is what makes his work a real revolution
rude1.blacksky.team
Rudy wants revolution. @rude1.blacksky.team · 1d
If this becomes a big enough problem, we can switch gears over time! When Blacksky Private Posts ships (eventually) that won't touch Bluesky services at all and we (the Blacksky community) can decide collectively how we want that to work (maybe we don't allow images/videos at all!) 10/11
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 13h
www.platformocracy.com/p/there-is-n...
There is no online safety without anonymity
Last week, I said we need real-world identity online. This week, I rebut myself. Nobody said this Internet thing was going to be easy.
www.platformocracy.com
bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 13h
I agree! I wrote a piece to that effect in my newsletter a couple of weeks ago. The thing is, giving out accounts like free candy is also bad. It enables abuse at scale & leads to mass surveillance in the name of safety. Ideas like zero knowledge proofs and webs of trust have some promise to help.
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 20h
100%. Also, though, FWIW, the avalanche of garbage is so big because of easy, anonymous signups, which is a gigantic gift to bad actors who can do terrible stuff at scale, and even if they get caught and banned, can walk right back in the front door and do it again.
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Reposted by Jonathan Bellack
julietshen.bsky.social
boo-liet shen 👻 @julietshen.bsky.social · 1d
if you know solid software engineers who want to be part of our open source software adventure, email [email protected]

+10 if they've worked on trust & safety
+10 if they have worked with graphql and/or typescript
+100 if they like chicken puns
+1000 if they want to change the world
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Reposted by Jonathan Bellack
annebdh.bsky.social
Anne Bertucio @annebdh.bsky.social · 1d
Want to work on open source full time? The @roost.tools engineering team is starting to hatch! Come build OSS tools making a difference in Trust & Safety.

This is a fully remote role, though some schedule overlap with North American time zones is expected.

www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/43...
ROOST.tools hiring Staff Software Engineer in United States | LinkedIn
Posted 8:52:18 PM. About ROOSTROOST is a community effort to build scalable and resilient safety infrastructure for…See this and similar jobs on LinkedIn.
www.linkedin.com
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Reposted by Jonathan Bellack
rahaeli.bsky.social
rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 1d
And I just want to reiterate this ( from a thread deep in replies). I started doing this work before any of these tools existed. The number of my contemporaries in the field who have died by suicide is NOT A SMALL NUMBER. The work is incredibly traumatizing.
rahaeli.bsky.social
rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 1d
As someone who was doing that human review of images before even PhotoDNA existed, I can testify that the amount of human suffering automated image classification prevents is MASSIVE. Like, I am the best case scenario of the human cost of that work and I still have lifelong consequences from it.
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Reposted by Jonathan Bellack
devingaffney.com
Devin Gaffney @devingaffney.com · 23h
Time to up your donation amounts folks
rude1.blacksky.team
Rudy wants revolution. @rude1.blacksky.team · 1d
I hear and see your concerns. Over the weekend, a couple users hosted on Blacksky's PDS were banned from the Bluesky app and thus the Bluesky API servers. This was a weakness of our system I've been aware of and hoped we had more time to address before any kind of public incident. 1/11
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Reposted by Jonathan Bellack
rude1.blacksky.team
Rudy wants revolution. @rude1.blacksky.team · 1d
Suspension of accts from Bluesky has called into question the mission and very existence of Blacksky. "If bsky can still suspend you, what's the point?"

For one usually Bluesky doesn't just suspend you. They delete all of your data AND suspend you. Moving to Blacksky prevents that. 4/11
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Reposted by Jonathan Bellack
dustyweb.bsky.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber @dustyweb.bsky.social · 1d
I had a back and forth with a member of Bluesky's team about decentralization in my second blogpost, which takes a bigger deep dive into several details, including challenges with what will happen if Bluesky's architecture actually *was* federated.

Also maybe worth a re-read. How does it hold up?
dustyweb.bsky.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber @dustyweb.bsky.social · Dec 13
Three weeks ago I wrote "How decentralized is Bluesky really?" dustycloud.org/blog/how-dec...

Shortly thereafter, @bnewbold.net wrote his response: whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net...

I have written my (final) response blogpost: dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-b...

And as last time, 🧵. Buckle up.
Re: Re: Bluesky and Decentralization -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
dustycloud.org
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
This, right here, is the problem. Nobody can foster a healthy community if they can only afford to spend 30 seconds on each decision. If the money is not there, involve the community. Reddit is not perfect, but it at least has delegated a lot of moderation to subredditors.
aaron.bsky.team
Aaron Rodericks @aaron.bsky.team · 2d
A single moderator reviews thousands of reports per year — often making a decision in under 30 seconds. Expanding the scope of what counts as “evidence” makes it much harder to act fairly and consistently. 2/9
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
💯💯💯👏👏👏
ryanjgallag.com
Ryan J. Gallagher @ryanjgallag.com · 1d
Moderation isn't simply about taking things down, it's also about building a collectively safe space. Telling someone they can just "label" (or hide/block) something they don't like won't address their concern that their community isn't safe
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
At a minimum. Full separation of powers would be better. I wrote this back in June.
Bluesky trust and safety is too important to be left to Bluesky
Bluesky is open about almost everything, except setting and enforcing their community guidelines. They have an opportunity to lead the Internet forward with a democratic alternative.
www.platformocracy.com
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
Great point, +1 to all. Most social media platforms have a huge gap around coordinated abuse. Forcing the target to report one bad post at a time revictimizes them and doesn't get moderators the needed context anyway.

Perhaps hire ombudsmen or citizen advocates to investigate + support.
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
Another one would be looking into the current kerfluffle around the user Link being apparently permabanned. Map out the warnings and notifications he received, what he had to do in order to appeal, and what that process was like.
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
This would be a longer discussion but happy to discuss. A good place to start would be what people have to go through to report organized harassment rather than individual bad posts. This research paper has excellent insights. arxiv.org/pdf/2202.11168
arxiv.org
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
Optimistically I could imagine a market for different instance governance. Free but admin rules; everyone pays a share of the cost but gets a vote; etc.
bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest it would fix your situation so apologies for coming across that way. I meant more that in the fullness of reality it would be nice to have a choice of platform governance models rather than every place being some variation of absolute monarchy.
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
s/think/know/
bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
It doesn't have to be this way and probably shouldn't. Imagine an instance that could give the admin a vote of no confidence and have someone else take it over.
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
...if you make it easy & effective to report toxicity (& for people to defend themselves if accused) you are creating healthier patterns that will increase reporting rates, platform experience at handling cases, and ultimately lead to better enforcement and lower toxicity levels. Everyone wins. 4/4
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
...these user flows are usually bad because they are low frequency paths. But to the user who has had a toxic experience or been accused, these are the *most important flows of their product experience.* They are the chance for your platform to earn loyalty or destroy it. And also... 3/4
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
...what is the user journey *after* you encounter toxicity? Blocking, reporting, handling harassment, etc. What is the response from the platform? Also, what is the user journey if you are accused of toxicity? If you have your account deactivated? Is there an appeals flow? Because... 2/4
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bellack.com
Jonathan Bellack @bellack.com · 1d
Thanks for reaching out to learn. Respectfully, I suggest a different question would do more to help improve user experience. All social media will have some toxicity because, well, humans. The opportunity is to look at the user experience *when* someone encounters toxicity, and critically... 1/4
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Reposted by Jonathan Bellack
gregpak.com
Greg Pak : Work @gregpak.com · 4d
Due to recent trolling by the Bluesky CEO, I finally decided to try out another server - namely the myatproto.social server offered to non-Black users by Blacksky. Followed the transfer instructions below and it went fine! (Had to use my DID id instead of my username, but other than that, all good!)
rude1.blacksky.team
Rudy wants revolution. @rude1.blacksky.team · 4d
Migrating to Blacksky PDS: Complete Guide | Blacksky Documentation
Complete guide to migrating your Bluesky account to Blacksky's infrastructure. Covers migration tools, step-by-step instructions, troubleshooting, and how to use Blacksky services without migrating.
docs.blacksky.community
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