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You can verify yourself on Mastodon by including a piece of HTML code in your site’s header.
Literally everyone can do that, even government agencies. I have it on my blog. What do we do then?
So, trying to parse what’s going on here.
Bluesky has verified that an account claiming to belong to the US government agency ICE really is controlled by that agency. Somehow that shows that Mastodon is better. Because Trump has his own Mastodon instance and doesn’t need anyone to vouch for his goons?
Looking at the comments, maybe the issue is rather that the Bluesky company provides services to ICE. Tech companies should refuse service. Huh. I guess there is more diversity of opinion on Lemmy than I had thought, regarding the power of tech companies, democracy, and law.
It’s just all emotion and no rational thought now. People just go into outrage mode when certain topics are mentioned.
Really it opens a channel to criticize ICE without needing to logon to X to do so. But that’s bad because preventing communication is good?
Of course I doubt ICE will care about criticism directed towards their account on bluesky. But that means things said on the internet don’t have much of an effect on things, which means it doesn’t matter whether they’re on bluesky (or any other forum).
Mostly it’s about some weird belief by some about controlling what is being said on the internet gains power. You’d think the events that have happened would have proven this wrong, but still people continue to be upset about things being said on the internet and want some power over those things.
Really words on the internet don’t matter as much as people think, and the idea of blocking unwanted information is annoying at best and can lead to ignorance. What matters is the horrible acts ICE is doing. We should want more light being shown on them, and welcome any potential channel of discussion.
Wanting to prevent discussion indicates you feel you’re in the wrong. ICE is indicating they want discussion, while those that are outraged by ICE being on bluesky are indicating they don’t want discussion on ICE. Why would anyone want to make is seem ICE is in the right while they’re in the wrong? It’s people not thinking and only reacting emotionally and handing ICE a W because they are raging instead of thinking.
Yeah, the reactive group signaling stuff does more harm than good, just further perpetuating the conditions that allow propaganda to proliferate. This includes intentionally using the wrong words, for dramatic effect. Wholly agree that more, rational conversation and LESS insularity is the best path forward.
Bluesky is a centralized platform and their mods don’t ban Nazis.
Trump being able to clone Mastodon is not the same as letting Trump on Mastodon.social
Every Mastodon instance can choose to defederate with truth social
BlueSky can choose to kick ICE off their platform
It’s that simple
Trump being able to clone Mastodon is not the same as letting Trump on Mastodon.social
The Mastodon devs made a choice in releasing it as open source. They could have decided to pick and chose who is allowed to use it. It was completely foreseeable, that the software would be used for something like Gab or Truth.Social. When they release update, they know that these will also be used by such services.
This is merely a statement of fact, not criticism. They chose not to exercise power or become arbiters of good and evil. That is laudable.
Bluesky is a centralized platform and their mods don’t ban Nazis.
I get it. You feel that tech companies should deny service to bad people. For example, to a government agency acting on behalf of a president elected by a solid majority of the popular vote.
I agree that the voters got it wrong, but I don’t think that the rich and powerful vetoing voters will lead to good outcomes. Look at medieval Europe. Life got better with democracy, not with a supposedly more just king.
The tech lord most in line with your ideas is Elon Musk, except that he’s kinda nazi. So, on a purely practical note, it doesn’t seem very likely that tech companies being more political would lessen racism.
Do you think it would be better if all the billionaires, who are probably mostly non-nazi, were activist like him?
solid majority of the popular vote
narrow plurality
I think that tech companies taking a stand on what their employees and/or users believe in is a reasonable thing.
Idk what the employees of bluesky believe, but I’m fairly familiar with the bay area tech scene and I think that there is a decent chance that the employees would like to take a stand by not providing services to ICE.
That being said, idk if simply allowing them to have an account is providing services. I think it’s probably better to have govt agencies have verified accounts so people know when things are official statements, even if you disagree with the agency.
taking a stand on what their employees and/or users believe in is a reasonable thing.
The majority of USA citizens voted for Trump. Why should Bluesky take a stand on what a minority believe in?
Even if that was true, which it isn’t, a company should reflect the beliefs of its employees and community.
Actually, less than a quarter of citizens voted for him. Less than a 3rd or registered voters.
Not even half of a half of citizens said they wanted this.
it’s called guilt by assocation. it’s shitty and lame type of logical fallacy
if you live on the same street as a nazi, you must be a nazi. because apparently you have to sell your home and move away if a nazi moves in.
of course, if you do this and it’s a non-white person you are racist… and a bad person, but if you do it for a nazi you’re a good person.
it’s not as if the logic of the thing is what at’s fault, and the accuser has hyperbolic sense of other people’s social obligations to appeal to their sensibility.
I would like an explanation as to exactly why a Nazi and a non-white person are comparable categories of people.
Yeah, so? Verification just means they are who they say they are. It doesn’t mean Bluesky endorses their posts.
The White House has a verified Bluesky account, too. They haven’t posted anything in months, though, presumably because of all the ratio-ing.
I get why this would bug people.
It’s a small act of legitimizing the domestic Gestapo, but we’ve already seen that the corporate social media is a-okay with platforming terrorists, Nazis, and the worst.
That’s why we’re on Lemmy instead.
Too many people thought that Twitters Blue Checkmark meant you were special. That attitude carries over to Bluesky and being verified.
Lol, yeah. If I saw an account labeled “American Nazi Party” with a blue check mark, I wouldn’t think “wow, Bluesky endorses Nazis” - I’d think “wow, this isn’t a satire account, these are actual Nazis, imma block them.”
Lol, yeah. If I saw an account labeled “American Nazi Party” with a blue check mark, I wouldn’t think “wow, Bluesky endorses Nazis” - I’d think “wow, this isn’t a satire account, these are actual Nazis, imma block them.”
I’d think “wow they let Nazis on here. Like they know about them and are cool with that. This place is trash”
And miss out on all the juicy trolling opportunities?
yeah but you have at least half a brain.
most internet users barely have 1/10 of one. and demand other users be banned for not sharing their opinions, but would be outraged if they were banned for their objectionable opinions.
A private group publishing posts for another group is exactly the act of endorsing their posts.
Which no one will read because bluesky has a really great block system
Yeap. This is a provocative, reactive take that doesn’t consider much.
It’s not, though. Do you think that the admins of reddthat.com endorse everything you post? Creating a public forum for people (including the representatives of organizations) to post on doesn’t imply that the forum endorses any of the content those people post on it.
I wouldn’t call it “endorsing”, but I would call it “platforming”. blahaj.zone is platforming you, lemmy.ml is platforming me, bluesky is platforming nazis.
So?
Any place Nazis are allowed is not a place I want to be. At least on any Lemmy server I’d not block, Nazis get banned
Are they banned in Mastodon? Lmao
There is no Mastodon for them to be blocked on in the sense you’re talking about.
Mastodon is similar in setup to Lemmy in that nobody owns it and anyone can run it. I am absolutely positive they are banned on tons of Mastodon servers and not banned on tons of others. If the server you are on is federated with even one server with one that isn’t banned, you could potentially see their posts, at which point you can either report those posts to your and their admins, or block them yourself.
So the mastodon service supports Nazis.
nobody owns it and anyone can run it
They could have chosen a license that forbid usage for spreading hate. They put “free software” and “open source” above blocking hate speech.
They’re providing software to Nazis, and I don’t really see how that makes them better than providing a place to post.
Everyone responding here and confused why this matters seem not get the point. This post is just a warning that the types of people most of us don’t want to associate with are now on that platform. The problem is not that they are verified, it’s that they exist there at all.
Edit: some reasonable arguments have been made here for allowing these Nazis on Blue sky, which I originally thought was a bad idea, but maybe disallowing them won’t actually solve anything and may exacerbate things. I don’t know. I’ll think about it some more.
Personally, I do want a common communication platform for people I despise because I want to be able to keep tabs on their public announcements. Also, I don’t want any tech platform to have sole authority over who can communicate, as in the present, that will invariably work against the left more than the right.
I do not want to share close proximity to them on a network graph, or regularly engage with their supporters, though. So I agree that federation is crucial. But to be clear, it’s not because I want to ban them from a platform, it’s because I want managed distance and better moderation.
I don’t mind Bluesky verifying them, but I’m glad that on Mastodon I don’t have to share the same giant server as them.
If it’s an official govt agency I think it makes sense for them to be allowed on communications platforms and to be verified, so that people can see what they’re saying and know that it’s an official statement.
Then people can see the post and make their own judgements about it, knowing it’s an official agency statement.
Having twitter style factcheck for blatant misinformation is also important for this, though.Yeah, I can see that perspective too, but at the same time it’s Nazi propaganda they’re posting. There aren’t really any good options.
They have always been on there. There have been waves of brigading and trolling, etc. BlueSky’s blocking tools and options for no algorithm dramatically limit their visibility, and they eventually have no impact and get bored and eventually go away.
No, that’s exactly what I thought, and I’m still confused as why this is bad? Do people want baby’s first echo chamber again?
It’s not hard to understand that people want Nazi ideology to be rejected.
I do. But… how will that happen if they are not verified…?
Yeah, I wasn’t the clearest here. I thought they shouldn’t be allowed on there at all, but I’m rethinking it now.
We also want to ensure that conservatives are repeatedly alienated so they build their own networks and never see other points of view! /s
How the tf would them being verified make them “on the platform” as opposed to them literally being on the platform but not verified. Total cope comment from someone who tried to back rationalise their initial reaction.
Reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit. What about my statement means that them being there before was okay? I assume most people upset about it didn’t have a fucking clue they were there before. Not that it matters since it’s clear from your tone you’re a troll.
The original post explicitly calls them out specifically for being verified, not being on the platform. Then you walk in, dick swinging, saying “ummm ackchully it’s about them being on the platform not being verified. And you’re illiterate for being able to read and thinking otherwise 😏” yeah okay buddy keep coping
If you actually read the thread like I did you might get it. But yeah I’m weirdly macho and also wrong or something
If you actually read the post like I did you might get it, but yeah I’m weirdly illiterate and also wrong or something
deleted by creator
realisation that their own argument wasn’t consistent with what they previously commented moment
I deleted my account on BlueSky since last Sept. BlueSky is pretty trash
I … don’t understand? Are they bad because they verified them? Why the “welcome” comment, that’s not what Verification is? Are they “platforming” them? I don’t get what is the preferred outcomes?
The verification is from Blue Sky itself saying that the account is indeed ICE agency.
Fuck ICE they should not be having a a platform
On paper it’s a government agency which would normally be allowed to have verification.
However it is a government agency functioning more like a hate group, right now very inimical to the concept and idea of civil rights (already enshrined as law), and hostile to diversity and social justice; with absolutely no regulation of its activities, it is an agency mandated directly by the executive to remove anyone who is not white and Christian.
Unfortunately, Bluesky still has to verify them.
Block them if you want. Block lists are public so… use caution.
There are MANY government accounts on Blusky. I think if they did not verify them, the government would find someone to buy them or shut them down. Use your heads here.
I prefer the instance blocking Nazis instead of users manually having to do so.
So you’re not using your head then.
You think Nazis should not be banned by admins on your instance?
What’s the alternative? They have admins ban any and all accounts that might be made by ice or ice personnel? Refusing to validate them doesn’t take them off the platform. They’d still be there, you just wouldn’t know who they were. In fact you still don’t, they could very well have puppet accounts all across blue sky, Lemmy, and all of your favorite instances.
At the very least when this account starts to post insane shit, you’ll know it’s actually them and not some edge lord cosplayer pretending to be ice. A verified account removes the plausible deniability aspect of anonymous posting.
And I’m not being argumentative, I’m asking a genuine question. This is the Gestapo wearing a uniform. If anything, they’re stupid for asking for verification. This is them wearing ICE jackets to the grocery store.
The real test will be how bluesky treats the content this verified account posts. When (and let’s be real, it’ll be when, not if) bluesky refuses to censor this account, then they’ll have proven themselves complicit.
They have admins ban any and all accounts that might be made by ice or ice personnel?
yes.
Why are people so max about this?
Because they want corporations to do their job for them of holding the government accountable.
(Not American here)
While i agree fediverse is then solution and i don’t use bluesky, i don’t see the issue is recognizing ICE as verified.
After all ice is a government agency of the USA whether you like it or not, and should be verified if there is a procedure to do so.
No i don’t like ice and i do not condone what they do, but that doesn’t change the above statement.
You know that the problem isn’t that they’re verifying the gestapo, it’s that they’re platforming and subsequently legitimising them.
Wake up. Ice, being government, it’s already legitimized enough in real life.
What difference would it make in the social media. Better if they are out in the open in social media instead, at least they get responsible for what they post, officially.
What difference would it make in the social media.
Apparently you slept through a fascist dictator rising to power by manipulating desperate people, specifically on social media.
Apparently you slept through the part where mainstream social media did try to censor, ban, and deplatform that dictator’s supporters, and it backfired.
I mean, Twitter literally banned Donald Trump, and he just started his own Twitter clone. Mainstream social media banned COVID disinformation and now we have an anti-vaxxer running the US Department of Health. Probably hundreds of thousands of people got deplatformed for claiming the 2020 elections were stolen, and more people now believe Trump won in 2020 then they did in 2021.
Biden pressured big social media to censor ideas he didn’t want spreading. The ideas spread anyway. All Biden did was show he was afraid of those ideas and make some of the worst people in the world look like martyrs.
I really can’t think of a better example of how “deplatforming Nazis” doesn’t work than the last five years of American history.
I see what you’re saying and you make a good point honestly.
Like the white house, department of homeland security, and others before them, the account will get no traction and be ignored. It is currently working really well on bluesky.
When they mandate visibility a la Twitter, that is the problem. But they don’t.
Eh. I don’t use bsky, and think most current ICE staff should be imprisoned for terrorism for the rest of their lives, but I don’t want any communications services to decide which entities should and shouldn’t be verified. That’s how you end up with power-tripping mods, propaganda bubbles, and censorship (exactly what fascists are doing with X, fb, tiktok, etc).
The goal should be an open protocol where users/orgs can sign messages cryptographically (like PGP) and every other user can decide which users, feeds, or algos they subscribe to without censorship. Like, if I subscribe to my friends and family (trusted sources), or friends of friends, I don’t want any form of moderation between them and me, but the freedom to sub to moderated topics is also necessary for public (untrusted sources) feeds/comms.
Nah balls to that. This is simple paradox of tolerance shit, anti-social ideology doesn’t get a platform in the marketplace of ideas.
On one hand I see your point. On t’other, we’ve tried complete neutrality and it failed, maybe it’s time for a communications platform where we hold people to a standard?
We haven’t, really. Our “complete neutrality” is infested with troll farms, where people are employed to make hundreds of accounts to spread propaganda.
I’m thinking the answer is to implement a huge barrier for troll farms, but a small speed bump for real people.
It could be oauth with Steam or your cell provider, where you can make an account if you’ve spent over $250 with them. Actual credit history would work. You can combine these and allow any of them, which might let one person make 3-4 accounts, maybe, but that’s still limited enough to make things difficult for troll farms.
There is an issue where billionaires that want to influence us have absolutely absurd resources, and maybe paying $1000 per account isn’t enough of a barrier for them. But at least it gives us a chance for the bans to stick significantly more than they do now.
So you want a Nazi bar. Ok.
That’s a nice strawman you’ve built for yourself. What’s their name?
they’re platforming and subsequently legitimising them.
You could make that argument about them being allowed to have an account at all, but simply marking that account in such a way that informs the userbase that it’s not a troll/parody account or something, but the actual organization?
That doesn’t “platform” them, they’re already on the platform at the time this happened. And confirming that something asserted to be true, is in fact true, is a good thing.
If ICE tried to verify their account on Lemmy it would be permabanned instantly
The nature of FOSS allows anyone to use free software like Lemmy and Mastodon. ICE could therefore join by making their own instance or joining a friendly one but it’d be defederated by most others.
The great thing about fediverse is that everyone gets a voice and we can choose who to listen to.
Truth Social is running Mastodon under the hood. But nobody considers it a part of the fediverse, because even if it had federation turned on it would instantly be defederated by 99% of instances.
I’m sure there are nazi lemmy instances out there, but they are all defederated from the lemmyverse.
This is the correct approach, decentralized platforms are somehow doing a better job at this then the de-facto centralized bsky.
As is GAB
Might depend what instance. They wouldn’t try to verify on db0 because yes, they would be banned instantly with prejudice. They would probably just hop on Lemmy.world or something.
Furthermore, it would be better if the US Government just put up their own instance. Let each instance decide whether or not to federate with them, and let users decide if they want to follow them or not.
I don’t ban anyone or any instance in my own instance, so no they cannot be “parammanned” from Lemmy. That’s not how it works and why i like Lemmy and its principles.
Find out how long your Lemmy instance stays federated with the rest of the big instances once you start hosting Nazis
You don’t get it: I am and will remain the only user of my instance…
Do you even now how Lemmy works? Did I say I was going to let ICE people create users on my instance? I only said I don’t defederate any instance.
I wonder if that is acutally better though, or just as problematic in the other direction
It is a lot better. If you let Nazis join your platform, your platform is now a Nazi bar. Ban them, don’t let them spread their propaganda.
They still can’t post shit against the general instance rules. So they’d have to be very careful of get the nuisance of getting their posts constantly removed, and eventually banned. No need to make individual distinctions when the general rules already work.
Nazis are quite good at bending or evading rules to further their agenda. They will push the boundaries of what’s acceptable by using creative allegories or dogwhistles. Moderators are supposed to moderate assuming goodwill from participants, this should not be the case here because ICE is not operating in good faith; a good mod will know to just ban self-identified nazis straight away. Even if the mods are hesitant to ban without any activity, me thinks a job ad to join the modern Gestapo (which is already in ICE’s profile) should be grounds for a ban.
Probbly not at the mgtow Lemmy instance.
It’s a good thing they get verified. It means they can not take back anything they post and they have to take accountability for the account.
Do you think it would be better if they didn’t verify it and let them spread misinformation and propaganda with plausible deniability?
Yeah I really don’t see why everyone is upset about this. Should be upset that ICE exists but not but they have an official bluesky account. This is basically the same as going “yep they’re real”.
This is just more weird Mastodon elitism.
It would be better if they wouldn’t even be platformed at all. We don’t need no federation with Nazis.
I look forward to them being confronted with views they can’t just ask Elon to delete.
But, let’s be real here, this is rage bait to track people using their first amendment rights in a way they don’t love. BSKY doesn’t need to give up anything on users. Users accessing BSKY ip addresses given up by their ISP will be more than enough for Palintir to find. A few links with trackers provide browser fingerprinting. Easy day for them.
Be careful, y’all.
They completely deindexed Link (spacelawshitpost.me) for not showing appropriate reverence for Charlie Kirk after he died by pointing to their TOS policy on promoting violence, but an organisation that only exists to exert violence on non-white people gets a pass.
take accountability
[Citation needed]
It’s better if the nazis were permabanned from their indexer thingy. Otherwise it’s just a nazi bar.
Imagine if in the 30s, some newspaper allowed the Gestapo to run ads and write an opinion column. Would you be defending them?
Labeling the account as verified and excluding/not excluding from the AppView are two separate actions.
It is a clear indication that they don’t intend to ban the account, they have verified it on their own server. They are two separate actions, but one implies that the other will not be done.
And in any case, I’m pointing out that the dichotomy between “verify ICE and let them post nazi propaganda officially” and “let ICE post nazi propaganda with plausible deniability” is false, they can (should) just ban them.
but one implies that the other will not be done.
This is false.
Do you expect bsky to ban ICE? They already have a job posting to join the Gestapo in their profile, is that not enough?
Someone at bsky verification team looked at this, and instead of flagging the account to be reviewed and removed, they pressed the “verify” button. If you give them the benefit of doubt, this was a mistake from someone on the verification team, but realistically speaking a corporate platform turning into a Nazi bar is quite natural nowadays.
I don’t know how else to say it: you keep falling into the same non-sequitur.
No, I don’t expect them to ban anyone from the government. And, no, I don’t think it would be wise to do it: verifying the account does not mean they are supporting it, it just means they are making sure that whatever crap ICE is saying can not go around without accountability.
If you don’t want to see their shitty posts, now you can simply filter it out. And thanks to verification, you can share your filters to others. That’s how decentralized systems work. Bluesky does not control who I get to see. ICE or any other institution can not buy its way into manufacturing propaganda. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than any of the existing alternatives.
No, I don’t expect them to ban anyone from the government.
So, you would be OK with a newspaper accepting ads and publishing an opinion column from Gestapo or SS? They were official government organizations after all.
And, no, I don’t think it would be wise to do it: verifying the account does not mean they are supporting it, it just means they are making sure that whatever crap ICE is saying can not go around without accountability.
You are once again presenting a false dichotomy. The choice is not only between “verify” and “not verify”, there is also the option to “ban”. Banning ICE would not let them post Nazi propaganda on their platform at all.
That’s how decentralized systems work. Bluesky does not control who I get to see.
- Bluesky is de-facto centralized, they operate the only full-network indexer, they get to control what accounts can post to all frontends
- They are hosting the ICE account on their own server and domain (bsky.social), and make it available through their own frontend (bsky.app). They definitely can control that, even if there were other indexers available
There is no excuse for bluesky to be hosting nazis. They have the choice, they are making that choice, fuck em.
ICE or any other institution can not buy its way into manufacturing propaganda.
They literally can. Except in this case they didn’t even have to pay, the corporate overlords of bluesky will let them post propaganda for free.
This makes ICE much easier to block.
The block log is public. It’s basically giving uncle Sam a list of targets to hit next.
Instead burn the bridge connecting to bsky, or ignore the account clientside which is not public.
Lemmy blocks are really just mutes. On mastodon, admins can see if you blocked someone.
The fediverse really isn’t better in this regard.
It’s basically giving uncle Sam a list of targets to hit next.
How, exactly? Even if you use your real name as your username (which no one does), unless it’s very uncommon, that still won’t uniquely identify you.
You don’t have to be such a bitch about everything. If you guys can’t even work up the courage to block a government account on an obscure social media site for fear of reprisal then you might as well enroll yourself for deportation right now because you clearly don’t have what it takes to do anything actually useful to stop all this.
You hurt someone’s feelings, but are extremely accurate.
Same logic as, “she smiled at me while taking my order she must be into me”
Isn’t the whole point of the verification checkmark is to make sure nobody impersonate well known people/organizations? I know Twitter eventually turned it into a whole cash grab subscription and ruined the concept, but on most other platforms it isn’t treated like some premium subscription and is just a means of knowing who is who.
Not a new debate at all… https://xkcd.com/1914/ and the context for that was https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-suspends-verifying-accounts-giving-154625015.html
I agree that if “verification” is going to be a thing, it should only mean the person or organization is who they claim to be, not imply endorsement of any of their activities.
I don’t think anyone impersonating gestapo would post anything worse than they already do, so there’s no damage there
You haven’t been on the Internet very long, huh?
Literally every post they make is going to have a thousand people telling them to go fuck themselves
