Here we spot wild Bardfinn Bluesky activities.
Be valid and ping ! bardfinn for something worthwhile or create a new thread.
Bard spotting on Bluesky 05 September 2024 
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Aaron Rodericks (@aaron.bsky.team):
The inversion principle is a powerful tool I use to shift my perspective and uncover blind spots. Consider this example: "I was repeatedly rude to this person because they are bad." Here, user A labels themselves as good, justifying rudeness to user B, whom they've labeled as bad. 1/7
Aaron Rodericks (@aaron.bsky.team):
People who agree with user A might think it's acceptable to be rude to user B due to their "bad" views. To check for bias, flip the model by inverting the users. Is it acceptable if user B does the same to user A? If not, there's a bias favoring one group over the other. 2/7
Aaron Rodericks (@aaron.bsky.team):
T&S policies should focus on behaviors (e.g., treating others with respect), regardless of the direction of rudeness. Otherwise, policies could be weaponized to favor one group over another repeatedly. 3/7
Aaron Rodericks (@aaron.bsky.team):
While bad faith actors exist and context matters, most cases involve two people trying to spend time online. Often, one person believes their abuse is justified based on the other's ideas or identity. 4/7
Aaron Rodericks (@aaron.bsky.team):
I've kept labels neutral to avoid polarizing the discussion with conflict, identity, or political associations. The goal of this self-questioning is to ensure impartiality when consulted on policy violations by moderators. 5/7
Aaron Rodericks (@aaron.bsky.team):
This principle helps me maintain neutrality in decision-making. By inverting perspectives, I can better understand and address potential biases in our approach to content moderation and user interactions. 6/7
Aaron Rodericks (@aaron.bsky.team):
I wish I could find the Twitter thread where I first saw it for credit, but I could not find the post from several years ago. I look forward nonetheless in learning and applying new ideas from Bluesky threads in the future! 7/7
mdy (@mdy.bsky.social):
I first encountered the idea of Inversion on the Farnam Street blog. fs.blog/inversion/
Infinite Perspective (@infiniteview.bsky.social):
That's cool but aaron is not doing inversion as described in that blog. He's doing reversal, as in reversing victim and offender. He's asking "what if it was Jews posting images of ovens at Nazis?" and saying that if that's okay then the other way must be too, or else it's "biased".
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
No. In the thread he discusses "the vast majority of cases" being two people having a viewpoint disagreement — a hedge row.
And the vast majority of moderation call-ins involving good faith users are just disagreements. "Why is Problematic Person X Allowed Here".
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
Nazis posting simultaneous holocaust denial and glorification isn't the use case for this tool; Nazism isn't something that gets evaluated- It just gets booted.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
Nazis — and self-declared transphobes, bigots, boundary violators, stalkers, etc that are clearly violating the acceptable use policy / user agreement, should just be Downmarseyd (where available (not this platform)), Reported, and Blocked.
95% of those /want/ hostility from their targets.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
What works to make those kinds of violators get frustrated and give up and go do something else
Is to run into a boring, emotionless grey brick wall.
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Volition (@volition.bsky.social):
how many transphobes, bigots, boundary violators, and stalkers actually "self-declare" as such?
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
A surprising amount. Most ultimately want attention / to violate someone else's boundaries, so declaring that they've violated a boundary is pretty high on their priorities.
Excising that incentive curbs that vector of abuse.
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Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
Now do the Genocide in Gaza.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
I oppose that.
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Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
Cool, should the people cheering it on or otherwise justifying or defending it be banned?
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
I'm going to stop you.
I know when someone is using elenchic approaches to "little lady" patronise me. You can cut it out.
I helped get Reddit Sitewide Rule 1, which prohibits genocide promotion & denial, adopted.
support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/art...
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
I and others I worked with used that to document & get banned dozens of groups cheering on genocides or denying genocides, regardless of political persuasion.
Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
Both on Reddit, and here on this site, your work seems to be completely for naught, as they freely, without any restraint promote genocide, and the only people punished are the people that call them out.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
Yeah, uh, you opened with belittling me and now you're dismissing the work I did — which I tracked and analysed, kept metrics on — out of hand.
To whom are you making an argument
Because it isn't me
Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
Yes. I am. I am belittling your "work" because it was a waste and counter productive. I'm certainly not making an argument to you, or anyone who thinks like you. You coddle fascists.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
If you're not making an argument to me, why are you engaging me
Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
Because, as a stupid piece of shit saying wrong things, your stupidity and lies deserve to be challenged.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
and that would be why your Reddit account got banned, probably - for deciding that someone was an abuse target.
Goodbye.
Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
For telling someone insulting and being abusive me? Absolutely. It's unfortunate that it was a sub mod and they have unchecked power. Like the system you work in.
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Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
It's particularly galling to cite the Reddit rule, since that site is the worst cesspool of genocide apologia and promotion.
Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
Calling what has been happening in Gaza "a genocide" got my own account banned from a sub, then reported for "antisemitic hate" (for calling a genocide "a genocide"), and permanently banned from the whole site. Quite the Christmas present last year.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
I read a lot of these kinds of "I was unfairly banned" narratives — literally tens of thousands — and few of them stack up. It takes four separate incidents of sitewide rules violations - or a federal crime - for an account to be permanently banned from Reddit.
Again, to whom are you arguing
Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
lol, nope. The account talked on one niche forum until the genocide, and then about that. It was banned for calling a genocide "a genocide" and was reported by various factions, like "democrats" and other Zionists. Easily racking up 4 reports for the one thing.
Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
It's a nice easy bullshit excuse you have, but it's transparent, considering the argument you're making here, on this thread, in this context.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
Again, why do you think it's acceptable to misogynistically patronise me, strawman me as a fascist sympathiser, etc
Would it not be a better use of your time to attend therapy
Egalitarian (@egality.bsky.social):
Lmao, go frick yourself with the misogynistically patronizing bullshit. How many times did your genocide defending butt pull rank on me. Eat shit.
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Impressive. Normally people with such severe developmental disabilities struggle to write much more than a sentence or two. You really have exceeded our expectations for the writing portion. Sadly the coherency of your writing, along with your abilities in the social skills and reading portions, are far behind your peers with similar disabilities.
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RadioFreeZerg (@radiofreezerg.bsky.social):
Are you pretending Naomi Cunningham isn't here with no action from T&S besides a tepid "intolerance" label?
That there isn't an unacknowledged targeted harassment campaign active against the trans women who use this site? Lot of abstraction and theorizing that doesn't match whats actually going on
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
I am saying that, practically, no social media site can demand a person produce their /Nazikeule/ to determine whether they get service. None of them can ban "Nazis" from using the site - only the ones chanting, ranting, flying flags.
Or ones which have an airtight case attached to their reputation
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
I know she's a bigot, representing a bigoted cause and org.
You know it.
For T&S, the question is, "Is she using the site to do so".
T&S aren't omniscient. They need a case. That case can originate in many ways.
In the meantime, we can choke out her amplification.
Father Draven 🫙$50/100 🏳⚧♿👩👧👦 (@willowdraven.bsky.social):
Is there some sort of legal structure preventing them from booting bigots who represent bigoted organizations?
Can't they just throw a line in the terms of service that say "we reserve the right to remove users that we feel don't represent our values" or something?
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
In a sense, yes. The User Agreement & Acceptable Use Policies constitute a contract, inviting "everyone" to use the service as long as they don't use it for a specific class of activities. If site mods exercise arbitrary agency outside the AUP — potential liabilities arise.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
In the USA, there's civil case law that affects what kind of agency a paid T&S / site moderation operative can exercise without opening doors to other liabilities.
Volunteer blocklist maintainers, much less so.
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AGTMADCAT 🇵🇸🥥🌴 (@agtmadcat.bsky.social):
The first amendment provides a clear freedom of association, so if we all know a person is a bigot, the site can throw them out.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
And that is the crux. What signifiers do "we all know".
Mike Draco ex Machina (@digitaldraco.bsky.social):
Offline, you are free to kick someone out of a place for behaviors they enacted elsewhere.
It's bizarre to me that people think this does not apply online somehow.
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Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
Oh, I absolutely believe/know she's a bigot, and if I had my way, she'd shout into the void.
Showing a corporation that XYZ organisation is inescapably a hate group, stop allowing their registered agent to use the service, involves levels of documentation, journ*lism, govt inquiry & statements.
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Father Draven 🫙$50/100 🏳⚧♿👩👧👦 (@willowdraven.bsky.social):
I think this is the fundamental problem that people are having. Requiring this ridiculous level of documentation is a choice that is being made by these corporations. It's a choice that's being made by Bluesky.
They can choose to operate differently.
To be ethical actors, they must.
Father Draven 🫙$50/100 🏳⚧♿👩👧👦 (@willowdraven.bsky.social):
To require mountains of labor from marginalized groups to remove organizations and their agents who are ideologically committed to their destruction is to side with those organizations and make your own a tool towards the achievement of their aims.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
I agree. I don't think BlueSky requires a great deal of labour, merely a threshold of knowledge vs rumour & a reliance on "on-platform behaviour" as the primary driver for prioritising enforcement.
This site thankfully isn't 2015-era Reddit for T&S; in fact it's better than 2022 Twitter.
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Phil McDuff (@mcduff.bsky.social):
This is the kind of thing that liberals and free speech "absolutists" always say, and it's important to recognise that it's based on absolutely nothing. It is a fantasy of what they think should happen, not observed experience of what actually happens.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
The "free speech absolutists" are, 99% of the time, bigots who want a guaranteed access to an audience.
Liberty Lobby in the '60's wanted guaranteed access to AM airwaves. Later groups wanted guaranteed access to TV. Creationists wanted access to kids in public schools. Captive audiences.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
It's such a central tenet of their operation that they cite it over and over in their core operation manuals, and work to undermine it wherever possible.
They don't want freedom of speech.
They want to tear down other people's freedom from association, and persuade them to forgo it.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
In politics, law, society, and social media T&S, one of the most powerful things someone can do is draw a boundary — doesn't matter why the boundary was drawn, just a firm "Do Not Contact Me Again".
If/When Party B violates that boundary, that's clear, and that's actionable.
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Invisible Pink Unicorn (yes that one) (@dirtynerdy.bsky.social):
Except in the case of the More Bubbles guy who has been creating hundreds of sock puppets for >6 months for the express purpose of harassing trans ppl and T&S (including Aaron here) wont address the core problem
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
BlueSky has the same problem every other Open Registration site has: VPNs are ubiquitous, confirmation email accounts are ubiquitous, and so they have to rely - in the case of the "mre bbbl*s" type - on user reports of Behaviour on Platform, and blocks until they process the report.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
The reasons the "mr bbbls" type of boundary violator troll can come back are beyond the scope of operating the site.
The reasons they do come back is because people won't greyrock and block them.
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Mike Draco ex Machina (@digitaldraco.bsky.social):
Except when you block someone on socials and they make a new account to harass you over and over and moderation shrugs their shoulders at it – which has happened to me more than once on both reddit and Twitter.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
On Reddit, if you use www.reddit.com/report?reaso... and cite the prior usernames / examples of sitewide ban evasion and/or block evasion, they'll usually handle it. If they don't handle it first pass, modmail the ticket close URL to /r/reddit.com for review.
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phyphor (@phyphor.one-dash.org):
Ideally it would get booted, but that's not necessarily what happens
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
I have seen "hedge row" grade intolerance get labels on here, and (I hope!) a warning gets issued to the person platforming it. Some people do stupid things, make mistakes, and deserve a second chance.
There are other considerations, too.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
Sometimes T&S are collecting backend data / mapping out a network, to throw them all off the site at once without dedicating a fulltime employee to kicking them one by one 24/7.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
Sometimes the slapfights are indistinguishable from consensual shouting matches / kink sessions. It's unfair to ask paid employees to sit and figure out whether an incident is a lover's quarrel, or a lover's "quarrel", etc.
At some line you have to say "this interaction is consensual"
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
Blocking - personal blocks & block listings - exist to fill that.
If someone argues with someone else they purport to be a Nazi, instead of blocking and reporting - the supposition is that at some level, Party A wanted/needed the interaction.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
From an economic, behavioural standpoint - some people want to fight Nazis. Or transphobes. Or "debate" anthropogenic climate change, chemtrails, etc.
They solicit an interaction.
I used to be that kind of person.
Then the Nazis told me to my face that that kind of person is their favourite.
Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):
I read the literature they produced for private "how to", and the literature written by academics.
Now I am in camp "Block and Report".
They consider a brick wall the worst possible outcome of their attempts to initiate.
Studies show it is.
So that's what they deserve.
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I hope you had chatgpt pen that one fam
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