I get the impression (from the outside) that Bluesky is going to be like Jack's Twitter. Jack's Twitter hid Nazi accounts from German Twitter, because Germany had stricter laws around that, but then left the Nazi accounts visible to everyone else on Twitter. (It used to be a trick on Twitter to change your location to Germany to avoid seeing as much racist content.)
That's pretty much Bluesky's racism slider, no? That's not the same as banning and deplatforming Nazis. Musk's Twitter just unbanned a load of Nazis all at once, yes. But Jack's Twitter took years to ban Nazi accounts with large followings in the first place, which wasn't great to begin with.
Remember how many years it took them to ban Glinner? The EDL. Katie Hopkins. Trump. Etc. I know Musk's Twitter openly snogs Nazis in the town square, but Jack's Twitter flirted with them for years and years, allowing them to retain a platform and continue to organise, to recruit to their cause there, target marginalised groups for hatred, court media attention, and so on. We have all ended up worse for that.
Plus no one (when I asked on the bird app anyway) is clarifying if when you toggle hate groups off on Bluesky, if they can still see what you post. I honestly want to know, because that's a potential flash point where you could still get targeted by hate groups who can see your posts, but potentially you can't see theirs?
Does anyone know how the racism slider actually works?
If moderation on a platform leaves racists up and active, then as much as I hate seeing posts from racists, I also need to be able to see them to block them for myself. I proactively block racists, transphobes, homophobes, etc, on Twitter all the time because Twitter sure as heck isn't going to remove them. So I want to proactively prevent as many instances of unwelcome contact with me and anyone who reads me as I can.
The racism slider, coupled with Bluesky removing a PoC's post of: "Shut up, Cracker", pretty much recalls Jack's Twitter in how racists with large followings weren't banned, but people of colour were still tone policed for not liking the racism. It's not giving me good vibes, folks. If people of colour don't end up settling there, even though other groups do, I won't be very surprised.
