Update: After this article was published, Bluesky restored Kabas’ post and told 404 Media the following: “This was a case of our moderators applying the policy for non-consensual AI content strictly. After re-evaluating the newsworthy context, the moderation team is reinstating those posts.”
Bluesky deleted a viral, AI-generated protest video in which Donald Trump is sucking on Elon Musk’s toes because its moderators said it was “non-consensual explicit material.” The video was broadcast on televisions inside the office Housing and Urban Development earlier this week, and quickly went viral on Bluesky and Twitter.
Independent journalist Marisa Kabas obtained a video from a government employee and posted it on Bluesky, where it went viral. Tuesday night, Bluesky moderators deleted the video because they said it was “non-consensual explicit material.”
Other Bluesky users said that versions of the video they uploaded were also deleted, though it is still possible to find the video on the platform.
Technically speaking, the AI video of Trump sucking Musk’s toes, which had the words “LONG LIVE THE REAL KING” shown on top of it, is a nonconsensual AI-generated video, because Trump and Musk did not agree to it. But social media platform content moderation policies have always had carve outs that allow for the criticism of powerful people, especially the world’s richest man and the literal president of the United States.
For example, we once obtained Facebook’s internal rules about sexual content for content moderators, which included broad carveouts to allow for sexual content that criticized public figures and politicians. The First Amendment, which does not apply to social media companies but is relevant considering that Bluesky told Kabas she could not use the platform to “break the law,” has essentially unlimited protection for criticizing public figures in the way this video is doing.
Content moderation has been one of Bluesky’s growing pains over the last few months. The platform has millions of users but only a few dozen employees, meaning that perfect content moderation is impossible, and a lot of it necessarily needs to be automated. This is going to lead to mistakes. But the video Kabas posted was one of the most popular posts on the platform earlier this week and resulted in a national conversation about the protest. Deleting it—whether accidentally or because its moderation rules are so strict as to not allow for this type of reporting on a protest against the President of the United States—is a problem.
It’s just really weird that you turn to profit motive as a benefit when we’re talking about systems that tend to enshittify, and that’s like, the main thing that makes them enshittify.
My argument is about how enshittification destroys platforms, and platforms that don’t do that will retain their growth. Bluesky has all the ingredients to enshittify, mastodon doesn’t.
Yes they need to work on their onboarding, but unlike bluesky, they can keep going at it till it sticks. Centralised platforms get a launch, and a lifecycle, and then they tend to go away.
Quite literally the opposite of what you said. If a platform is central, it can be switched off tomorrow. Nobody can do that to the fediverse as long as the internet exists. The idea that hobbyists are somehow less reliable than fucking corporations is also absurd. Have you met corporations?
This is literally a tortoise-and-the-hare situation.
Why? That’s pretty much the common thread in successful SM apps vs unsuccessful SM apps. The ones w/ profit motive attract investors, which means better marketing and initial rollout, which leads to more users.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad, just that it’s effective.
What’s the benefit you’re trying to get out of platforms?
Mastodon will probably stumble along in some form for a long time, but servers will come and go, meaning content will come and go. The same is true for Lemmy, many of the bigger servers will likely go away in 10-20 years, if not sooner, as the admins get tired of hosting them (it’s pretty expensive). The platform will likely continue to exist, but you’ll probably need to jump between servers every so often.
I guess I don’t see that as hugely different from jumping from Twitter to BlueSky. Twitter had a good run, and maybe BlueSky will have a similar run.
Maybe the entirety of the fediverse won’t die, but significant portions will disappear from time to time as servers drop out and new ones join.
I really don’t see a case for the Fediverse “winning” in any meaningful sense. The reason Wikipedia succeeded is because it has permanence. The Fediverse lacks that, so why wouldn’t people just jump to the flavor of the week instead? You know, the flashy new thing that uses the latest designs and has some interesting gimmick.
I think the Fediverse will always be playing catch-up. Development is relatively slow, and it has proven to be less capable of taking advantage of opportunities than BlueSky. Why? Because BlueSky is swimming in money, whereas Mastodon, Lemmy, et al are hobby projects. Hobby projects work well in some areas where they form a foundation (e.g. Linux), but they don’t work as well at chasing fads. Why isn’t there a popular alternative to Snapchat, TikTok, or other “flavors of the week”? Because FOSS moves slowly, and will never keep up with the fads in SM.
So my issues with the Fediverse are:
I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying it’s an uphill battle with a fair amount of caveats.