This is a good way of thinking about my previous post, although I'm not entirely convinced that this is a meaningful difference as far as the average user is concerned.

In a sense, this really signals the beginning of the end (if not the end) of decentralized/composable moderation on Bluesky, at least for the most part.

The Iran war is accelerating a shift toward renewable energy as governments race to reduce supply-chain vulnerabilities, according to UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell.

we know the account yet?

the body language in this shot is legit art AOC : clearly 'go fuck yourself, raccoon dick chopper' RFK Jr : leaning forward, trying to dominate, stammering, failing Lady in back : grinning at RFK Jr's obvious confusion at being faced with opposition Cop, back to viewer : 'bruh' body language

you wouldnt believe this big wooden horse, oh it’s so beautiful you wouldnt believe and theyre saying “mr trump youll never get that horse in.” look at em back there. the fake news. but we’re gonna bring in that horse folks and we’ll say “thank you, bye bye” but they don’t think we can get it in

Forget TACO, we are approaching the NACHOOO Zone Not Able to Cease Hostilities On Our Own

A large international study across 13 EU countries shows that a decisive #MiddleGroup often determines whether #ClimatePolicy proposals gain majority support.

#ClimateChange is lengthening our days. Rising sea levels slow Earth’s rotation, and the current increase is unmatched in the past 3.6 million years.

Just incredible shoebill awareness-raising from this Hong Kong teens' magazine

Today was the day Donald Trump became the green energy president

one thing that drives me insane about modern platforms is how many default to "3 months" or "1 year" instead of showing the actual date of a post, very frustrating

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

the informal second person plural in english is now "chat"

IMO the issue is that if Will and Sky had their way, there is a risk that Bluesky simply becomes Threads 2.0 (this isn't anything against Threads, but it's also why we don't need a duplicate). I also get the feeling that what a lot of people On Here really want is "Threads without Zuckerberg"...

Most people are worried about climate change - but most don't hear or talk about regularly. That's why I started my free newsletter Talking Climate. Every week I share good news, not so good news, and what people can do. If you aren't a reader yet, see below. I have 6 different ways to subscribe!

This sounds like one of those cases where someone was banned for their own good (as in "it would be beneficial for their mental health"). As for whether it should be temporary or permanent, I'll just say that permabans should only be used as a last resort.

some good climate/energy news: * 96% of new US power capacity was carbon-free in 2024 (56 gigawatts!) * 2025 included the first month ever when 51% of power on the U.S. grid was carbon-free * The golbal trend is overwhelming: The world is now investing more $ in clean energy than fossil fuels

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Why the fuck is a temporary suspension still ending up as a PDS-level takedown? Ok, sure, it should be back to normal after the given time. But that's not what was promised back in September (pfrazee.leaflet.pub/3lz4sgu7iec2k).

I do think the X feature that shows what country/region an account posts from is inherently pretty good and should be a standard feature on every social media website. It genuinely sucks that Elon Musk, noted shithead, is the one guy doing it.

PROMOTE YOUR BOOKS! EVERYONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR PUBLISHED BOOKS! www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978...

he got a three day timeout for a month-old post lol

Silly me thinking composable moderation would prevent situations like this

How people react to uncertainty has far-reaching socio-political consequences: A new ETH Zurich study found that people who perceive uncertainty as an opportunity are less likely to vote for right-wing populists. ethz.ch/en/news-and-...

It feels like a lot of disconnect comes from the fact that what makes sense as operable policies for a scaled social media site has low relevance to what makes sense as norms for healthy society, despite our expectation that these should have more of a relationship.

I thought the @sarahkendzior.bsky.social suspension was an interestingly nontrivial moderation scenario. I wrote up a little case study/explainer on how it might have been handled on Mastodon. Probably only for people who care about moderation nitty-gritty. www.tbray.org/ongoing/When...

Sigh. I want to like these folks but I wish they would stop stepping on rakes. *taps sign, again*

Bluesky should really specify whether a suspension is temporary or permanent. @pfrazee.com @aaron.bsky.team

When you are a small social media site getting the same letter as Meta, Google, and TikTok, that's a sign that you're under a degree of scrutiny that is quite frankly terrifying, especially in this current climate!

It likely does not help that Bluesky was one of the six social media sites that got the letter from Clay Higgins, chair of the law enforcement subcommittee of the House oversight committee, about violent rhetoric after Charlie Kirk's death: clayhiggins.house.gov/2025/09/15/h...

Bluesky used to use a much less stringent threshold for removing violent rhetoric than they do today, and it changed to the current more-stringent policy early on, when a large number of users objected to hyperbolic violent rhetoric used against a prominent poster that was not moderated.

I believe the mods when they say they haven't finished the technical work necessary to automatically inform users of what posts they're being suspended for. I also believe that's not an acceptable flaw for this website in late 2025.

The upshot is that moderation employees can’t deviate from their playbook.

The implication of which is that every obvious copyright violation those discretion-exercising employees fail to deal with, with equal agency, opens the door to effectively unlimited liability to copyright holders whose works are infringed upon.

One of those reasons is an (‘ancient’ haha) bit of case law attached to Mavrix Photography LLC v LiveJournal, Inc. which delineates that employed moderators who have the ability and opportunity to exercise judgement on moderating content, also have A&O on obv. copyright violations

Trust & Safety moderation employees / contractors, for a significant number of reasons, are not afforded the ability nor the opportunity to exercise their own judgement. They are not volunteer moderators, (who can and should exercise discretion); employees must stick to a rulebook.

I think this kind of information is extremely useful to have when a platform suspends a high-profile public figure, and I'd much rather see people arguing about whether this is a good rule than, say, whether a journalist was banned for sharply criticizing an elected official.

The thread includes three statements we didn't know until now: 1. Rationale 2. Kind of mod action (72 hour suspension) 3. Notification was sent (No one but Sarah knows what notification she actually saw or exactly what it included—the team's said they're working on better emails.)

I want to restate something I said in a lot of replies yesterday, which is that this move is not going to reduce replies yelling at the Bsky team—and that should not be the goal. What it does is clarify how moderation works here so that people can assess that and act accordingly.

Bluesky suspended Sarah Kendzior today for no reason whatsoever. She just shared excerpts of her articles, which were as always incisive and not offensive at all. Hey @pfrazee.com this is super not OK. I know her- we've interacted a fair bit via chats and her work is essential.

This is a fun chart! The green is the main bsky load balancer traffic throughput from Saturday night, and the purple is how much traffic there was 7 days before (the previous Saturday) The spike is due to the world series - pretty incredible! ⚾

There was already a *lot* going on with Bluesky, and now it's under even more pressure. I wrote about how I think about moderation, affordances, expectations, human needs, and powerful trolls for @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/trump-admini...

🌐 From the first web page created in 1991… to 1 trillion web pages archived today. Every meme, blog, tweet & vanished site is part of our shared story. This is our collective memory. And it’s being saved. Join in our celebration this October: blog.archive.org/trillion/ #Wayback1T #WaybackMachine

Neat! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Posts about scientific research on Bluesky receive substantially more attention than similar posts on Twitter. More importantly, you're far less likely to get sexist or racist replies.

not at all surprising: arstechnica.com/science/2025...