-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 1.8k
New issue
Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.
By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.
Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account
Bluesky Moderation Service: Change default state of Intolerant and Rude labels #7030
Comments
Hate speech and bigotry are unacceptable |
Hate speech has no place anywhere |
Yeah, I dunno, I feel like hate speech is probably more harmful than being a little mean? Please fix your priorities. |
This is an extremely sensible change to make, and should absolutely be the default. |
This is a very sensible proposal, although honestly, I feel like "Rude" might be better defaulted to "Off" given how it's been applied to minorities and activists historically. I dunno, it seems like an odd thing to filter in general - but it definitely shouldn't be considered more serious than intolerance, which is a label you'd expect to be applied to bigots like Singal. |
Taking it a step further with Rude -> Off, bold! Someone must have grown up with a thick skin ;) |
I vehemently agree with this change. Additionally, I honestly don't even like the existence of "Rude" because how do you even define what's rude? Of course, going around and cussing at people randomly IS rude, but we all know that in face of great prejudice, the affected people will take actions that normally would be perceived as "rude". Should them also be labelled rude? Paraphrasing @gdude2002 the label "Rude" has been used to label minorities and activists denouncing problems, and honestly that is not a path I personally want to see Bluesky taking. I know that T&S is difficult and with a site with +6 million people it is a gargantuan task, so at least the tools we use to curate and protect ourselves should be working 100% correctly. I personally would focus this label on more glaring misconducts like "intolerance" and "threat", not the simple act of being rude. |
The proposal makes sense to me. Also, intolerance is quite easily definable, while, as mentioned before, rudeness is not. |
Playing devils advocate here: In the current setup, rude posts are effectively deboosted; it simply disappears a post from most people’s feeds. On the other hand, warning on a post actively lets users know what sort of behavior to expect from the account, providing an opportunity to block. Personally I was surprised to find that rude was hide by default but using this line of thinking I actually understand why it may have launched as-is. Everyone can have an off day and might post something rude. I’d prefer that not to damper my mood, so hide it. However, if someone is being intolerant, awareness is the solution, not limiting their reach to just their echo chamber. If users are uninterested in helping in combating intolerant people, they can adjust the settings, provided they were a bit less hidden by default. |
While I see what you're getting at @SnoFox, I feel like that's why we're able to configure the labels. From a platform perspective, I feel it makes more sense to hide intolerance to pre-emptively limit the reach - and thus the motivation - of that form of problematic content. In my experience, many accounts that appear to be suitable for this label use intolerance as a vehicle for exposure and agenda. In my opinion, it's worth hiding ahead of time - and, assuming accounts are tagged properly, this means many people will never see the problematic content and thus won't need to block the accounts! That's the way I see it, at least. |
@SnoFox I can understand this line of thought, but a hypothetical situation is: user A, a known bad actor, posts intolerant stuff under the guise of "just asking questions" constantly; user B loses their cool with the constant harassment and insults A; B's post is now labeled as "Rude" and hidden from the feed, while user A can continue posting incendiary things under the guise of "just asking questions". I have seen many times that bad actors will teeter on the edge of what is considered permitted and what isn't in order to bait people to insult them. While we know that the ideal is to never deal with trolls and bad actors, we know this is not usually what happens. I think it is better to deplatform bad actors by hiding them altogether, since they're not strangers to gaming the system in this way |
Just want to +1 the fact that bad actors will "goad" other people with intolerant speech to bait a "rude" or angry response from a marginalized member, who then gets punished more than the goading bad actor. This is something that plays out a lot on social media, although I first learned of this tactic's potential in The Elders Scrolls III: Morrowind. |
The defaults of a website not just signal the mentality of the people behind it, it also has a major impact on the general user-base as many if not a majority of users will leave the settings untouched. In this case leaving the defaults as they are both signals that tone is more important than whether or not something is hate speech, and leaves users more exposed to hate speech (especially when wrapped in a veneer of civility), allowing such harmful ideas to become the norm over the voices of those who would find such things offensive and are willing to speak out against it. |
It's important to point out, @SnoFox , that people who are trying to spread hate and intolerance could care less about a slap on the wrist and being called out. They're expecting that. They're ready for that. They don't care. The only thing that putting a warning on their content does as opposed to just making it disappear for most people is that it gives them more access to the user-base and more vulnerable targets (whether it be targets of hate or targets for conversion). |
Hate speech and bigotry is unacceptable on civilized society and is even plain-law illegal in some regions. |
I'll say that the whole "freedom of speech over all" has been detrimental to civil conversation in social media. It's always those types who disrupt the community and then shield themselves with "I'm being civil, I'm just asking questions, free speech" etc, while harming minorities in the way. This is easy to solve in a personal Discord server or even a bulletin board, but once you reach more than a million users you need to be much more proactive about who and how users are going to be labeled. I just want to thank you all for being thoughtful and steadfast about this situation, I hope it makes Bluesky a better place. |
This is a very practical request. I say make it happen. |
Describe the Feature
Summary
The default values for the Bluesky Moderation Service labeler (@moderation.bsky.app) should be changed to reflect an improved Trust & Safety experience for minorities and members of marginalized groups on the app. Intolerance should be HIDE by default and Rude should be WARN by default.
User Story
As a member of a marginalized group / minority,
I want the defaults for moderation on bluesky to HIDE intolerance, and WARN about rudeness,
So that I'm better protected from hate speech on the platform while also less in jeopardy of being silenced due to tone policing.
Desired Implementation
Switch Intolerance to HIDE by default for all users. Switch Rude to WARN by default for all users.
Attachments
Current Defaults (as of 12-09-2024)
Desired Defaults
Switch Intolerance to HIDE by default for all users. Switch Rude to WARN by default for all users.
Describe Alternatives
Even if you don't set Intolerance to HIDE by default (which I don't know why you wouldn't), you should at the very least change Rude to WARN by default.
Additional Context
Intolerance has no place on a civilized platform, that's why it should be hidden by default.
"Rudeness" being hidden by default is a form of "tone policing" that might deserve a warning but definitely not being hidden by default. This is a tool weaponized against disaffected marginalized groups who aren't being heard in order to further silence them.
Put simply, how can Rudeness be a worse offense than Intolerance on this platform?
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: