Bluesky and The Battle of Wormtongue
How will Jay Graber and her team respond?
Note: this was originally written before Bluesky's Friday the 13th announcement ... I've made some minor updates, and will go into more detail in a followon article.
With millions of people looking for alternatives to the fascist hellscape of Xitter, it's not surprising that Bluesky's grown rapidly in the last few months. And with JK Rowling, Wormtongue and their ilk running amok (and Apartheid Clyde cheering them on and helping) it's not surprising that more and more trans people are leaving Xitter. So it's also not surprising that harassers looking to target trans people have also been signing up for Bluesky. August featured a major wave of Very British Bigotry. Since the US election in November, the volume's increased significantly.
Of course, anti-trans harassment and hate speech is only one of the many challenges facing Bluesky users these days. Bluesky's Trust & Safety team, who's having a hard time in general keeping up with the rapid growth. Volunteer-run moderation services like Blacksky are helpful, and over time could be transformative, but don't substitute for the lack of platform moderation – especially since (unlike Twitter) Bluesky doesn't support private accounts. Over the last few weeks, I've been seeing more and more complaints about trolling, bots, and reply guys Several long-time contributors are pulling back, going on hiatus, or even deleting their accounts.
So from the perspective of people who like the fascist hellscape of Xitter, it's an ideal time to try to launch an attack on Bluesky.
How will Bluesky CEO Jay Graber and her team respond?
Contents
- To suspend or not to suspend?
- What's past is prologue
- The community fights back
- Appeasement never works
- A golden opportunity
To suspend or not to suspend?
Note: Wormtongue thrives on attention, so I'm not using his name in the text. Thanks to The Midnight Society for permission to use their skeet with an appropriate nickname as the main image for this post!
Wormtongue first joined Bluesky on December 1, but waited a few days before actually posting. On December 6, he kicked things off on Xitter by encouraging his anti-trans followers to join him in his plan to "colonize Bluesky with normal people." And just in case any of his followers were confused about what he meant by "normal", he also listed several normal anti-trans bigots who already have Bluesky accounts.
On Bluesky, Wormtongue launched his attack by posting a link to an article he's written article that's part of a coordinated anti-trans smear campaign. He then returned to his lair on Xitter and shared a screenshot of a Bluesky post by a trans person who had (quite fairly in my opinion) compared him to David Duke. In response, his normal followers (who are known for harassing people on Xitter) harassed the trans person on Bluesky so badly that she shut down her Bluesky account.
To me, Wormtongue's behavior clearly violated Bluesky's Community Guidelines, which prohibit harassment and promoting hate.1 Most Trust & Safety professionals who have weighed in see it that way too. Of course Wormtongue could argue that he wasn'texplicitly suggested harassing the person whose posts he screenshotted and shared to his followers who routinely harass people. Similarly he could claim that he wasn't promoting hate, just sharing a news article. Yeah right. From a Trust & Safety perspective, these are classic examples of bad-faith "rules lawyering" – and as any experienced moderator or competent Trust & Safety professional knows, letting people get away with rules lawyering encourages harassers and provides a roadmap for how they can get around the community guidelines.
At firs it seemed like Bluesky's Trust & Safety team initially saw it that way as well, because on December 6 they suspended Wormtongue's account.1.5
But then Wormtongue's account was quickly unsuspended, and instead labeled it as Intolerant.2
And then the next day, Bluesky suspended Wormtongue's account again.
And then Bluesky unsuspended Wormtongue's account again, and removed the label.3
For some reason trans people and allies weren't particularly happy with this sequence of events. Who could have predicted?
What's past is prologue
But let's back up a bit, because when I casually referred to Bluesky's Trust & Safety team and community guidelines clause prohibiting promoting hate, I left out some important backstory.
Jack Dorsey initially funded Bluesky afer reading Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech, which suggests that an advantage of a protocol-based approach is that people like Alex Jones can still reach their audience. Even after after wisely pivoted from a pure protocol approach to building an app, they still didn't hire any Trust & Safety people. And Bluesky's early-2023 community guidelines didn't include any prohibition on promoting hate. Jack was still on Bluesky's board at this point, and back when was running Twitter he personally intervened to keep neo-Nazi Richard Spencer from being banned, so this may well have been his influence. Then again it might just be that Bluesky was following the path of Twitter (and most corporate social network startups) and just didn't prioritize the perspectives or safety of marginalized people.
But as noted startup guru Clausewitz once observed, no plan survives contact with beta testing. Things came to a head in May 2023, just a few months into Bluesky's invitation-only beta.
- First, Bluesky suspended the account of a trans person for telling a cis white male influencer “WE ARE GOING TO BEAT YOU WITH HAMMERS.”
- Next, Bluesky didn't take action when a cis white woman who had made multiple racist remarks suggested that a Black non-binary person should get shoved off of someplace real high.
- And then to top it off, when it turned out that people were embedding racist slurs in their handles, Bluesky initially didn't take action – and didn't communicate with the community.
For some reason trans and Black people and their allies weren't particularly happy with this sequence of events. Who could have predicted?
Soon there were headlines like Bluesky’s growing pains strain its relationship with Black users, Is Twitter Competitor Bluesky Failing To Protect Its Black Users?, and Could Bluesky Have A Racism Problem? – as well as lots of angry skeets directed at the Bluesky team, and mail and LinkedIn comments directed at Bluesky investors. Kylie Robison's Inside Twitter rival Bluesky’s first major crisis, as investors pressured CEO Jay Graber to speak out about racist incident in Fortune
"We’ve made mistakes in the past, and despite our best efforts, we will probably make mistakes in the future. But it’s always our goal to correct those wrongs, and as we work to improve over time, we hope you’ll see that our actions support our intentions. We ask that you give us grace as we figure it out, and trust that we’re working as hard as we can to build a better, safer, more resilient social web."
– Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, 2023-07-22 Letter to the Community
"We hear your demand loud and clear. We are in the process of building a dedicated Trust and Safety team to protect the experiences of marginalized users and ensure a safe environment for all on our network.”
– July 2023 Bluesky customer support email to voraciousviolet, quoted in Morgan Sung's Bluesky sends some users personalized apologies after racism controversy
To Bluesky's credit, they realized they needed to change course. As well as acknowledging mistakes, and committing to hire a Trust & Safety team, Jay apologized for the lack of communication to the community – and Bluesky even sent personalized apologies to some of the people involved4
By early 2024, Jack had left Bluesky's board and deleted his account. Good riddance to bad rubbish! Not only that, the product team started providing tools for people to protect themselves; and Bluesky hired former Twitter elections integrity lead Aaron Rodericks as their Director of Trust & Safety.
Then again, Bluesky didn't apologize to all of the people involved. As I said in Speaking of erasure ...
"Work by Aveta (aka @aliafonsy.bsky.social) – including their original Black Tech Twitter follow thread as well as inviting so many key Black tweeters to Bluesky in early 2023, and then speaking out strongly against the anti-Blackness on Bluesky – also provided a critical foundation for Black Twitter's move to Bluesky. And unsurprisingly, Aveta has been almost completely erased from the broader narrative. In fact, as far as I know, Bluesky hasn't ever even apologized to Aveta for the shitty stuff that happened back then – let alone credited these contributions or looked for ways to help get compensation for Aveta and others for all the unpaid work they did to make Bluesky succesful."
And as Sydette Harry and Jonathan H. Gray highlight, there's a through line from the mid-2023 battles and other to the Battle of Wormtongue. With Bluesky repeating past mistakes by once again not prioritizing the safety of marginalized community members (and once again not communicating) a lot of people are once again pointing out that their actions do not in fact support their stated intentions.
The community fights back
While Bluesky continued their radio silence, Wormtongue shared personal health information of a trans person on Bluesky without their consent – and made a post highlighting assistance he's getting from a member of KiwiFarms, a transphobic harassment site best known for doxing and its body count of the trans people its driven to suicide. Meanwhile on Xitter, Wormtongue posted screenshots of trans Bluesky users who have blocked him, leading to more harassment on Bluesky. Who could have predicted?
But even though Bluesky wasn't acting, the community was. Wormtongue quickly became the most-blocked person on Bluesky (overtaking Brianna Wu). More and more people criticized Bluesky Trust & Safety's lack of response more and more sharply. A bot started tracking all of Bluesky Director of Trust & Safety Aaron Rodericks' interactions, highlighting everything that he was treating as higher priority than dealing with anti-trans harassment. Bluesky shut the bot down almost immediately (priorities!); Roderick's claim that he hadn't been aware of the bot (because he was so busy and was only paying attention to priority notifications) went over so badly that he had to delete it.
And Bluesky had recently started teasing a subscription option, tentatively named Bluesky+. Before the Battle of Wormtongue, many users (including me) were looking forward to giving them our money. After all, we desperately need an alternative to Xitter, and despite Bluesky's problems there's a lot to like about it (especially Blacksky!). But with Bluesky refusing to do anything about Wormtongue, the vibe changed.
Borderless intentionally made the scope of this call to action broad to also include issues that Black users continue to face, as well as the pattern of banning Palestinian accounts even when they provide proof. Johnathan H. Gray similarly highlights that "Palestinians are saying the same things that the black folks were saying that the trans folks are now saying." and I'm seeing a lot of similar solidarity from other long-time Bluesky users of all genders and races. Which is a good thing, because as Gray points out.
"With fascism and oppression on the rise, we need to have each other before we're left with nothing. That's what true solidarity is and why its worth supporting all your folks. If even one of us ain't free, then none of us are."
On December 11, somebody exploited a previously-unreported security hole that caused a crash whenever Wormtongue loooked at one of his posts. Direct action FTW! And I also started to see well-regarded posters saying that they were planning on spending less time on Bluesky as a result of this – and multiple responses from people saying that they're thinking much the same.
The next day, a change.org petition asking Bluesky to enforce their community guideline equally went live. Just two hours later, it has almost 4,000 signatures, and by that evening it had over 16000 – including Lizzo. People really are frustrated!
"Bsky is about to hit 25 million so reporters are going to run stories. It would be unfortunate if the scandal still were going on then such that the headline were "marred by controversy, bluesky hits 25M""
– Liz Fong-Jones, December 11
Sure enough, Bluesky topped 25 million users on December 12. Here's a sampling of the headlines
- Trans people want this user banned from Bluesky for one very big reason – Harry Giardina, Into
- Bluesky faces its first LGBTQ+ safety test as users call for anti-trans podcaster Jesse Singal ban – Ariel Messman-Rucker, Pride,
- Bluesky at a crossroads as users petition to ban Jesse Singal over anti-trans views, harassment – Sarah Perez, TechCrunch
Unfortunate indeed.
Appeasement never works
"If Bluesky bans him, they risk even more heat from Musk and Trump's Eye of Sauron, which could result in everything from expensive lawsuits to mass harassment and bot campaigns to a sea of foul coverage in various MAGA-friendly major media outlets (which is, nowadays, just about all of them)."
– Faine Greenwood, Everything Happens So Much: Bluesky’s L’affaire Singal + Butternut Squash Soup, Little Flying Robots, December 13
Of course, marginalized people and allies aren't the only ones who can exert pressure. Wormtongue is known for threatening lawsuits, and sure enough he threatened to sue Bluesky after he was initially suspended. Sure, Bluesky is a private site and can ban whoever they like, but even frivolous lawsuits take time and energy and can lead to bad press – plus these days, it's hard to have a lot of confidence in the court system. Not only that, if Bluesky takes action to defend themselves and their marginalized uses, Apartheid Clyde is looking for any opportunity to support anti-trans bigotry while attacking a competitor with a better product, Republican politicians would no doubt make a stink, and the mainstream media loves framing anti-trans harassers and fascists as the good guys so might well screech loudly and paint Bluesky as the woke oppressors.
So even though surrendering to Wormtongue would permanently lose Bluesky any trust or goodwill from marginalized users and allies ... appeasement might well seem like the path of least resistance to Bluesky's executive team and board.
Then again, appeasement never works. Even if Bluesky meekly surrenders here and Wormtongue and his buddies move in, that will only empower Apartheid Clyde and Republican politicians and the mainstream media to find some other excuse to screech. And while throwing out the welcome mat to bigots is a good path to an acquisition offer from Larry Ellison or Peter Thiel or Apartheid Clyde or Truth Social ... is that really the outcome Bluesky wants?
Bluesky's leadership team isn't stupid, and presumably realizes that. So it's possible that they're not planning to go the appeasement route, and are just making sure all their legal ducks are in a row before banning Wormtongue.
Time will tell.
A golden opportunity
From a business strategy perspective, the Battle of Wormtongue is a golden opportunity for Bluesky. As I said back in 2017,
"Policies against racism, sexism, discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, and Nazis are extremely appealing positioning these days. Not for everybody, of course: anti-safe-spacers, people with simplistic views of “free speech”, trolls, harassers and Nazis all have problems with it. Still, there’s clearly a large under-served market who’s sick of the norms on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and elsewhere."
It's even more true today. And just as true is the point Afsenah Rigot makes in Design From the Margins
"The decentered include subpopulations who are the most impacted and least supported; they are often those that face highest marginalization in society... when your most at-risk and disenfranchised are covered by your product, we are all covered."
So let's hope that Jay Graber and her team make the right choice here.
Stay tuned!
Notes
1 Bluesky's Community Guidelines include this langauge:
"Treat others with respect. For example, no:
1. Harassment or abuse directed at a specific person or group, including but not limited to, sexual harassment and gender identity-based harassment
2. Promoting hate or extremist conduct that targets people or groups based on their race, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, or sexual orientation"
The Bluesky Must Enforce its Community Guidelines Equally petition discussed a different violation of Bluesky's Community Guidelines: Singal posting a trans person's personal health information without their consent. Singal's rules-lawyering argument here is that it wasn't a HIPAA violation for him to share it (true but irrelvant) and that since some details had been removed it wasn't personally-identifying information (almost certainly false and in any case also irrelevant). Yeah right.
1.5 In Everything Happens So Much: Bluesky’s L’affaire Singal + Butternut Squash Soup, Faine Greenwood suggests that the discussion of impersonation accounts in Bluesky's Friday the 13th update (written after the original version of this post) implies that Singal's account was originally banned under the mistaken believe that it was impersonating. Maybe so, although I interpreted the sentence "Other prominent impersonation accounts were quickly removed, contributing to a false perception that we take action based on behavior outside of Bluesky" as referring to Bluesky's previous banning of an account that claimed to be the anti-trans hate group Libs of Tik Tok.
2 When an account is labeled Intolerant by Bluesky, people still see their posts by default, but if you figure out the user interface mechanism then you can hide the posts. That doesn't prevent interaction, but it's better than nothing. One way is to click on the label (how intuitive!) which tells you the label was applied by the Bluesky moderation service and has a link that you can click on that gets you to the settings for that moderation service; scroll down and change Intolerance from Warn to Hide. Alternatively, you can go to Settings / Content,Advanced list click on Bluesky moderation service in the Advanced section, at which point you're in the settings for that serivce and can scroll down and change Intolerance from Warn to Hide
Of course even if you do that, they can still harass you, but if you figure out a different UI mechanism you can block them. And of course even if they do that their followers can still harass you, but it's better than nohting.
For somewhat more protection, you can also if you figure out how to use blocklists and community labelers you can reduce this to some extent. If you want to block Wormtongue's followers, be careful not to use the fake Wormtongue blocklist that also has a bunch of trans people listed included; instead, well-known trans author Julia Serano recommends using this blocklist, run by somebody she trusts. Wormtongue and his followers on Xitter know that these blocklists exists, so presumably some of them are smart enough not to followhim on Bluesky, so it's far from buletproof protection, but it's better than nothing.
If you were the target of harassment on Twitter you probably know that making your account private is a "shields up" mode which cuts down harassment significantly ... but that's not an option on Bluesky, sorry.
3 I've heard more than one person speculate that this sequence of events implies that Bluesky CEO Jay Graber or Bluesky's investors might be overruling the initial decision by Trust & Safety. It's certianly possible; at the end of the day, it's the CEO and board who call the shots.
4 Although Bluesky quickly distanced themselves from these apologies, clarifying that this had been done by "a newly hired agent" and "it is not Bluesky’s policy to conduct personalized or private communications on general issues through support emails").
Update log
Ongoing minor fixes: typos, wording cleanups
December 12: initial version published in the morning; later in the day, added a couple more links and quotes, update statistics for change.org petition
December 16: added links to various articles, went into more detail discussion in footnotes
December 17: restructure The community fights back section, move some stuff from footnote to main text