This reeks of astroturf.
This particular tactic in which a rival social media service gains ground then hand-wringing articles trying to stoke fears that it’s not “up to the task of moderation” start to appear has become so standard that it could have its own name, like a chess opening.
BlueSky’s full-time staff is on the order of 20 people. They’ve got 25M users and counting.
I don’t think its crazy to raise the question “How will you do moderation?” in a company that hasn’t significantly monetized itself yet and is running on a skeleton crew.
Stories like this are trite, in so far as they’re written about every upcoming social media service. But that’s because social media sites tend to follow the same trajectory. BlueSky is becoming a victim of its own success, as more people encourage more participation by spammers, scammers, and bots.
What will Dorsey do with BlueSky in 2024 that’s different than what he did with Twitter in 2014? Will he manage the company any better this time around or just toss the keys to Marc Andressen or Peter Thiel for another multi-million dollar buyout?
I doubt Dorsey will do much at all with Bluesky, given he is no longer on Bluesky’s board.
Exactly this - moderation is hard. Really hard. Automated moderation doesn’t work. People are able to find the loopholes. And if you don’t do moderation, evil people will arrive at your plattform and share child molestation content, deal drugs, post revenge porn or ISIS propaganda. If you don’t have dedicated teams to counter russian or chinese desinfo campaigns, there will be desinfo campaigns on your plattform.
I mean, I’d be at least as worried about American domestic disinfo as anything coming from oversees, but point taken.
