Government Censorship Comes To Bluesky (techcrunch.com) 30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Government censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there's currently a loophole thanks to how the social network is structured. Earlier this month, Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the request of Turkish governmental authorities, according to a recent report by the Freedom of Expression Association. As a result, people in Turkey can no longer see these accounts, and their reach is limited. The report indicates that 59 Bluesky accounts were blocked on the grounds of protecting "national security and public order." Bluesky also made another 13 accounts and at least one post invisible from Turkey.
Given that many Turkish users migrated from X to Bluesky in the hopes of fleeing government censorship, Bluesky's bowing to the Turkish government's demands has raised questions among the community as to whether the social network is as open and decentralized as it claims to be. (Or whether it's "just like Twitter" after all.) However, Bluesky's technical underpinnings currently make bypassing these blocks easier than it would be on a network like X -- even if it's not quite as open as the alternative social network Mastodon, another decentralized X rival.
A Mastodon user could move their account around to different servers to avoid censorship targeted at the original Mastodon instance (server) where they first made posts that attracted the censors. Users on the official Bluesky app can configure their moderation settings but have no way to opt out of the moderation service Bluesky provides. This includes its use of geographic labelers, like the newly added Turkish moderation labeler that handles the censorship of accounts mandated by the Turkish government. (Laurens Hof has a great breakdown of how this all works in more technical detail here on The Fediverse Report.) Simply put, if you're on the official Bluesky app and Bluesky (the company) agrees to censor something in your region, there's no way to opt out of this to see the hidden posts or accounts. Other third-party Bluesky apps, which make up the larger open social web known as the Atmosphere, don't have to follow these same rules. At least, not for now.
Given that many Turkish users migrated from X to Bluesky in the hopes of fleeing government censorship, Bluesky's bowing to the Turkish government's demands has raised questions among the community as to whether the social network is as open and decentralized as it claims to be. (Or whether it's "just like Twitter" after all.) However, Bluesky's technical underpinnings currently make bypassing these blocks easier than it would be on a network like X -- even if it's not quite as open as the alternative social network Mastodon, another decentralized X rival.
A Mastodon user could move their account around to different servers to avoid censorship targeted at the original Mastodon instance (server) where they first made posts that attracted the censors. Users on the official Bluesky app can configure their moderation settings but have no way to opt out of the moderation service Bluesky provides. This includes its use of geographic labelers, like the newly added Turkish moderation labeler that handles the censorship of accounts mandated by the Turkish government. (Laurens Hof has a great breakdown of how this all works in more technical detail here on The Fediverse Report.) Simply put, if you're on the official Bluesky app and Bluesky (the company) agrees to censor something in your region, there's no way to opt out of this to see the hidden posts or accounts. Other third-party Bluesky apps, which make up the larger open social web known as the Atmosphere, don't have to follow these same rules. At least, not for now.
Just a fact of life (Score:5, Insightful)
It does not matter what you think about cencorship, companies have to make a choice: Either they operate in a given country or not, if they do, they have to follow the laws of that country. If they do not, that the causes their revenues to be lower and companies exist to make money, so option two wins almost always.
There are really only two ways it can change: 1) people in the country in question change the laws. 2) The company is convinced that the cost to them for exiting such a market is less than the benefit they get in other markets.
Neither is very likely given that the blocking is often political and suppressing oppising views to the current regime and most people running companies know the harsh reality that people are much more likely to yell at a company to do X than actually do something about it if the company does not do anything.
Re: Just a fact of life (Score:1)
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The exact same situation applies to a Mastodon server. They can't ignore court orders either. If you get a court order against Mastodon.social, you've blocked half of the Fediverse's users right there. Hit the other major servers and you've hit nearly all of the rest.
At least on Bluesky you can *actually* migrate between servers (e.g. including your content), instead of just migrating your metadata.
Re: Just a fact of life (Score:1)
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It *is* the solution that blocked people are taking.
And you *can't* migrate your content on Mastodon. If it's on a server that got blocked, *it's staying blocked*. Or outright deleted, if that's what the court order says. Or altered without your consent.
Half of Mastodon is dominated by a single server. With Bluesky, yes, it's like 98% of the
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Does Bluesky have any offices, staff, servers, infrastructure or anything else in Turkey? Do they earn any revenue in Turkey? If they have no business presence and no legal presence and earn no money in Turkey, how can they be subject to Turkish law?
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They're really not but they could be tried in Turkish court regardless, maybe the executives are charged who knows and Turkey would likely just attempt to block the site. If you're Bluesky it's basically risks opening up a small international incident with a nation state.
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That is not how modern platforms work, they will only block things in the countries that it is needed in, not in other places. Like in the example the blocked content is not visible from Turkey, but is from elsewhere.
If you want it to be different, you need to convince th people there to change their laws.
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Look pal I love the way we do free speech in America and if it were up to me every nation would do it that way but they don't and a social media company is not the hero we deserve or need to try and change that. The fact they built it open and extendable enough that they can't actually censor or ban entirely is very in the American spirit, what's more American than malicious compliance?
So yeah, sorry we got our own issues right now so the nuances of freedom of speech in fucking Turkiye isn't exactly top of
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Turkish courts do not dispense justice to foreigners, they extort money. You'll be pressured to spend money for lawyers, court fees, private investigators, etc. But they will keep you in jail. When they can't squeeze any more money from you or your relatives, then they will decide whether to prosecute you.
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Their app is on the Google/Apple stores, which do. Their choice is to have their app banned from stores in Turkey or obey the censorship mandate.
Same as the Elon/Brazil case in that regard.
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I've never seen a hint of "kiddy porn" on Bluesky, while on X, Musk *personally reinstated* the account of a major user who shared child pornography.
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Re: Goodbye, bluesky (Score:1)
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The English name of the country remains Turkey not something we can't even write on Slashdot. Just like we say Germany not Deutchland. And their Führer can go <censored>.
Remember it is only censorship if you agree... (Score:3)
Re: Remember it is only censorship if you agree... (Score:1)
And if you're just workin' your job, paying your mortgage, wondering when you'll need to bite the bullet and buy a new car/refrigerator/furnace and trying to be a moderately passable parent to your children, and just wish a pox on both their houses, it's neither censorship nor doubleplusgood whatever, it's merely the gods fighting again.
So use a web client (Score:2)
This is just going to be a label, a third party web client isn't going to try to use geolocation to hide the posts. Any mainstream social network needs a commercial core to do the awful mind destroying job of moderation. Community needs to keep them honest and route around localised censorship they get forced into by their commercial centralised nature.
Don't ever use the official clients and fork the PDS/relays (someone needs to check the network takedowns and keep them honest). I don't use it at all, but s
But isn't it decentralized? (Score:2)
Now you see how much of a joke the "decentralization" of Bluesky is.
Come on, join a Mastodon instance. If you are a prime target for censorship possible a few ones in different countries.
Let the censors play whack-a-mole when they try to get rid of some content or writer.