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If you are cis ("not transgender") I need to explain this to you. Bluesky today posted this vague thread, announcing-without-spelling-out that they're allowing a writer, net troll and anti-trans activist named Jesse Singal to stay on the platform, despite every trans user saying it makes us unsafe.

This is the heart of the thread: They're looking at the one specific rules violation Singal is being reported for *currently*. And they're saying, this doesn't count as a rules violation, because he was careful enough to stay within the strict lines of the rule as written.

This misunderstands the issue, and is a fundamental error in moderation philosophy. The problem isn't any specific rule violation—Singal is skilled in "I'm-not-touching-you" harassment and will follow rules if you write them. The problem is the overall effect on the site Singal's presence will have.

You have to understand the context. The context is that there is an organized, anonymous group, centered around a site named "Kiwifarms", that has as a goal driving trans people to suicide. Singal is *currently* describing himself as working with this group as part of his operations on the site.

Sorry for the random reply, but I'm trying to remember: doesn't the protocol or at least Blue sky allow you to view posts through the filter of different moderation services? Which is why there are more reporting options than just the bsky safety team url.

Hi. Yes, that's a planned feature, and it's *interesting*— features like this would have made Twitter a better place— but I don't think it's an adequate solution in this case. There are a few basic problems with the idea, one being bsky mod services work for *incoming* posts, but not for *outgoing*.

Because bluesky is an open system, it's actually a little *more* harassment-friendly than Twitter. There's no private accounts, and the site is designed to be "scraped" (if you sign up as a Relay, you get a firehose of ALL posts, including the "web-only" ones). It's easy to monitor people.

The concern, with organized harassment, is that the one person you blocked will direct *other people* to go after you— and maybe you haven't blocked those people yet. And maybe the mod service can try to get them, but if they make sockpuppet accounts, the mod service doesn't know to block the socks.

So your posts are circulating within a community. There are people organizing *within* that community to signal flare your posts for harassment— (that— the signal flaring— was exactly the rule Singal technically "didn't break", referred to in the Safety thread, because he did it indirectly enough)—

—you can't limit the spread of EITHER your posts OR the signal flares, and organized groups like KF (the group Singal says in the screenshot he is in communication with) are skilled in making many dupe/bot accounts so that if some get blocked/modded they just switch to the next. This is the problem.