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I am utterly delighted by this subversive use of the Bluesky label feature, where you can subscribe to a custom app that then adds visible labels to profiles This one shows you which posh expensive private school British public figures attended, plus their current fees bsky.app/profile/dadd...

Once you turn it on it looks like this

Wrote a bit more about labelers on my blog simonwillison.net/2024/Nov/22/...

A lot of people are concerned about the potential for abuse with this custom label feature What's the worst case scenario here, given that labels are only visible to the people who opt-in to seeing labels from that specific labeler?

Co-ordinated harrasment campaigns can already share links to Bluesky profiles that they plan to target using off-site mechanisms like shared Google Docs, WhatsApp groups etc Is the threat from custom labels purely one of making things more convenient for those groups, or is there something else?

My opinion right now is that the features to watch out for are features that make some form of harassment possible that isn't possible at all if the feature doesn't exist - and I don't think custom labelers qualify for that I'm very ready to be convinced otherwise

It just makes it that much easier, which doesn't seem great to me. There's a big difference between going somewhere to look up a name and seeing some label pushed into your face

Unless I misunderstand the feature, I think the label is only "pushed into your face" if you explicitly subscribe to the labeler.

Yes? Exactly? When people can opt out of _being labeled_ it will be one thing, but the fact that seeing labels is opt in is still not good