Hughster

One month in and this feed has pretty much transformed my experience here. It feels very very close to old Twitter in its prime. I honestly think the platform should consider buying it out and making it the new default.

What is really happening with Bluesky and its moderation? A thread.

First, let’s use the accurate word to describe what Jay Graber (the CEO) and others at Bluesky have been receiving: it’s not criticism, it’s *harassment*

I’ve seen some of them being harassed for months by deranged people

1/

The Bishop of Birmingham has written to the Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick about his comments about Handsworth

It makes me irrationally angry to read this while police are still devoting significant resources to catching people using weed

"I hoped…the outrage about [Windrush]…demonstrated we were finally moving away from [racist] thinking. But Jenrick’s remarks show…we are, in 2025, in an even worse place. [They] are a symptom of a new cult of ethno-nationalism, imported from the USA and supercharged by bad actors on social media"

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It's like watching a BNP spokesperson from 20 years ago (and then you realise this guy could soon be LOTO)

This is true, but I also worry about the normalising effect of having an overt racist as LOTO, even if short-lived.

So here we are, nearly 25 years later, and not only are people back saying the kind of things the BNP used to say almost word-for-word but it's now mainstream politicians one step away from leader of the opposition

The sooner this country "hardens" up and stops allowing a quarter of a million immigrants in a year the better. 90% of my friends and colleges are what the left would call racist-because we believe in our country and can also remember not many years ago when you didn't have whole areas without a white face in sight. Anonymous

A reader answer to the question "What is your reaction to the [Burnley and Oldham local election] gains made by the BNP? Is the far right on the rise in the UK? How should mainstream parties deal with elected BNP councillors?"

*2002.*

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking... #Jenrick

Corrupt bias so called journalist you should be ashamed of yourselves

Mass tactical voting will help but if it's as poorly promoted and coordinated as last year again it's not going to be enough

If Labour are even considering PR then they'll need to do something about it pretty quickly—if we go the pact/merge route instead it'll take a few years to get things in order

Is any journalist at Conservative conference going to ask Robert Jenrick where he got his new "Let's take our country back," slogan from?

We really have reached the point where we need either (a) PR or (b) left and right parties to start forming electoral alliances or merging

This is just… horrible. Jenrick is talking exactly like an NF or BNP spokesperson

If your report relies on or relates to conduct that happened outside of Bluesky, please provide links, context, or any relevant evidence in the details section of your report, so our moderation team can take these factors into consideration.

I think some of these claims are based on this deleted passage from the Community Guidelines (rather than the TOS). The entire document was rewritten in August but it doesn't look like there's anything new that replicates the principle of considering external conduct.
bsky.social/about/suppor...

Aaand there's the inevitable rapid escalation to "you must be racist and transphobic"

I trust the replies, quotes and harassment lists you and the rest of your staff have been enduring recently have answered your question…

Given this only just happened I think Jenrick knows perfectly well what the implications of what he's saying are.

Is there a post he's made here that obviously violates the TOS?

An awful lot of people who insist they're only "calling out" and "educating" do seem to enjoy the opportunity to behave like dicks rather too much.

Similar to me! It just makes everything more flexible and avoids a lot of stress

At this stage I wouldn't blame Bluesky for turning off their own replies in their own app

You know what really grinds my gears? The way YouTube thumbnails all have silly pantomime expressions

We can easily test if the innocent explanation is the right one by asking him if he'd go to, say, rural Lincolnshire and complain about not seeing any non-white faces.

If the Tories do indeed make him leader then they're a racist party, arguably further right than Reform, and they should be shunned from mainstream politics as the BNP were

(Jenrick at lectern) "That's real Britain"

Jenrick is a racist (much more explicitly than Farage) and it's time to start calling that out

You can't open police approved ones without the code in 30 seconds