<story><title>I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky</title><url>https://worthdoingbadly.com/bsky/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btown</author><text>Given that Bluesky makes it this easy to download data, it&amp;#x27;s quite alarming that the graph of who blocks &amp;amp; mutes who is fully public and easy to extract into a database: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;atproto.com&amp;#x2F;lexicons&amp;#x2F;app-bsky-graph#appbskygraphgetblocks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;atproto.com&amp;#x2F;lexicons&amp;#x2F;app-bsky-graph#appbskygraphgetb...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;On Twitter, blocking a toxic user does not notify them - while they can query the block status of one profile at a time, they can never get a full list of people who block them. But it would be trivial to create a Bluesky app view that provides this inverted index. And some people would be inclined to use the list of people who block them as a &amp;quot;target list&amp;quot; of people whose views differ from them, to share with their networks as prospects for targeted harassment that may even cross into real-life violence. (The fact that critics of the infamous Ki*f*ms forum have been swatted - and that I am even now reticent to type the full name - is just the tip of the iceberg of potential dangers here.)&lt;p&gt;I hope that Bluesky comes up with a better mechanism here - it&amp;#x27;s tough to do in a federated system, but research like &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eprint.iacr.org&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;1577.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eprint.iacr.org&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;1577.pdf&lt;/a&gt; may be helpful.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>VancouverMan</author><text>Maybe it&amp;#x27;d be better to just not have any blocking&amp;#x2F;muting built into such a system at all.&lt;p&gt;If User A doesn&amp;#x27;t want to see posts from User B, that&amp;#x27;s fine. User A can have his client filter them out locally, prior to when they&amp;#x27;d otherwise be displayed. Nobody else has to know this is happening.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that User A should be permitted to prevent User B from replying to User A&amp;#x27;s posts, which in turn prevents User C (or all other users) from discovering what User B thinks about whatever User A posted.&lt;p&gt;User A trying to prevent his otherwise-public posts from being visible to User B seems pointless to me, as User B could log out, or use another account that hasn&amp;#x27;t been blocked, or ask somebody else who hasn&amp;#x27;t been blocked to screenshot it, or use some other way around it.</text></comment>
<story><title>I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky</title><url>https://worthdoingbadly.com/bsky/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btown</author><text>Given that Bluesky makes it this easy to download data, it&amp;#x27;s quite alarming that the graph of who blocks &amp;amp; mutes who is fully public and easy to extract into a database: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;atproto.com&amp;#x2F;lexicons&amp;#x2F;app-bsky-graph#appbskygraphgetblocks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;atproto.com&amp;#x2F;lexicons&amp;#x2F;app-bsky-graph#appbskygraphgetb...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;On Twitter, blocking a toxic user does not notify them - while they can query the block status of one profile at a time, they can never get a full list of people who block them. But it would be trivial to create a Bluesky app view that provides this inverted index. And some people would be inclined to use the list of people who block them as a &amp;quot;target list&amp;quot; of people whose views differ from them, to share with their networks as prospects for targeted harassment that may even cross into real-life violence. (The fact that critics of the infamous Ki*f*ms forum have been swatted - and that I am even now reticent to type the full name - is just the tip of the iceberg of potential dangers here.)&lt;p&gt;I hope that Bluesky comes up with a better mechanism here - it&amp;#x27;s tough to do in a federated system, but research like &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eprint.iacr.org&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;1577.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eprint.iacr.org&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;1577.pdf&lt;/a&gt; may be helpful.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brundolf</author><text>(Saying this as an excited bluesky user and someone who really really hopes all of this succeeds long-term)&lt;p&gt;I think possibly their biggest challenge ahead will be making parts of it &lt;i&gt;non&lt;/i&gt;-public. Private mutes&amp;#x2F;blocks, having some analogue of Circles for whitelisting post viewers, etc.&lt;p&gt;Having a &lt;i&gt;truly&lt;/i&gt; open and public database - especially once signups no longer require invite codes - is going to mean a cambrian explosion of tools and clients the likes of which we&amp;#x27;ve never seen before in social media (which is already sorta happening even with closed signups). But that might include malicious apps that take advantage of that same openness to stalk, spam, and harass (especially given it&amp;#x27;s coinciding with a huge leap in AI technology). It might be AT Protocol&amp;#x27;s biggest test.</text></comment>