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An important PSA for people who are active on #Bluesky and who, upon hearing that the ICE account was officially verified, are saying: "I will just block it."

Blocking on Bluesky is NOT PRIVATE: it's very easy to see who is blocking any account by visiting sites that list that information.

I took a screenshot from clearsky.app, listing all the accounts that are blocking ICE (I pixelated avatars and usernames for privacy purposes).

The safest bet is to mute (that info is private) 😫

in reply to Elena Rossini

Better:
Leave for a better neighbourhood <img class=" title=":fediverse:"/>

reshared this

in reply to Elena Rossini

I will never understand this decision. I’ve seen people say it’s just due to how ATProtocol works. But surely there’s a way they could have implemented blocks and have them private.

Roni Rolle Laukkarinen reshared this.

in reply to Elena Rossini

I'm well aware that posting this info on the Fediverse seems like a pointless exercise, but it's to raise awareness and spread the word to people active in BOTH places.

I was never really active on #Bluesky and entirely stopped using it months ago but there's no point in posting this info there because I have zero reach. Or rather: 1100+ followers and 1-2 likes (at best!) and zero comments for any post. It's like I'm shadow-banned.

If you use it and enjoy it no judgement but please be safe!

in reply to Elena Rossini

There are many more companies, institutions, news outlets, YouTubers etc. there then here. For example, several EU institutions and politicians are pretty active there. So, I have a few lists and use it as sort of a reader to check the latest news and other information once or twice a day. Mastodon is where I follow and interact with real people, which is what I really enjoy here.
in reply to hyperreal

@hyperreal thanks. I actually blocked the bridge months ago, so feel free to share a screenshot if it works better
in reply to Elena Rossini

I'm not sure if blocking the bridge also blocks linked posts. As far as I can tell on my Bsky account the link to your OP that I shared on Bsky still resolves correctly. Maybe blocking the bridge is a different thing. Or I don't know lol.
in reply to hyperreal

@hyperreal good to hear! at any rate my account couldn't be bridged because it starts with an underscore (a quirk of the bridge)...
in reply to Elena Rossini

@hyperreal

I closed my account there quite a while back but only de-bridged today. I'm sad to no longer see posts from certain people I followed but overall I feel a whole lot better. 👍

in reply to Eye

@grb090423
>I'm sad to no longer see posts from certain people I followed (...)

You can follow bridged accounts even without your account itself being bridged.
Following a bridge is simply a opt-in to federate your posts to Bluesky and its users
@_elena @hyperreal

in reply to Elena Rossini

The very same applies to the Fediverse, by the way: When blocking someone, that information is relayed to the instance where the blocked account is hosted. While this is not typically publicly visible, malicious instances know who blocked some of their members and can of course use that information.

(We internally used the amount of blocks as a hint to which local account to investigate, but it‘s at present not worth the hassle.)

in reply to Elena Rossini

At least for me, I just don't want to see their lies and bias. Having them on a block list does that. It stops them from polluting my feed.

Anyone who thinks that stops the US Government from reading your feed, emails, etc. hasn't read Snowdon.

in reply to Elena Rossini

Agreed. Bsky is a much less interactive experience than here on Mastodon/Fediverse. I follow a couple of authors, a few sports sites, and check general news there. But yeah, it's mostly a "read only" environment if you aren't "somebody." I will note that those two authors do read and respond to replies.

I mostly consider Bluesky an "eMuskulated" Twitter and it seems to be replacing Twitter as a place mass media and "somebodies" go to post expecting that everyone is reading along.

in reply to troi

@troi Bluesky as "eMuskulated Twitter" took me out 😂 PRICELESS and so spot on!
@troi
in reply to Elena Rossini

feel free to use. Everything I do is public domain:) if I get a smile or a laugh I’ve achieved my goal.
in reply to troi

@troi oooh I've bookmarked your toot and I will certainly be using it (and crediting you!)
@troi
in reply to Elena Rossini

There is no privacy on bluesky or any other application hosted in US.
US government can request data anytime.
in reply to Elena Rossini

That was the reason for deleting my account 5 minutes before.
in reply to Elena Rossini

Damn. Hopefully this gets a wave of people to quit bluesky and join fedi - if ICE was on fedi, the majority of decent instance hosts would just block them outright, so their users wouldn't have to worry.
in reply to Elena Rossini

@smattymatty hm, I think that's a vulnerable argument. If fedi would spread more, there would appear more instances that would not block ICE.
Unknown parent

Unknown parent

mastodon - Collegamento all'originale
Elena Rossini
@ApostateEnglishman @aaronmccollum indeed... even if this is unintentional, it's starting to feel like a honeypot 😩
Unknown parent

in reply to Elena Rossini

I wouldn’t use any US service for talking about ICE right now. They’ve got full Palantir coverage on it. Absolutely no doubt on my mind.
in reply to Elena Rossini

can we call it brownshirtsky now?
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
Unknown parent

@aaronmccollum It's a real worry that right now, thousands of people with reason to fear ICE are voluntarily adding themselves to a handy list of potential targets, simply by blocking the account.

Again and again, the Bluesky people demonstrate they have no interest in the safety of users.

in reply to Elena Rossini

Everything on Bsky is public

They don’t care about privacy

reshared this

in reply to Elena Rossini

It’s kinda scrary, with the right tools one can get a lot of info on people this way

Maybe not direct but many indirect can also lead to that I guess

in reply to stux⚡️

@stux
People would be genuinely surprised how easy that is to trace things back to them even with the "pseudonymized data". Sure it doesn't contain your name, but it still details (for example)

- Age range
- Rough location
- Interests
- Known associations

Guess how trivial it becomes to correlate that back to an individual? Age range and rough location are known data-points for governments (census) soooo, yeah. Easy-peasy unfortunately :blobcatsad:

in reply to stux⚡️

@stux BTW, blocking on Mastodon is also visible. And worse: blocked people can often still read all your public postings. We also have room for improvement when it comes to safety!

@_elena

in reply to Petra van Cronenburg

@NatureMC Well yeah but that’s if you have a public profile ;)

There is no way around that, without an account anyone can view those from the public pages. That’s why we have followers-only for example

But the block lists are not public on Mastodon and on Bsky they are

in reply to stux⚡️

@stux People who work with social media, are obliged to have a public profile.

If you block s'o on Bsky, after some seconds, each part can't see anything more from the other account. Not a single post.

Block lists: yes.

@_elena

in reply to Petra van Cronenburg

@NatureMC But if you logout, you can still view the profile and posts right?

It wouldn’t make sense otherwise

in reply to stux⚡️

@stux I just tested it. Yes, you are right: I have to search for a blocked account on Bsky and then I can read it. They don't have this login-wall like other platforms.
Thanks, I learnt something new!

@_elena

in reply to Petra van Cronenburg

@NatureMC Yup! And with Mastodon and other Fedi software (most) you could ‘hide’ it behind a auth check

Not sure why they do it that way though

in reply to Elena Rossini

It's weird that one's blocks are visible on Bluesky. However, what's so bad if ICE knows one has blocked them?
in reply to Elena Rossini

@sloanlance Block lists seem to damp that down, at least so far. I'm subscribed to several. Also, given the number of people blocking ICE, and other government sites, harassers will be busy.
in reply to Elena Rossini

Ok. Makes sense, I guess. It's good to know the risks.

PS: I remember the days when 4Chan was just silly crap.

in reply to Elena Rossini

If you're outside the United States, make sure to write to your politicians to tell them you don't want your nation's security and immigration working with ICE! Wearing masks and shooting innocent civilians, threatening violence and terrorising the general population, these are not the behaviors of a legitimate law enforcement agency.
in reply to Elena Rossini

I blocked the entire bsky.brid.gy instance as well as blocking the bridge bot.
in reply to Elena Rossini

and what about subscribing to block lists? There are block lists for fascism ... as dangerous for US people?
in reply to Elena Rossini

I am staying here. No Stasi, no Nazis, no AfD, no ICE, no DHS, no CDU, no CCP….problem solved.
in reply to Elena Rossini

"I will just block it" doesn't solve the problem of the social media platform you enrich by posting on approving of a local gestapo
in reply to Elena Rossini

strongly disagree;

"The safest bet" is to leave bluesky and create a fedi instance with the software of your choice.

wink smiley.

in reply to Sebastian Lasse

@sl007 I fundamentally agree with you and that’s why I stopped using Bluesky. But I’m trying not to be too divisive and not to alienate people who enjoy it. Otherwise they will dismiss everything I ever say about Bluesky, warnings and whatnot 😢
in reply to Elena Rossini

Really sorry and disappointed that so many still stay on that shitty platform. I actively refuse to boost anything from bluesky. Jack Dorsey's a shitbag Nazi fellater just like Musk Zuck all of them.
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
Unknown parent

mastodon - Collegamento all'originale
Petra van Cronenburg

@nazokiyoubinbou Just a note for the Fediverse = paradise adepts: I'm regularly blocking and if possible reporting Maga propaganda even on Mastodon. You can get evil people *everywhere*.
The question is how much you can protect yourself or if such attempts are defederated or suspended.
Here, the Fediverse is better because human moderators. But most people don't know that difference. And would Mastodon be prepared if the ICE opens an account?

@u_urban @_elena

in reply to Elena Rossini

@pluralistic I found I had already blocked it through one of the lists I’m subscribed to.

Anyway, blocking the gestapo is the minor or the sins they would find in my TL.

in reply to Don Hawkins - W7DAH

@donhawkins I would recommend keeping the account inactive / deleting the app instead to avoid username squatting.

I learned the hard way with X - I used Twitter for 14 years and just mere days after deleting 3 accounts, my usernames were immediately seized 😭

in reply to Elena Rossini

I had one Birdsite account, deleted it, never revisited … why should I care if the account name is reused over there now?
in reply to Elena Rossini

Ahh, yes. Gotcha. Personally, not a major concern. Anticipated from the start & easily managed.
in reply to Elena Rossini

I’m outside their jurisdiction. I want them to see they are getting blocked.
in reply to Elena Rossini

Being outside the US and having no intentions to ever go there, I *have* blocked them.
in reply to Elena Rossini

Good advice. I do the same here. That way it is a private personal choice.
Unknown parent

friendica - Collegamento all'originale
Carlos Solís
There is one thing that Bluesky has and the Fediverse still hasn't fully implemented: shared block lists are still not supported natively by ActivityPub and require external, fragmented implementations. Bluesky has account labeling services that can work on a per-account or per-post basis, and shared lists that can be used as either starter packs or banlists. The latter is still WIP on Mastodon's side, because of the focus on being opt-in.
in reply to Petra van Cronenburg

@NatureMC @nazokiyoubinbou
It would be blocked by most instances (servers) mine for sure, I had the freedom to choose!
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to u_urban

@u_urban Great to hear. And then it would be easy to move to such an instance to be free of them.
BTW, the moderators here do a hard and great job, especially when we have a wave of propaganda-fake-accounts. You can nearly watch real time how these fakes at last hide on tiny unmoderated instances before they are gone.
People outside often don't know that our moderation is still hand-made.

@nazokiyoubinbou @_elena

in reply to Elena Rossini

@corbden

I am fully aware of the block vs. mute functionality, and I have blocked them not just for my own convenience reading, but to raise a significant barrier to harassment and protect the people with whom I speak also.

In fact, I subscribe to eva.computer's blocklist for all federal accounts (other than NOAA, NWS, CPSC, and the Federal Reserve) along with thousands of other people, which handled it automatically.

Blocking protects your friends, not just your eyes.

in reply to Elena Rossini

you know pixelating is pointless since you explain how to see the original list, don't you.
in reply to Elena Rossini

so but, what about people living outside of the US? They can happily block ICE all day long without being affected in any way, right?
What would happen if the list of accounts blocking ICE would be flooded with masses of foreign accounts? Just curious ~
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to Elena Rossini

idrc if someone can see me blocking ICE. why is this a big deal for people outside of the US?
in reply to Elena Rossini

This is also true about Mastodon*, but Mastodon actively tries to hide that fact from users and muddy the waters.

* It's technically hidden to users but not the admins of the instances involved, but if you're a gov agency, you're presumably on your own instance, as seems to be the custom here for the "big players."

in reply to Elena Rossini

Bit too late for me, I'm already subscribed to the "all US official accounts" block list.