Private School Labeler on Bluesky

(simonwillison.net)

35 points | by tosh 11 hours ago ago

13 comments

  • teruakohatu 10 hours ago

    > On the one hand, there are clearly opportunities for abuse here. But given the opt-in nature of the labelers, this doesn't feel hugely different to someone creating a separate webpage full of information about Bluesky profiles.

    It requires very little imagination to see how this could be abused. Does the bluesky client also display labellers a user subscribes to?

    Then at least it would work in both directions and it would be obvious who is using a labeller to label people for distasteful reasons.

    • r00fus 7 hours ago

      > It requires very little imagination to see how this could be abused.

      Pray tell, how do you feel how labelers can be misused as opposed to an app like TweetDeck etc that simply leverages the features of the platform?

    • layer8 10 hours ago

      It doesn’t enable anything a browser extension couldn’t do as well.

    • simonw 10 hours ago

      I'm afraid you're going to need to spell it out to me. What are the opportunities for abuse here that aren't already present in the form of private WhatsApp groups or shared Google Docs with lists of accounts and abusive notes about them?

      I'm not saying there aren't any, but my imagination hasn't been able to come up with anything more than "it makes it slightly more convenient for co-ordinated harrassers to remember who they were planning on harrassing".

      • efsavage 10 hours ago

        I think there's more than a quantitative difference between "slightly more convenient" and "with no effort". A centrally maintained list of labelled "enemies" that you get forever with a click is materially different than having to research people who gave you a reason to do so.

        • r00fus 7 hours ago

          Using your logic, a shared blocklist could also be a way to "harass" people.

      • chomp 9 hours ago

        Is your thesis that since we live in a world of infinite possibilities, any device that makes harassment more efficient is not worth measured consideration for guard rails because there’s always a different and worse way to it?

        • simonw 9 hours ago

          The labels feature was originally designed to help PROTECT against harassment - people being harassed can use labels to share notes with each other about hostile accounts.

          Does that positive use of the feature outweight any potential negative uses?

  • preciousoo 10 hours ago

    Could this be worked around to add private notes to people’s profiles? My fav feature on RES was the ability to “tag” accounts on Reddit

    • drivingmenuts 6 hours ago

      On the surface, it sounds useful, but this sounds like a case where the potential harms greatly outweighs any other use, inc. doxxing, harassment, bullying, libel ... Unfortunately, there's no way to stop it cold.

      • simonw 4 hours ago

        I still don't get it. Right now you could create a Google Doc full of malicious information about one or more Bluesky profiles. Why is this different?

        To clarify: these labels are maintained in systems outside of Bluesky, and are only visible to users who deliberately "subscribe" to a specific labeler.

  • 11 hours ago
    [deleted]
  • SoftTalker 11 hours ago

    [flagged]