Bluesky

[AG31]

My wife has been on Bluesky for over a year and loves it. (She's a fantastic YA/MG author that I wish I could brag about on here without outing myself.)
She'd steadily built up to around 1000 followers over the year
Then, this week, she's added about 200 followers per day after a couple of people included her in starter packs. She's just over 2700 followers now.

I know what YA means, but what does MG mean?

 

[John Connors]

I know what YA means, but what does MG mean?

Middle-Grade

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm more worried about Literotica. It's the largest erotica site by far, is US-based and hosts plenty of "transgender ideology" to point to. If it really is run by just two people, Lit would be easy to attack or simply litigate into the ground. An easy target and great symbolic victory. I see that AO3, Wattpad and others are preparing for attacks. I hope Lit has plans to move to EU hosting.

Lit is a text based site though, not video. All the drama and excitement is about visual porn, not written. That makes a big difference, I think. I hope it does, anyway.

 

[John Connors]

Same thing with 'unhoused' as the new politically correct way of saying 'homeless'. Or 'migrants' in place of 'illegal immigrants'.

This taboo around language is one of many reasons people are so pissed off and pushing back. People are tired of the self-censorship and having to walk around on egg shells in fear of upsetting them for saying something politically incorrect.






Moving to EU hosting would be complete suicide for Literotica and these sites to host. The EU does not have any of the protections on speech and creative freedoms that we have here in America.

These sites will be fine with protections under the First Amendment. Literotica has disclaimers that mention Falwell v Flynt. Set aside Elon Musk Derangement Syndrome and have faith in the constitution and our rights. It will be fine.

Up until recently, some countries in the EU were debating the Union banning or circumventing end-to-end encryption.

The EU is absolutely THE last place Literotica should ever be hosted from.

 

[AllenWoody]

This taboo around language is one of many reasons people are so pissed off and pushing back. People are tired of the self-censorship and having to walk around on egg shells in fear of upsetting them for saying something politically incorrect.

It can get positively Orwelllian.

 

[cadeauxxx]

About censorship...

 

[AG31]

About censorship...

View attachment 2428222

Reports about what?

 

[cadeauxxx]

Reports about what?

Your guess is as good as mine. They sound frustrated since it's getting in the way of them being able to remove illegal serious content that deserves their attention.

It can get positively Orwelllian.

I read 1984 for the first time in 20 years back in the summer. Some of it is a little bit outdated by Cold War era. The stuff in it about newspeak and censorship though, is extremely relevant to the culture we're living in today.

Off topic; I tip my hat to you with the Sticky Fingers album cover. One of my favorite rock albums. The weather is finally cold enough to play Moonlight Mile.

 

[lovecraft68]

It can get positively Orwelllian.

Forget 1984 and go with V for Vendetta seems even more accurate.

 

[SyleusSnow]

Up until recently, some countries in the EU were debating the Union banning or circumventing end-to-end encryption.

The EU is absolutely THE last place Literotica should ever be hosted from.

But they didn't. The US has discussed exactly the same thing repeatedly. Meanwhile the US actually has CALEA which mandates Internet providers give law enforcement and government back door access to communications. Made famous this week for allowing China to access sensitive government information. And then there's the Patriot Act which mandates "if you can get the data, you must. And never tell anyone." Microsoft fought it for years to keep customer email safely hosted in Ireland out of the hands of US law enforcement.

It varies by country, but porn laws in most of the EU are reasonable. And the GDPR privacy law is very strong.

About censorship...

View attachment 2428222

Reports about what?

CSAM is Child Sexual Abuse Material. i.e. Child porn. Of course it has to be censored.

What the other report are, who knows? Bluesky allows anyone to report a post as Misleading, Spam, Unwanted sexual content, anti-social behavior, illegal and "other".

If I were to speculate, I'd suspect such a sudden flood of reports is from certain groups brigading Bluesky because the site has been making headlines for taking traffic away from Twitter and been labelled by the far right as "leftist". Or actually posting such material to discredit the site.

 

[lovecraft68]

About censorship...

View attachment 2428222

ETA I posted this just as the post above me went up.

I want a prize for calling this one.

Well, you're missing the obvious. This is an attack by "the other side' because they fear this threat of 'freedom' Yes, that's the story that will surface very soon if not from them, some of their users.

Now reread the post above me. Yeah, always someone else, but never your crowd. Got it. You people can literally not take accountability for anything. The truth is these types will test any new site, but they can never be your type can they?

CSAM is child sexual abuse material. It means the site is being flooded with reports of some type of child porn.

History lesson for everyone. Years ago when some sick creep published a "Pedophile's Handbook" on Amazon, a book that it was their fault went through their 'screening' they not only removed it but somehow blamed 18+ taboo material for it, and banned all of that, and a lot of other erotica.

If this is legit and they've had an influx of CP, then this could stop the erotica 'movement' before it starts

And...the other side will also be blamed for sending this

But sad-and underserved-reality is, many people equate porn with being the gateway to child porn.

Game over before it started?

 

[Bramblethorn]

About censorship...

View attachment 2428222

Sorry, are you suggesting that removing CSAM is a bad or unusual thing for a social media site to do?

 

[lovecraft68]

Sorry, are you suggesting that removing CSAM is a bad or unusual thing for a social media site to do?

I take it to mean what I said above, this does not bode well for erotica as its always unfairly tied into 'that porn crowd"

Or maybe its not completely unfair. How often is the underaged issue pushed here?

New venue means another place for this type to invade.

 

[OldTennisGuy]

Just signed up on BlueSky….how do I find you?

 

[Bramblethorn]

This will flame out just like Threads and other Twitter alternatives that just serve as echo chambers for people who don't know how to use the block button

Might be worth learning a bit more about your own platform of choice before wading into discussion.



Space Karen got upset that too many people were blocking him. He eventually backed away from plans to delete block altogether, but the functionality was greatly reduced last month. It no longer stops people from seeing tweets by people who they've blocked or who have blocked them, which is...kind of the point of block functionality.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoni...lock-them-the-controversial-change-explained/

My partner still has an account there, and has been seeing tweets from people she blocked long ago.

and how to mute specific words and hashtags to correlate the homepage how they want.

lol.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I take it to mean what I said above, this does not bode well for erotica as its always unfairly tied into 'that porn crowd"

Or maybe its not completely unfair. How often is the underaged issue pushed here?

New venue means another place for this type to invade.

Every social media site is legally required to remove CSAM, and every legit social media site has a process for reporting and removing it.

Yes, people sometimes use the spectre of "child porn" to attack other things. But it doesn't tell us anything much about Bluesky in particular that they're censoring CSAM; Twitter and every viable alternative does too.

 

[cadeauxxx]

Sorry, are you suggesting that removing CSAM is a bad or unusual thing for a social media site to do?

No where did I suggest that.

Here's what I posted after that, since you have trouble reading (I bolded it for you since you have a hard time).

Your guess is as good as mine. They sound frustrated since it's getting in the way of them being able to remove illegal serious content that deserves their attention.

Don't know how you misread this as me wanting the site to have illegal and real harmful material that shouldn't be there.

Might be worth learning a bit more about your own platform of choice before wading into discussion.

View attachment 2428253

Space Karen got upset that too many people were blocking him. He eventually backed away from plans to delete block altogether, but the functionality was greatly reduced last month. It no longer stops people from seeing tweets by people who they've blocked or who have blocked them, which is...kind of the point of block functionality.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoni...lock-them-the-controversial-change-explained/

My partner still has an account there, and has been seeing tweets from people she blocked long ago.



lol.

Then how come the block feature actually works for me? I don't see any posts from people I block, and have muted. They don't show up on my timeline at all, nor do I go looking for them.

You posted a screenshot from August 2023; over a year ago. The block feature still works just fine for me.

I already broke down why it's my "platform of choice". Sorry "Space Karen" hurts your feelings so much cause people that have different views and opinions bother you so much. It sure would be a boring world if everyone thought and agreed on the same thing.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Off topic; I tip my hat to you with the Sticky Fingers album cover. One of my favorite rock albums. The weather is finally cold enough to play Moonlight Mile.

Excellent taste!

 

[Bramblethorn]

We've been hearing this stuff for 2 years now how Twitter is on the brink of collapse cause Elon Musk is so terrible and the worst person ever. The same ones shouting this nonsense refuse to explain why the profits have went up.

What's your source for that claim?

 

[SyleusSnow]

Just signed up on BlueSky….how do I find you?

You mean how do you find other Lit authors on Bluesky?

Most of us are using the same username as here so you can search for those names.

Plus, Emily Miller is maintaining a list: https://bsky.app/starter-pack/emilymillerlit.bsky.social/3lar5c2tftd2g

 

[cadeauxxx]

What's your source for that claim?

Advertisers returning:
https://www.ft.com/content/34b6fc20-23f7-4e08-9ac4-ef05d5d66c13


Revenue at 3.4 billion:
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/

What's your sources btw?

 

[Plathfan]

While your distant descendants will learn about Elon Musk, they won’t even know you existed—just saying (assuming you have offspring, as the progressive community tends toward a negative birth rate).

 

[TheLobster]

I'm a bit confused why a platform like Twitter would even need the user-blocking feature to apply to publicly posted content (as opposed to direct interactions).

The follower-followed relationship is unidirectional and opt-in; your feed is what you make it yourself. If you don't like what someone posts, simply unfollow them. Assuming a blocked person is indeed prevented from direct interactions with you (messages, notifications about @-mentions, etc.), like @cadeauxxx suggests they are, I'm not sure where's the problem.

 

[Bazzle]

I'm a bit confused why a platform like Twitter would even need the user-blocking feature to apply to publicly posted content (as opposed to direct interactions).

The follower-followed relationship is unidirectional and opt-in; your feed is what you make it yourself. If you don't like what someone posts, simply unfollow them. Assuming a blocked person is indeed prevented from direct interactions with you (messages, notifications about @-mentions, etc.), like @cadeauxxx suggests they are, I'm not sure where's the problem.

Quite simply the Russians (presumably) have filled Twitter with thousands of bots. The majority of new accounts are fake. People blocked them. Elon didn't like us all blocking his income stream.
secondly female users felt safer blocking certain male accounts, that they didn't want then seeing. Elon doesn't agree with female rights so enabled blocked accounts to see what is being said. So defeating the block.
Twitter is a cesspit . It used to be fun.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Advertisers returning:
https://www.ft.com/content/34b6fc20-23f7-4e08-9ac4-ef05d5d66c13

Paywalled, but from the headline that seems to be discussing what will happen post-election, which wouldn't be relevant to your claim that profits have already gone up.

Revenue at 3.4 billion:
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/

Cool, let's look at that article...





Since you only quoted the first half of that sentence, I'm guessing you didn't see or didn't understand the second half of the sentence, so I'll explain it for you:

Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, so the performance for 2022 is mostly pre-Musk and 2023 is the first full year of his ownership.

A "decrease" means that a thing went down. Twitter earned less money in 2023, under Musk, than it did in the previous year. People were buying fewer ads there.

Of course, "revenue" and "profits" aren't the same thing. Profit is the difference between revenue and costs. Musk did fire a lot of people, which reduced Twitter's staffing costs, and he might also have managed to reduce hosting/bandwidth costs by driving users away. OTOH, the company also took on a lot of debt, which added something like $1.2 billion annually in interest costs IIRC. We don't have full profits data post-Musk, because as a private company Twitter no longer has to do the same level of public reporting that it used to.

But this article certainly doesn't provide much evidence to support your claim.
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/

What's your sources btw?

Sources for what?