If you have millions of people on a social network, and you go looking for toxic shit there, you will find it.
Well, on Mastodon, you might not because by default it doesn’t have a useful text search feature. If you’re on a server running a modified version, or something else with decent text search, you might. My self-hosted server was on a relay that briefly pulled in content from a famously toxic server. At first, I didn’t see it because I didn’t follow those accounts, but later, I added an improved search feature and tried searching for some terms of abuse. I did find a few absolutely vile posts.
Bluesky has had a working search from early on. Turning off some of the default moderation filters and searching for terms of abuse does, in fact find people using terms of abuse.
Two thoughts come to mind:
- If it’s there and you aren’t having it shoved down your throat, then that’s still a VAST improvement over Twitter, which has gone from shitty social media to blatant hate indoctrination platform.
and
- Did you just now discover that most people are shitty? I always assumed most people figured that out at 13 or 14.
Does the post strike anyone else as “off”?
Like why is this person giving a full elevator pitch of who they are before they drop the bomb of “bluesky is toxic”?
This person is a liar and just wants the Mastodon pat on the back. For some reason people on the fediverse can’t just enjoy their platforms and work to make them better. They have to lie about Bluesky and Nostr. I’ve been on Bluesky since the beginning. I’ve seen significantly more toxic people and content on fedi than I’ve ever have on Bluesky. People are happy to be away from X, they’re trying to promote a positive and supportive culture. There’s tonnes of minorities on Bluesky
Haven’t seen a single bit of toxic stuff yet, my feed is all cute art and photography.