(Quasi-sincere apologies for the earworm. This is probably not a post most people are interested in, but what else are blogs for? )

So, I deleted my Bluesky account.

For those unaware, Bluesky is a social media network created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to serve as the libertarian cryptocurrency paradise Twitter had failed to be. With Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (and rebranding as “X”, because that’s what Musk tries to name everything), a lot of people converged on Bluesky as a real replacement. Jack himself stopped using the network fairly quickly because most users didn’t want crypto, even if they did want a somewhat libertarian site open to marginalized folks, including sex workers, trans people, Black people, and of course those at the intersections of those groups.

While early Bluesky — which was invitation-only — had a lot of fun, there were problems with it as a Twitter replacement from the beginning. First, following Jack’s vision, Bluesky didn’t have a way to block other users’ accounts; blocking is necessary for any number of reasons from “I just don’t want to see this person’s posts because they’re annoying” to “this account is a literal Nazi/other evil entity”. Black users of Bluesky noted early on the lack of a trust and safety (T&S) department, which facilitates prevention of harassment, and despite official policies against racist activity, the network was very slow to respond.

Under pressure, Bluesky added a very powerful block function and ultimately opened up to all users without invitations in late 2023, finally implementing T&S. But a lot of the heavy lifting of moderation was left to users, who took on the task of building lists of bad actors, reporting them to T&S as they had time and energy. Some of those volunteer moderators turned out to be bad actors themselves as a result of the disorganized nature of things.

And then, my Worst Colleague™ joined the network.

My Worst Colleague™

Jesse Singal is a science journalist whose output is almost entirely committed to attacks on trans people’s healthcare, particularly trans children. He is probably most infamous for a cover story in the establishment liberal magazine The Atlantic; in that story, he asked rhetorically if trans kids were really trans and if they were worthy of receiving care. The story had many problems: misgendering the kids he profiled, implying kids were casually transitioning as a fad when trans medical care is actually very difficult to receive for adults and kids alike, and so forth. Meanwhile, a prescient story by Ed Yong tucked into the corner of the same Atlantic cover warned — before COVID-19 hit — that the United States isn’t ready for a pandemic. Other stories Singal has written exposed private medical information about children.

(As an aside: some have objected to me calling Singal a science journalist. However, that’s his job title. It’s not a statement about his ethics, which are questionable, or the quality of his work, which is unmentionable. Pretty sure he doesn’t regard me as a colleague, if it comes to that.)

Singal, like J.K. Rowling and many other anti-trans bigots, has pretty much made opposing rights for trans people his entire public personality. In addition to his articles in high-profile publications, he frequently threatens to sue people for mild criticisms, and encourages his social media followers to harass his critics, particularly those from marginalized groups.

When Singal joined Bluesky, many of us protested, asking he be banned preemptively based on his documented behavior on Twitter — all the more urgent because Bluesky has a lot of trans users who have been with the network since the beginning. As a science journalist myself, I asked the moderators to consider what values they express by allowing an open bigot like Singal on the network, whether they weighed his presence and that of his followers more than that of his targets. Users even organized a Change.org petition asking Bluesky to enforce its rules, which was signed by ordinary nobodies like me up to pop superstar Lizzo [update: I somehow missed that Lizzo has been accused of pretty serious misbehavior, so using her name is probably not my best choice here] and trans filmmaker Lilly Wachowski of The Matrix fame.

Meanwhile, Singal was organizing harassers on Twitter to sign up for Bluesky to attack people there, and after he was temporarily suspended, he threatened to sue the network for enforcing their own rules. Bluesky ultimately announced organizing harassment on Twitter didn’t break their rules because they can’t police behavior elsewhere.

That argument falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. If nothing else, a lot of the worst right-wing harassment campaigns such as GamerGate on Twitter were organized on 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, and other off-site networks. However, unlike the channers, Singal isn’t anonymous: he’s literally a cover-story writer for The Atlantic, something the vast majority of journalists will never achieve in decades of work. He organizes harassment openly under his own name, not to mention his habit of threatening lawsuits willy-nilly. By saying he can break rules against harassment as long as he organizes using Twitter, the moderation team has laid out a rulebook by which everyone from stalkers to Nazis can attack Bluesky.

It’s really worrisome that Bluesky decided to wreck things for … Jesse Singal, who despite being fairly high profile in my profession is not super famous. He’s not a celebrity: a lot of people (including possibly a lot of you) hadn’t heard of him before this incident. Even I wasn’t aware of the extent of his bullying until fairly recently, though obviously his anti-trans positions alone should be enough to ban him in a reasonable world. Overturning your own network’s rules for him is like setting your house on fire for a $75 insurance payout. He’s not even benefiting the network by his presence: his account is currently the most blocked on Bluesky, with over 70,000 people blocking him. Imagine picking Singal over Alex Winter (AKA, Bill of “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”).

In other words, this was a horrible set of decisions on the part of Bluesky’s management from start to finish. In the few days since they announced Singal is allowed to break their rules, he has sent cease-and-desist orders to various users — including finding people’s real names when they were posting under pseudonyms. Emboldened by all of this, a new group of trolls has descended to threaten violence against trans and other marginalized users. I decided that I personally couldn’t tolerate being on a network that encourages anti-trans harassment, not least perpetrated by an ostensible colleague.

So, I deleted my Bluesky account.

Blueskies from Pain

(Eh, let’s have another Pink Floyd earworm.)

Which sucks. I joined Bluesky because some of my friends and colleagues had already moved over there from Twitter. I’ve been using the site seriously for over a year now. It genuinely looked like a network where writers like me could operate, similar enough to Twitter but with certain advantages, and a few disadvantages naturally. It was a long arduous fight to get Nazis kicked off Twitter, not that I’m claiming any credit for that; I just joined my voice to others pushing for their removal. I don’t even want to have that battle again. (With Musk in charge, the Nazis are back anyway, so any victory we had was short-lived.)

Honestly I would like to go back for the people I know there. Without Twitter, Facebook, and now Bluesky, I am completely without a social media presence for the first time since 2007 or so. (I don’t count LinkedIn, although a very nice-looking lady with a lot of cleavage messaged me there to tell me she’s visiting my city soon and would like to meet, the type of thing which is a hallmark of all true social media networks.) Maybe I will return eventually, though with the holidays here I’m deferring any decision until 2025. However, I’m thinking today of all the people Singal is harassing, wishing Bluesky had not made the wrong decision and failed to learn the lessons of multiple other social media networks over the past 20some years.

[Update: Singal has linked this piece on his social media, so I’ve closed comments to keep things … civil.]