That's why I organized my protest on mastodon. No one showed up but my subscribers told me how awesome it was that I organized it.
https://bsky.app/profile/safety.bsky.app/post/3mukm26duos2c
Amazingly, the top replies to their post about targeted harassment are from accounts trying to redirect anger at several accounts that are common targets for dogpiling. It's deeply baked into the BlueSky culture and I don't know how it came to be like that.
I've tried to prune my feed to keep it out, but now the problem is that journalists I follow eventually find themselves targeted by a BlueSky dogpiling campaign and leave the platform.
EDIT: A lot of responses are trying to blame the dogpiling victims are saying the problem doesn't exist. Let me give you one recent example, where Rick Brewster made a proof of concept of Paint.NET running on Wine and got dogpiled so hard that he deleted the post and backed out: https://bsky.app/profile/rickbrew.bsky.social/post/3muiv4phe...
The earliest bluesky users tended to be the most toxic users of old Twitter, it's not too surprising
Paconbork, I see no sign of this. You are being ridiculous. And this network doesn't deserve any of this slander.
That being said, there's also the tumblr->twitter->bluesky contingent who have always loved dogpiling and they're mostly there because the site doesn't have musk boosting nazi posters.
Literally victim blaming.
The recent high profile example was a person who made a proof of concept of Paint.net on Wine and got dragged across the website so hard he felt he had to delete it, apologize, and abandon the project:
https://bsky.app/profile/rickbrew.bsky.social/post/3muiv4phe...
Literally victim blaming.
---
If you say something outrageous in the 'public square' and you get mocked for it by the public, how are you a victim?
I don't know why that would happen to someone trying to make a paint.NET clone, but that's also certainly not the type of post the person you replied to was talking about.
You’re not seeing it. Everyone who dogpiled the Paint.NET on Wine guy also thought they were doing legitimate mocking of a guy who said the wrong thing in a public square. The people who didn’t like AI thought it was valid to create a harassment campaign against him for using AI as part of his process. The people who thought all things Microsoft must be opposed thought it was valid to create a harassment campaign for making a Microsoft product work in more places.
Everyone in each of these campaigns thought their crusade was valid and the victim brought it upon themself. That you can see it being invalid in some cases is getting close to realizing why it’s a problem. Not everyone agrees on what’s right or wrong, but these public shaming campaigns serve to try to force everyone who disagrees out of the platform to strengthen the echo chamber.
You’re already noticing that you’re outside of the acceptable echo chamber thoughts because you don’t understand why the Paint.NET project would attract harassment. If you supported that guy and your post got traction, you too could get dogpiled. Do you think you would have said anything “outrageous” in the public square by questioning why anyone would criticize that guy?
Do you?
For example, if 500+ people replied to my comment here with why I'm wrong, I don't see how I'm some victim. People have their right to voice their opinions. I'd just ignore replies to that comment when I'm tired of engaging.
> Do you?
Being pedantic about the word to describe it isn't useful.
I don't care what word you use to describe the behavior. The behavior is common, it makes the site less pleasant, it drives away users I want to follow, and it's bad enough that Blue Sky is taking official steps to counter it.
Call it whatever you want, I don't care. Doesn't change anything about the issue.
That's how the mob moves.
Consider two ways of responding to someone saying something you don't like.
1) You post a reasoned critique of what they said. People who agree with you repost your critique so that a lot of people read it. Your purpose and effect is to convince people that they're wrong rather than punish them for disagreeing with you.
2) You accuse the other person of being an evil villain/pedo/nazi/terrorist. No reasoning is provided because their guilt is self-evident from the fact that you're pointing at them in an accusatory manner while wearing your tribe's official colors. The others are expected to not only do the same but also cut ties with them and try to have them harassed/fired/arrested/assaulted. Anyone who tries to rise to their defense is subjected to the same treatment.
The second one is just bullies using tribal loyalty as a pretext to rationalize their vacuous hostility.
But generally these things cluster very strongly around specific people.
Alas Journalists I think are high value targets. Ideally they'd use tools like blocklists to help each other defend against dog piling. Ideally we'd have more automated response systems to detect and manage problems, which we could build, because of how Bluesky data is (so far, "spaces" incoming which change the gane) all public data. Blocking posts etc. The ability to handle this problems is much higher on Bluesky than elsewhere.
This can happen on Bluesky. It sucks. But for most people it's not an issue at all. It does unfortunately drive off some higher profile people though.
HN sure seems desperate to believe BlueSky is the bad spot. I suspect other networks too have metrically built up this defense systems for themselves, to justify their continued use. x spectacle of posts to sing the propaganda song that this is the bad place over here, it's too left, it's too woke, it's too activist, it's too digpiley. It seems unmoored, completely unhinged to me.
It's intrinsic to the medium. The Twitter-like format is inherently toxic and irredeemable. It can't be fixed.
The microblogging format with likes and reposts selects for short highly viral stuff that pokes at the brain stem. Rage bait, trolling, lynch mobs, and stupid brain rot stuff are all ideal forms of content for this medium. Nuanced and genuinely insightful ideas are too long.
I think short form content in general is bad. Short form video seems to be less actively toxic but more brainless and attention-destroying. Short form content is the refined sugar (or in some cases the crack or the fentanyl) of discourse.
Reddit-style sites (like this one) are better but still suffer from these problems. HN avoids the worst of it by having a culture and mod policy of downvoting trolling and low-effort crap.
I often think back to this early networked communication as stark contrast to the ease and rapidity we communicate today and how that same easy and rapidity has driven the quality into the ground.
I was active on Reddit up to 2018 or so, and at that point it was already sliding full speed towards the cesspit it is today. Public votes destroy dissenting views, and moderators treat the site as their personal fiefdom. There aren't a lot of danish communities left on the internet, but r/denmark was getting unbearable because of constant tone policing, finger wagging and micro management by the mods. That, and constant low effort meme spam. And that subreddit was far from being the worst case.
I miss the dk.* Usenet days.
Bluesky was the refuge for Blue MAGA after Elon came out for Trump. That group (myself included at the time), comprised the majority of the user base and growth. Most have since returned to X, I stopped using Big Social media altogether. Bluesky leadership had a number of fumbles along the way that I suspects puts them post peak forever.
I'm not defending the dogpiling behaviour or even anti-AI sentiments in general. However, no one is entitled to saying things to people who don't want to hear it and receive only positive feedback for it. Sometimes even if you're excited about a thing, you have to keep it to yourself until you're in a room with others who would actually share your excitement. AKA maybe bsky isn't the place for him to share that excitement, and IMO that's neither good nor bad, but it's important to know that when you're cultivated a large-ish audience.
On Twitter, you can't get away from some random offensive racism, e.g. against Indian students at football games, or whatever the 2 minutes hate is ranting about on a certain day. In BlueSky, I get all signal and pretty much zero noise.
BlueSky also has far better tools for stopping dogpiling than Twitter, by stopping the quote-tweet phenomenon. All around a much much healthier place if one chooses the healthy direction.
IDF detained the Americans but let him go because he's a public figure. The rabbis are still detained. Go figure.
Also a reminder that Mastodon isn't one place. It's a network of instances. Bluesky is one and only one.
You go and open an account and post anything even remotely positive about LLMs and AI. You'll also get a harassment campaign against you as well.
Doesn't matter if you're localLLM, green energy, etc. AI = evil and there is no middle ground.
And Mastodon is a federation of disparate servers. But they are by and large extraordinarily ai-hostile nearly everywhere.
Reach the people, but make clear that there is an authoritative source that is ~not~ less rented.
Can you recall any other instance where FoxNews boycotted the White House press pool in support of left wing media outlets?
That is unprecedented as far as I know. What did Trump do that inspired FoxNews to make this choice?
I do agree there is a ton of hyperbolics in NoKings / Indivisible / the left. I work within these organizations, enduring it, to temper their messages and opinions. Minds are moved in real life while biases are reinforced online. It's hard to forget there is another human with different experiences when you sit face to face.
Occupy Oligarchy, we are the 99%
it's more important than you make it seem.
* Obama extensively used the Espionage Act to uncover government sources used by the press and also against the press directly
* Obama secretly subpoenaed the phone calls of AP reporters
* Obama didn't allow or severely restricted photojournalists
I don't think that it is good to ban the media from the White House, and I do think the much of the criticism is fair, but to then claim that this is undemocratic is wrong.
Occupy Oligarchy, we are the 99%
What, specifically, do you think this means? Do you think they're trying to install a new government without a vote?
Or is "disregard democracy" just word salad nonsense that you're repeating for some reason?
I am very concerned with much of the rhetoric on the left. I used to be more concerned with the right.
The difference to me today is I see intentional cruelty to our fellow humans by those currently in power. Especially from the likes of Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller.
Just that alone is enough I think.
But you can also see his disgust to western democracies, and his fascination with autocracies, the vast majority of them are extremely incompetent - thank God for that at least.
Living ex-presidents were not fair game until the partisan late 1990s. It was still done primarily as a posthumous tribute. Naming taxpayer-funded facilities for a sitting president who hopes to find a way to run again was not done under Franklin Roosevelt and has always remained drastically outside of the Overton Window. While in office, Trump has now directed attention to making the following public items promote his personal brand, name, image or likeness:
US Passports, US entry visas, US Naval class of vessels, US Institute of Peace federal building, National Park entry passes, and currency struck by the US Mint;
Moreover, presidential staff have confirmed that the president has asked for New York Penn Station to be renamed for himself before he would agree to release congressionally approved federal funds for its improvement. He also explored having Washington Dulles International Airport renamed for him; since then, his supporters have renamed Palm Beach International Airport (IATA PBI) for him and changed the IATA designation to DJT.
The president recently diverted over $22MM from Homeland Security and Border Protection to pay for television commercials featuring himself talking about causes dear to himself. I have not tracked whether this spending went to all major broadcast networks or was directed to be spent at networks that the president considered deserved the tax money. The third commercial "was virtually identical to an ad for Trump's Republican reelection campaign in 2024 and showed him walking down a hallway as his voice can be heard warning of a 'final battle' against 'globalists' and 'warmongers'." The president has reportedly agreed not to continue spending government money on this series but refuses to reimburse taxpayers the $22MM.
In 1926, coinage was struck with the image of the sitting president, in honor of the nation's 150th anniversary. It turns out that Trump on coins for the 250th anniversary has precedent.
The rest of it... yeah. Appalling, especially when you put it all together like that.
Populism and nationalism were on the rise, much like today. Hopefully we reflect on history and don't do another world war.
I do agree that the ads should be criticized, but there is precedent for previous presidents having done something similar, not that it makes it above scrutiny but rather not so bad.
The problem many Americans have is that these are the top priorities of the president. Even the Iran war was more about him and his legacy, to "be the guy" who ended it, not understanding Iran's ability to inflict damage on allies and close the straight, because Trump removed many of the people who have been analyzing this for decades. Perhaps there were good reasons prior presidents have not decided to do this.
Then he turns around and does deals with Putin while blaming Zelensky for diesel prices... it's all so shameless, it should be shameful.
If you listen to oval office or state room events in full, you will hear him forget what he is talking about and go to his standard ballroom, arches, name on this or that. He's more focused on himself than anyone else.
So you want constant war in Ukraine? What did Obama do when Russia took Crimea? What did Biden do during the Russia-Ukraine war that improved the situation?
He’s a narcissist, but so are all of them but Trump is probably more tactless about it than most.
That is not why Trump started his own forever war. In fact he told the Iranian "help is on the way" and then never showed.
https://nypost.com/2026/01/13/us-news/trump-tells-iranians-k...
He went to war for his legacy and miscalculated badly, because the people who understand the region and the IRGC were fired or pushed out. He was sending Witkoff and Kushner (real estate guys) to negotiate nuclear topics, alone, without experts in nuclear science or Iran / IRGC.
My expectation is they do to Trump what they did to Carter.
You're joking right? In just the past 48 hours he attempted to remove over 20,000 people from the voter rolls. A preliminary check of the data revealed that more than half of these people were born in the U.S. and thus were automatically entitled to vote.
Last week he attempted to denaturalize a sitting U.S. legislator based on supposed irregularities in her immigration paperwork from when she was a child...even though the paperwork had been reviewed without issue by the federal government when it was first submitted and again to confirm her eligibility for office at the start of her first term (which began during Trump's first term).
He has openly mused about using the Secret Service to assassinate people he doesn't like. For the past 2 years, he has been threatening to jail and murder his opponents, and ordered his DOJ to prosecute his opponents for made-up crimes.
Ilhan Omar certainly seems to have very concerning immigration records and given that a judge has signed the search warrant.
I think you have gone into conspiracy theory territory that I’m not familiar with.
Ilhan Omar’s alleged corruption and immigration fraud and the rampant fraud in Minnesota are good examples where the left leaning media has ignored but others have not.
It would be great if the "other elected officials" part turns out to be true, but my in my experience I don't see that happening. Have there been any policy proposals out of No Kings that would create better oversight and accountability?
One of the good ideas are expanding ranked choice voting.
One of the bad ideas is justifying gerrymandering because the other side is doing it too.
Roughly only 10% of House seats are actually competitive. This is a problem that needs fixing.
"NoKings" is one identity for the resistance to autocratic tendencies and the backslide of democracy seen globally. We does not need to be so literal, step back to see the full picture.
In some cases Presidents have issued orders that exceeded their legal authority. The effects of those are eventually blocked by the judicial system, although that necessarily takes some time.
Chucky Cheese specializes in this /s !/s
ICE refusing to make officers available to law enforcement for investigation of issues.
A lot more happening than "making executive orders", though kudos to Trump for trying to sign executive orders that even his own DOJ are not just illegal, but unconstitutional.
The advent of the computer changed how automation impacted society. We (majority of HN audience) benefitted immensely, rising in wealth and social acclaim, while at the same time failing to create new tasks for regular people, who's jobs we replaced with technology.
Let's see if the will of the people is honored, or if the king steps in too.
Plus, protests can influence other people in government, outside of elections.
why tho? it's No King_s_
you can have one
Trump acts like a king, even if he was elected. He gets tributes and requires deference, clearly visible from the foreign and corporate donations, and behavior of the Republican Party. Or take the "super intelligence" thing, him dictating what a technology shall be called, lest you become an ENEMY OF AMERICA. Or the repeated attempts to silence the media. If we consider the Kennedy Center you brought up, Trump's name was on there, then removed by court order. His response was to close it in spite. The Kennedy Center remains closed to this day, until he gets his way.
Trump has tried to violate most of the Bill of Rights. There are reasons people see every day for why NoKings sticks and resonates.
I do agree NoKings (and broadly the far left) have really bad messaging, a product of echo chambers (imo). I suspect the Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from the midterms... sigh.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/the-slopagan...
Saw this super interesting interview the other day. The Students - What the Greeks would call our government.
I do believe you read a blog post where someone told you there were passages which "describe Trump to a T".
This one, probably: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/how-hamilton-warned-in-the...
I suspect you did a quick search to find something you thought would back up this projection
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2SD8nzsQzIHnOi2zSTwP... (readings)
Since I write almost zero code these days, I have far more time for reading and writing human.
But what is that have to do with No Kings being a protest against the president acting like a tyrant?
Several of the colonies had general property taxes on land, buildings, and physical property which continue today. Given that "capital" was not a thing back then and wouldn't be for almost 200 years, these property taxes were in effect wealth taxes.
The point of the protest is to prevent him from making himself a king.
> And couldn't even change the name of the art center, so not that powerful.
This is really weak cherry picking. He has successfully removed medical care from millions of Americans, started foreign wars of aggression, destabilised several countries, probably tanked US international reputation for a generation... he is incredibly powerful.
Like first of all I would call a person who tries to pass the checks and balances of a democracy, even if they fail, the target of the ideals or “no kings”
And while we can disagree with the extent to which any one act or bribe elevates someone to dictator, and whether or not all the accusations are true, can you not understand why someone caught up in the narrative ecosystem happening over the past few years may develop the perspective that Trump is trying to consolidate power?
Also “no folks who incrementally Test the limits of power and fail” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Its incredibly frustrating to talk to people that take the position of "Well eventually they gave up after pressure from the courts and legislature, so no harm no foul." There's a difference between doing things that have a reasonable legal basis that the courts disagree with and what much of this administration was doing -- sometimes fragrantly ignoring court orders until D politicians got involved to pressure compliance.
Using the 2020 coup attempt as an example, yes, the courts shot down his attempts. The issue is that *he even tried* -- the attempt was transparently not good-faith concern about election integrity.
But Trump disavowed it, said that's not what he was running on. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/trump-project...
Today though, this plan to destroy the government is in full effect. It's had remarkable success with the quadfecta of GOapnhouse & Senate doing nothing, allowing the president to seize the power of the purse, enact recisions, whatever. And the partisan hack joke of Florida election recount denier "justices" enabling him at every turn, using shadow docket rulings at an unheard of rate to step in to deny the regular courts their normal motion of things, to forward dear leader along. Executive power we have no belief they will continue to espouse when it's a Democrat in a hopefully less gilded tacky ass White House. Project 2025's progress undoing America & governance has been a horror. https://www.project2025.observer/en
If you can't separate your personal opinion from a factual statement like this, you're not someone worth listening to.
Russ Vought and Stephen Miller are notable examples.
These people are not hiding this fact, they ar rather proud and loud about it. What they have also done is convince a number of people to go out and disavow the connection on their behalf.
You said it was "terrifying to America" and "No one wanted it".
That's your opinion. It's your opinion that you stated as a fact. I think a lot of people wanted it. I personally know many people who were excited about it and wanted it. It may be terrifying to leftists, but certainly not to America as a whole.
You might slow down and stop reacting emotionally. I'm not the same person.
> not to America as a whole
Most Americans now favor changes to the government which would require constitutional changes. They may not all use the same words, but there is a significant consensus things are very broken.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/07/28/most-amer...
I agree with your original statement. Some people did want this. Some small percent. Who are traitors to America, who want to destroy it. I don't think those people deserve anything but antipathy and to be persecuted as traitors.
Before I get hated out of existence, please note that I don't like either party or political tactics in general because they've devolved into politically commercialized populism without any empathy or critical thought. Just as an example, deportations under Trump are roughly on trend with Obama, Trump targeting activities are similar to Obama targeting conservative groups with the IRS, Obama lied in the SoTU about the gender wage gap, Obama was hard on journalists (highest prosecutions?) Like Trump has been, and Obama ignored court orders such as issuing immigration permits in violations of a order similar to Trump ignoring orders. I could sit here and hope that any of these abuses results in better oversight, but that would be naive based on the history.
Edit: if you're going to disagree, at least contribute to the discussion.
Obama lied in the SoTU. Um, OK? I mean, we should expect better than that, but are you seriously saying that Obama lied as much as Trump does?
For me personally, the single biggest thing was January 6, the whole "alternate electors" thing, and Trump pressuring Pence to accept the alternate (fake) ones. That was a full-blown attempt to steal an election that he lost. That I do not forget and do not forgive. And if you can show me something Obama did that's on that scale, well, I'll be surprised.
Is there good data for that or is it observation bias?
I'm not saying scale is the same. I'm saying that these abuses will continue to happen without accountability. The scale argument is not an excuse, merely a manifestation of cognitive dissonance.
Plenty of lies and corruption on any president if you care to look. https://lists.grabien.com/list/complete-guide-scandals-obama...
In fact there is, these numbers are published by the government. Trump has still not averaged what Obama did, nor topped the the greatest numbers of all time, so Obama is still greater than Trump, much to Midas's chagrin I suppose, given how much Trump talks about Obama, like Obama lives rent free in Trump's head. /s !/s
One example: https://latinonewsnetwork.com/community/who-deported-more-mi...
A bunch of European countries (including all of Scandinavia) are constitutional monarchies, and they don't devolve into the sort of anti-democratic behaviour we're all seeing from Trump. As a UK resident, I would prefer if the UK were a republic on general principle, but I fail to see the monarchy causing any real large-scale harm to society (individuals like Andrew notwithstanding).
The real point they should be making is "no more despots". Some despots are kings, but some are styled presidents, such as Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un.
Also, legitimately elected or appointed officials become despots all the time. Hitler had a plurality (but not outright majority) of votes in 1932. Salazar was an MP and minister of finance, and actually legitimately tried to resign from that role several times over many years before he was eventually nominated to the role of prime minister. Ferdinand Marcos won the Philippine presidential election in 1965 with some amount of intimidation, and the Philippines only formally became a military dictatorship under his rule in 1971.
In many ways, that's the scariest scenario — people who legitimately get elected to power, and then use that power to solidify their illegitimate rule.
I'm not a UK resident [obviously] but I thought the parliament was explicitly superior to the monarchy? Isn't the monarchy essentially cultural theater at this point, for centuries now? The moment the king causes a crisis by stepping out of his very narrow lane, one Act of Parliament could make the monarchy a memory, right? I suppose he could refuse ascent then, and that would be a legitimate constitutional crisis.
I would argue that, even though it's not my preference, there is real political value in the monarchy today still. E.g. Charles's speech to Congress[0] has a certain weight to it that wouldn't be there if Charles were an elected leader instead of a monarch.
> except they don't like the guy's policies and conduct.
That too, but his conduct rises above "policies I don't like"; he has shown direct contempt for the other branches of our government. For example, his administration has essentially dismantled or destroyed various functions in violation of the Constitution: take USAID as an example here: USAID is an agency created de jure by Congress, yet it has been de facto dissolved by the administration. We all learned, I think, in grade school, that the job of the executive is to implement the laws passed by Congress. From an article at the time about it:
> “The President does not have constitutional authority to ignore a statute that establishes a department or agency,” says Saikrishna Prakash, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
He holds the judicial branch in contempt too: quite literally any time any judge does anything he disagrees with, the judge is blasted as "left-wing radical", even and including cases where the judge was a GOP-appointee. Further examples include ignoring judicial orders and depriving people of access to the courts by physical force (see the many cases of the administration's removal of people from the country; to put it one way: "For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury", or "The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene" — Justice Sotomayor, joined by Kagan & Jackson.)
I spread the words of Michael Sandel to hundreds of left wing people, so they might come back towards the center. That they might acknowledge their complicity in creating the situation we find ourselves in. The constituents of NoKings is far more diverse than you know. Try joining us next time to see with your own eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp5qsEuUOWo
> making yourself feel morally superior to others
One might wonder if your comment here falls into this category.
There are a lot of heated comments here today, we all need to chill a bit. Why did you choose the words you did in your first reply to me?
There's no reason why Emperor Zuck's court can't be disrupted by some monkey king yet to appear.
We're at the dawn of the Third Age of the Internet.
Someone has to be the Frodo to take Facebook & Twitter's rings into Mount MySpace and melt them down into the same puddle of lava as the legacy media that came before them :)
Which is to say that it matters very much? The dollar only has value because people say so as well.
I thought it was mostly because the IRS only takes dollars, and they have guns [metaphorically].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
Although it didn't aim to replace "traditional" social media, it became enough of a threat to US homogeneity.
Even though TikTok doesn't even try to improve its messaging and friend UX etc, a lot of young people in Asia (outside China) use it as their primary platform.
I don’t use WhatsApp, which just means I’m not on the group chat. Nobody uses my preferred option because nobody but me is on it, which means not much actual chatting is happening.