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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

The problem is big enough that BlueSky is stepping up to take action against 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...

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> I don't know how it came to be like that.

The earliest bluesky users tended to be the most toxic users of old Twitter, it's not too surprising

People casting such mean allegations ought look in the mirror.

Paconbork, I see no sign of this. You are being ridiculous. And this network doesn't deserve any of this slander.

A lot of the dogpiling is from people who come out and say some dumb shit and demand respect. When they get ridicule for their ridiculous take, they play the victim.

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.

> A lot of the dogpiling is from people who come out and say some dumb shit and demand respect. When they get ridicule for their ridiculous take, they play the victim.

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...

> A lot of the dogpiling is from people who come out and say some dumb shit and demand respect. When they get ridicule for their ridiculous take, they play the victim.

Literally victim blaming.

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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.

> 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?

I don't think people responding independently to something you post online is harassment.

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.

> I don't think people responding independently to something you post online is harassment.

> 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.

The GP seems to sympathize with the dogpile so they can't (or won't) see what you see.

That's how the mob moves.

On Bluesky even the most centrist, moderate views are often dogpiled as "something outrageous". I got dragged into a flame war because I posted something to the effect of "I dont think communism would magically solve all our current problems"

> If you say something outrageous in the 'public square' and you get mocked for it by the public, how are you a victim?

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.

2) Clause B) That person is actually a nazi or pedo or terrorist. What is wrong in pointing this out?

In 99.99% of the cases the accusation is leveled, they're not, and in the remaining ~0% of cases it's still better to refute their argument than to call them names.

I'm talking about the out-of-touch article'd class of reporters who regularly get dragged over their tone deaf reporting but sure.

*Some of the most toxic users, maybe (I have no clue, since I barely used it ever), but there are enough left on Twitter for sure.

It was really jut the people least agreeable to Twitter's new ownership. Whether you view like or dislike of Elon as toxic is more down to personal taste. I find the culture there perfectly pleasant.

Most toxic twitter users stayed on twitter.

> I don't know how it came to be like that.

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 am reminded about the effort and patience it required to have long-form conversations on fidonet with people 2-3 states away due to the bbs hop delay. While the topics weren't necessarily particularly serious, the effort required to have any communication at all meant both sides spent time and effort.

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 think one reason why HN is somewhat saner, is that computer nerds are one of the few demographics today who still largely post from a real computer and keyboard. Smartphones with their small screens and keyboards discourage longform text no matter how much people claim to be proficient writers on them, but people on HN don't have the same obstacle to typing a couple of substantial paragraphs with actual depth and nuance.

No public votes, and mods that aren't insane is what keeps HN quality reasonable.

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.

bsky is primarily seeded with a culturally anti-AI, human-centric artist (illustrators, gamedevs, hobby coders, writers) core — these are the first folks who wanted to leave twitter/X but continue to share their art. Rick's og dogpiled post is now deleted so I don't know the exact drama, but I'd bet good money that he was either introducing AI features to paint.net, or trying to ship some vibecoded stuff no one asked for that is obviously vibecoded, and advertising them to the core hater-group as something they would be excited about.

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.

It would be interesting to figure out if these that do the dogpiling are real users or not. It does not reflect my experience on BlueSky. But I am just a single datapoint.

> It's deeply baked into the BlueSky culture and I don't know how it came to be like that.

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 believe you misspelled 'Digg culture', sir.

Someone dubbed "the running of Will Stancil" which I think describes a particular phenomenon of anti-engagement. I think there are some of anti- derangements about.

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.

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