Bluesky, A Love-Hate Relationship

I suppose I really don't have a right to complain about when social media platforms ban me. It's not like it's a human right to make posts on the internet, and there are people out there who have less and don't complain, but I still have the right to be upset about discrimination like this.

I thought the third time was the charm; this account lasted a while, but eventually it came to an end, as did the last two @allykotetsu.coms. I don't even know why they banned me, I rarely MAPposted, never advocated for anything illegal, never did or talked about illegal stuff, and mostly just posted random leftist theory. At that point the only thing that makes sense is ban evasion, which is bullshit. Like what, I break a rule once and then I'm never allowed to use your website ever again?

My apologies if I sound a bit irked, but I do not like this happening to me. I've seen way too many people get banned, such as ZeebDemon and Ezra, and never get justice. 

Banning is a slippery slope, because once you let yourself justify one group getting banned, such as actual predators, then that can expand to other people such as us, and then someday that'll go even further. What do mainline queer people think they're supporting when they report MAPs? Someday when being queer is made illegal, they'll get it too, and then they'll be the ones complaining about getting banned. Surely they should see that we shouldn't get banned either.

Social media companies will never be nice to us, and this is why I think having an offline presence is so important. We can only reach so many people if we make social media accounts that get banned over and over again, but in real life? They can't ban us. Let them try.

I do plan on making a new account, but I am getting quite annoyed with this. I think I will reinstate my ActivityPub (Mastodon) presence soon, to have a microblog account that can't get banned. Technically bsky didn't even ban me; I run my own PDS and own my data. They just made it so I can't interact with their website. I can't even use a third-party client, because those rely on the proprietary bsky.social backend! 

Bsky pretends that it's an "open network" where you "own your data", and it is! But it's also nothing more. What's the point in owning your data if there's still a single point where one company can decide what's allowed and what isn't? What's the point of an open network if having a larger part of that network is prohibitive for people who aren't large companies like the Bluesky PBC? ActivityPub is only better in some regards, but I think that's why it's important. In a federated universe it's impossible for one protocol to be objectively better than another, so it's good to diversify and use multiple.

I should probably not let this rant go on too long. It's just annoying how this happens over and over again. At least this blog is in a better state than it was before and it's easier for me to notify you all when this sort of thing happens. I'll probably make another announcement once I'm back on bsky and Mastodon. The latter might take a bit to get fully set up. 

Thanks for reading! <3