The News
Some journalists recently defected from X, whose owner is openly hostile to the profession, to Threads, which is more passively hostile. Many, including Jesse Singal, then moved over to Bluesky, which promptly entered a debate over whether to ban him. Singal has spent years in heated arguments over trans kids, and his views, agree or disagree, are well within the mainstream of US and UK politics. (A Politico writer was also briefly banned after taking a wave of criticism for saying, “Leaving X because you don’t like Elon is the kind of purity politics that landed Democrats in this mess to begin with.”)
Most of the calls for a ban seem to come from non-journalists on the platform, though the tone is captured in a bizarre time capsule of a TechCrunch piece, which ignores both the details of the Singal story and the possibility of disagreement. Sample: “People are demanding that Bluesky take a stand: It’s either a place that promises it won’t host bad actors, or it’s a place that promises not to inflate the reach of bad actors thanks to its various moderation tools. It cannot be both.”
Ben’s view
Journalism is a naturally unlikable profession, at its best telling people things they don’t want to hear and exposing them to other people’s points of view. So it seems appropriate, and maybe even for the best, that at least some of us will be unwelcome on basically any social platform.