1. "Censored" by whom, and for whom?
2. "Censored" for which "right of center" views?
P.S. I should also mention that I can see the posts on that account, even if they all have flags for intolerance by the default moderation service (a service you can opt out of by the way).
From what I see, Bsky is a single instance of one of the most politically aligned social media in existence; in practice, you can achieve that with any proprietary implementation, you don't need ATProto. I honestly thought that the protocol was engineered to prevent an echo chamber, but in reality it powers an enormous standalone echo chamber that is not moving anywhere, so I was wondering what's the difference.
The protocol has a notion of moderation accounts, sometimes called "labelers" because they can apply labels to your account. Users generally [1] subscribe to the moderation that they want to see. They can then set those labels to make the application to "show", "warn" (collapse by default, click to expand), or "hide" based on the labels.
1: People using the bluesky app cannot unsubscribe from the bluesky moderation service, but that is a policy choice of the bluesky app, not a protocol level choice, other clients can do as they choose.
If you register a Bluesky account from Germany, your account is assigned the German moderation labeler with no option to opt out. As soon as I noticed, I created a new account using a US IP address. This fixed it.
While signing up for moderation sounds very attractive to me, Bluesky's whole layered moderation approach seems designed to maximize algorithmic censorship.
Compare that to, for example, a mastodon instance (or a forum like HN) where you participate because you align with the general moderation approach cultivated by and within the community.
edit: I found the following write-up which mirrors my experience https://fediversereport.com/bluesky-censorship-and-country-b...
Bluesky moderators take down abusive and harmful posts. There is a daily uproar on the left about how they do this to "kiwifarms but leftishly" behavior under the guise of being "anti-trans". If right-wing centered posts are getting taken down, it is because they are abusive and harmful.
Bluesky popularized subscriber lists, like blocklists. A large portion of the network mass-mutes or mass-blocks anyone on the big right-wing block lists. This is user behavior, not the platform censoring right wing people.
(There are a few other far-right mastodon instances, but then there are pockets of the far-right on bsky, too)
When Bluesky was taking traction, the cultural expectation among its audience was already for the platform to heavily shape the narrative. Paradoxically, AFAIK the Bluesky devs themselves are pretty serious about it being an open standard, though I'm basing this on what I heard. So I mostly believe people that the echo chambering you mention is structured in a way that it's technically not centralized. Though in practice, it's way easier to amplify left wing messages on closed websites like YouTube, Facebook, X (I'm basing this on algorithmic recommendations I'm getting and experience of people I know) than the other way around on Bluesky. But this is just the weight distribution of the audience.
Even then non-left supervised Mastodon ecosystem is something of a deep cut. I mean you're right it exists and now I recall hearing about some drama years ago, but not a part of the front and center info about them, for any common person. So I'm not fully buying the contrast you're trying to build here.
Elon Musk took over Twitter and made it rabidly right-wing. As a result, a lot of left-wing people went to Blue Sky.
Social networks are just groups of people: if such a network starts with a core group that leans heavily on a particular end of the political spectrum, the network will also (even with zero bias from the network itself) lean that way.
Like if someone is talking about "white fragility" and being intolerant towards white people, or being xenophobic about American culture, would that be likely to result in them being flagged for intolerance also?
Asking because while I don't mind the concept, I find in practice most of the time platforms add these filters and rules as a way to enforce ideological consensus.
If I were truly able to decide what I see I would see every single post as a new user. Then I would have the optuon to opt in to lists, banning / hiding other users etc.
Instead, I'm forcefully opted-in to not seeing what someone else decided I shouldn't see from the start, and I must find the way to opt out.
It’s hardly any different than those placards they used to put over the swimsuit magazines in the checkout line at the grocery store. No one was stopping you from buying it and seeing all the titties you wanted.
Like, if you want to consume tedious transphobic ‘jokes’ on bsky, you can. Personally, I’m kind of bored of their one joke, and opt not to.
Given that Twitter has been taken over by a far-right lunatic, one might reasonably expect the alternatives to lean a bit left.
Bluesky came at the right moment to pick up lots of people fleeing Twitter after Musk's overbearing edgelord enshittification of Twitter.
Now, Bluesky's robust moderation tools allow users to subscribe to user-curated block lists. Users are empowered to decide they don't want to hear certain viewpoints. You don't want to see cat videos? Subscribe to a block list.
Right wing folks mostly don't care to try Bluesky because they have Twitter, but those that do try don't get much traction because no one sees their posts. Trolling and rage-baiting become unsatisfying when you're talking to yourself.