On ICE, Verification, and Presence As Harm

[Laurens Hof at Connected Places]

This post by Laurens Hof speaks to a bunch of issues at the intersection of our current moment in history (I haven’t yet found the words to refer to it that don’t sound like a euphemism) and the open social web.

ICE joined Bluesky as part of a wave of Trump Administration accounts that were created last November, as an apparent intimidation tactic against a network that was perceived to be largely left-wing. It never posted and the account seemed abandoned, but Bluesky officially verified it this week. Subsequently, it made a post to further its narrative about Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old whose local public schools superintendent says was used by ICE as bait.

As Laurens points out, what happened next on the two main pillars of the open social web was interesting:

“The decision by Bluesky PBC to verify the ICE account, two months after registration and without the account being active, lead to quite different responses for the fediverse and for the ATmosphere. On the fediverse, the choice by Bluesky PBC to lend legitimacy to ICE was a final nail in the coffin, with loud declarations to disconnect from Bluesky and block the bridge between these two networking protocols. Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko was the most notable account, who publicly declared to disconnect from the bridge.

Within the ATmosphere, the response focused on two parts, both a frustration with Bluesky PBC verifying the ICE account, as well as a call to block the account en-masse, which led to the ICE account quickly becoming one of the most-blocked accounts on the network.”

For Mastodon, this is in some ways an endorsement of the fediverse model. Both communities and individuals can choose not to connect with other communities and accounts that they find harmful. This is in contrast with the AT Protocol model, which is not made of archipelagos of smaller communities; it’s a wide town square at scale, much like Twitter was.

For Bluesky, this is indicative of the tension between being an open protocol and a prominent consumer social media platform. On one hand, the protocol allows anyone to be a verifier: in this model, the government itself could have verified the ICE account, and any client that trusts the government to verify would have displayed a badge. This arrangement would avoid the appearance of Bluesky endorsing ICE. On the other hand, Bluesky the platform has its own verification service, because you need that on a commercial social network to prevent imposters and other abuse.

The timeline between verification and ICE’s first post is a little odd. But it’s also true that ICE is a government agency. If ICE is going to be on the platform to begin with, sticking a badge on its account to ensure everyone knows that, yes, this is the real ICE, is not a bad idea.

I’m going to pause here and state, for the record, that not only am I not a fan of ICE, I believe they are committing crimes and following a terrifyingly fascist playbook. People are being both kidnapped and murdered on the streets.

That’s important context for this next discussion:

“Bluesky’s Community Guidelines lists the two major principles as ‘Safety First’ and ‘Respect Others’. It is somewhat unclear how the presence of a fascist police force that is actively working to instigate civil war aligns with the principles of safety and respect that Bluesky supposedly champions.

When it comes to actual rules in the guidelines, it is all about user behaviour and the content on Bluesky. The problem is that it is the presence of ICE itself that is already causing the harm. The intimidation of ‘we are here, you cannot escape us’ is the point, and the accounts by the regime are deliberately trying to provoke an outrage.”

These things are true, in my mind. But it’s also really complicated.

If you were Bluesky, what would you do? Which precedent would you set?

Imagine if it were to ban ICE on the grounds that it is causing harm both in the world and through its presence on the platform. (It is causing harm.) ICE remains a government agency, and doing so would therefore be a political act. Its actions are claimed to be legal by the government. Banning it could set a precedent that Bluesky can ban accounts whose politics it disagrees with. At the very least, it would be contentious and cement its reputation as a left-wing network.

If it doesn’t ban ICE, we get the situation we have today. People are upset that ICE has a presence on the network. Some users on Mastodon, which is largely seen as a place for people to connect safely in smaller groups, disconnect from the Bluesky bridge. Some users on Bluesky are upset that it appears to be endorsing ICE by verifying the account; it becomes one of the most-blocked accounts within a matter of hours. And then ICE uses it to spread its message. Not banning it could be seen as an endorsement, or as Bluesky not taking what ICE is doing and represents seriously enough. That’s particularly true when banning the account would only ban them on the official Bluesky apps, not on the AT Protocol ecosystem as a whole.

It’s not a problem that Bluesky-the-protocol would have, but the fact is that it’s primarily a consumer platform. And if any consumer social platform makes trust and safety rulings that are, in effect, arbitrary, it sets a precedent that it can turf people off its platform on a whim, which undermines both trust and safety.

But it’s also extremely hard, because ICE is terrifying, they are kidnapping and killing people on the streets, and most people don’t want them in their space. They likely moved to Bluesky to get away from the hard right wing discourse happening over on X/Twitter; the community self-selected largely based on that fact, which made it feel safer, but the platform itself doesn’t necessarily share those values.

A social media app that aims to be town square is different to a social networking app that aims to provide a smaller, safe community. The latter has a far easier time banning accounts from entities like ICE, because it can set a tighter set of community rules. So one lesson is perhaps that we need — or at least, many people need — a pluralistic open social web, where we can choose communities based on our values. That’s closer to the fediverse than to the ATmosphere model: the fediverse is smaller communities, while the social media ecosystem being built on AT Protocol is closer to an open version of Twitter.

Bluesky is in a tough position. It’s building an open protocol but most of the users of its flagship app don’t give two hoots about that. They’re looking for a safe place to discuss and share, and Bluesky’s core value for them is that it’s not X/Twitter and doesn’t have the toxicity of that network. It’s considered to be easier to use than Mastodon because there’s one place to sign up and one official app. AT Protocol wouldn’t be as successful as it’s becoming without that dynamic. So it has to continue to foster that community while also maintaining its protocol, and it can’t fork itself to create multiple app experiences for different audiences. It also can’t indicate that its flagship app is just for people who hate ICE.

My conclusion is that Bluesky is doing the only thing it can — and this is the only path that leads to AT Protocol becoming a successful open social web protocol. You need to have a vibrant community, and most people who join one don’t care about the underlying technology. There’s a world, later on, where other providers create viable alternative microblogging experiences with different takes on trust and safety — which is beginning to happen with Blacksky and Eurosky — but the ecosystem is not there yet. Protocol success and community safety have conflicting requirements, and Bluesky has to continue navigating that ambiguity for now; later on it may be able to focus on the protocol.

Meanwhile, ICE is doing a lot of harm, and its presence may be a real risk to many of Bluesky’s users. They may find that the fediverse, after all, is a better place for them to call home.

[Link]