this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
582 points (89.2% liked)

Fediverse

39301 readers
96 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 211 points 1 week ago (2 children)

(Not American here)

While i agree fediverse is then solution and i don't use bluesky, i don't see the issue is recognizing ICE as verified.

After all ice is a government agency of the USA whether you like it or not, and should be verified if there is a procedure to do so.

No i don't like ice and i do not condone what they do, but that doesn't change the above statement.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 73 points 1 week ago (3 children)

You know that the problem isn’t that they’re verifying the gestapo, it’s that they’re platforming and subsequently legitimising them.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

Eh. I don't use bsky, and think most current ICE staff should be imprisoned for terrorism for the rest of their lives, but I don't want any communications services to decide which entities should and shouldn't be verified. That's how you end up with power-tripping mods, propaganda bubbles, and censorship (exactly what fascists are doing with X, fb, tiktok, etc).

The goal should be an open protocol where users/orgs can sign messages cryptographically (like PGP) and every other user can decide which users, feeds, or algos they subscribe to without censorship. Like, if I subscribe to my friends and family (trusted sources), or friends of friends, I don't want any form of moderation between them and me, but the freedom to sub to moderated topics is also necessary for public (untrusted sources) feeds/comms.

[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

On one hand I see your point. On t'other, we've tried complete neutrality and it failed, maybe it's time for a communications platform where we hold people to a standard?

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 9 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Wake up. Ice, being government, it's already legitimized enough in real life.

What difference would it make in the social media. Better if they are out in the open in social media instead, at least they get responsible for what they post, officially.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 week ago (11 children)

If ICE tried to verify their account on Lemmy it would be permabanned instantly

[–] photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 55 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The nature of FOSS allows anyone to use free software like Lemmy and Mastodon. ICE could therefore join by making their own instance or joining a friendly one but it'd be defederated by most others.

The great thing about fediverse is that everyone gets a voice and we can choose who to listen to.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Truth Social is running Mastodon under the hood. But nobody considers it a part of the fediverse, because even if it had federation turned on it would instantly be defederated by 99% of instances.

I'm sure there are nazi lemmy instances out there, but they are all defederated from the lemmyverse.

This is the correct approach, decentralized platforms are somehow doing a better job at this then the de-facto centralized bsky.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[–] rglullis@communick.news 83 points 1 week ago (16 children)

It's a good thing they get verified. It means they can not take back anything they post and they have to take accountability for the account.

Do you think it would be better if they didn't verify it and let them spread misinformation and propaganda with plausible deniability?

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 47 points 1 week ago

Yeah I really don't see why everyone is upset about this. Should be upset that ICE exists but not but they have an official bluesky account. This is basically the same as going "yep they're real".

This is just more weird Mastodon elitism.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 10 points 1 week ago

I look forward to them being confronted with views they can't just ask Elon to delete.

But, let's be real here, this is rage bait to track people using their first amendment rights in a way they don't love. BSKY doesn't need to give up anything on users. Users accessing BSKY ip addresses given up by their ISP will be more than enough for Palintir to find. A few links with trackers provide browser fingerprinting. Easy day for them.

Be careful, y'all.

[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 10 points 1 week ago

They completely deindexed Link (spacelawshitpost.me) for not showing appropriate reverence for Charlie Kirk after he died by pointing to their TOS policy on promoting violence, but an organisation that only exists to exert violence on non-white people gets a pass.

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 62 points 1 week ago (5 children)

So, trying to parse what's going on here.

Bluesky has verified that an account claiming to belong to the US government agency ICE really is controlled by that agency. Somehow that shows that Mastodon is better. Because Trump has his own Mastodon instance and doesn't need anyone to vouch for his goons?

Looking at the comments, maybe the issue is rather that the Bluesky company provides services to ICE. Tech companies should refuse service. Huh. I guess there is more diversity of opinion on Lemmy than I had thought, regarding the power of tech companies, democracy, and law.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 36 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Bluesky is a centralized platform and their mods don't ban Nazis.

Trump being able to clone Mastodon is not the same as letting Trump on Mastodon.social

[–] beerman595692@programming.dev 14 points 1 week ago

Every Mastodon instance can choose to defederate with truth social

BlueSky can choose to kick ICE off their platform

It's that simple

load more comments (12 replies)
[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It's just all emotion and no rational thought now. People just go into outrage mode when certain topics are mentioned.

Really it opens a channel to criticize ICE without needing to logon to X to do so. But that's bad because preventing communication is good?

Of course I doubt ICE will care about criticism directed towards their account on bluesky. But that means things said on the internet don't have much of an effect on things, which means it doesn't matter whether they're on bluesky (or any other forum).

Mostly it's about some weird belief by some about controlling what is being said on the internet gains power. You'd think the events that have happened would have proven this wrong, but still people continue to be upset about things being said on the internet and want some power over those things.

Really words on the internet don't matter as much as people think, and the idea of blocking unwanted information is annoying at best and can lead to ignorance. What matters is the horrible acts ICE is doing. We should want more light being shown on them, and welcome any potential channel of discussion.

Wanting to prevent discussion indicates you feel you're in the wrong. ICE is indicating they want discussion, while those that are outraged by ICE being on bluesky are indicating they don't want discussion on ICE. Why would anyone want to make is seem ICE is in the right while they're in the wrong? It's people not thinking and only reacting emotionally and handing ICE a W because they are raging instead of thinking.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] pirate2377@lemmy.zip 58 points 1 week ago (14 children)

Does a verification equate to an endorsement now? I'm strongly against ICE, but as long as ICE exists, then it makes sense to verify their official account. That's all verification is to me at least, just something to let you know it's the real _ account rather than an imposter.

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yes, I think it’s an especially good idea to verify them right now. I don’t want some imposter escalating a war.

Do I want them in my spaces? Fuck no. I would prefer to abolish ICE and arrest all those treasonous fuckers.

But, that’s the reality of the world right now. It’s important to know what is real and what isn’t.

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 45 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

You can verify yourself on Mastodon by including a piece of HTML code in your site's header.

Literally everyone can do that, even government agencies. I have it on my blog. What do we do then?

[–] teolan@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If ICE where to join a fediverse instance they would most likely get insta-banned or their instanced would be defederated from large portions of the fediverse very quick.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Syndication@lemmy.today 44 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Isn't the whole point of the verification checkmark is to make sure nobody impersonate well known people/organizations? I know Twitter eventually turned it into a whole cash grab subscription and ruined the concept, but on most other platforms it isn't treated like some premium subscription and is just a means of knowing who is who.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 week ago

Not a new debate at all… https://xkcd.com/1914/ and the context for that was https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-suspends-verifying-accounts-giving-154625015.html

I agree that if "verification" is going to be a thing, it should only mean the person or organization is who they claim to be, not imply endorsement of any of their activities.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Borger@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Not that big of a deal IMHO; it’s what verification is for, unlike X’s blue check model.

Obligatory fuck ICE.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (24 children)

Everyone responding here and confused why this matters seem not get the point. This post is just a warning that the types of people most of us don't want to associate with are now on that platform. The problem is not that they are verified, it's that they exist there at all.

Edit: some reasonable arguments have been made here for allowing these Nazis on Blue sky, which I originally thought was a bad idea, but maybe disallowing them won't actually solve anything and may exacerbate things. I don't know. I'll think about it some more.

load more comments (24 replies)
[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 week ago

Literally every post they make is going to have a thousand people telling them to go fuck themselves

[–] Minimac@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I deleted my account on BlueSky since last Sept. BlueSky is pretty trash

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›