Did they issue similar statements encouraging people not to celebrate the plan to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer or when someone threw a Molotov cocktail into Josh Shapiro's Passover celebrations? Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered earlier this year. Did we get a warning against glorifying their deaths?
Political violence is wrong regardless of who or what party is the target. It would be nice if BlueSky demonstrated they shared that belief.
I doubt there were many (if any) legitimate (as in, not bots or sockpuppets) Bluesky accounts celebrating either of those things, so I don't see why a warning would be necessary.
It sounds like your point is when left wing politicos are targeted and people celebrate it, those are obviously sock-puppets and bots. But when right wing celebrities (for lack of a better word) are targeted, it's the democratic base that comes out in force to celebrate.
So only right wing commentators who advocate political violence deserve protection?
[Also... Do you have any data supporting this hypothesis?]
I'm not who you are replying to but the demographics of bluesky is heavily left wing. The users are significantly less likely to make fun of people on their side being attacked.
Also, I've seen more comments in the last 24 hours saying Kirk deserved it than comments about Shapiro despite his attack happening months ago.
Lastly, I don't know much about Kirk, but I haven't seen a single comment he made where he advocating for political violence. Would you mind sharing a few?
With the trans one, it is not clear if he was advocating for violence or to put them in a mental institution. It sounds more likely he is advocating for violence, but you can't tell.
With the Pelosi one, I don't think he was condoning violence, but wanted him free so there could be an interview with the attacker. "Bail him out and then go ask him some questions". I think this is due to conspiratorial views that there was a fallout between gay lovers.
Neither of these are great, but it is not clear that either are actually advocating for violence.
Forcing someone who is not mentally ill into a mental institution is an act of violence. It’s not much different than throwing someone in jail even though they haven’t committed a crime.
Kirk: “Joe Biden is a bumbling dementia filled Alzheimer's corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.”
>> Lastly, I don't know much about Kirk, but I haven't seen a single comment he made where he advocating for political violence. Would you mind sharing a few?
That is not advocating for violence anymore than saying a rapist should be jailed or a murder should be given the death penalty. He is not calling for some sort of extra judaical punishment, but to work within the legal system and execute the law.
I'm just here to answer your direct question. As a general rule, I don't carry opinions on celebrities, Charlie Kirk included. So this is a relatively objective summary of what a critic of him who goes digging would be most likely to find. In my own personal opinion, you generally won't find "smoking guns" in terms of black-and-white obvious calls to violence from Charlie Kirk.
Critics would likely point to:
- Helping organize January 6th, claimed that "The team at Turning Point Action are honored to help make this happen, sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president."
- Glorifying Kyle Rittenhouse: “You’re a hero to millions, it’s an honor to be able to have you.” as well as supporting the man who attacked the Pelosi household.
- At an event in Nampa, Idaho (Oct 25, 2021), an audience member posed an alarming question during Kirk’s Q&A session. Kirk did denounce the idea of shooting political opponents – but notably, he did so on strategic grounds rather than moral ones. The man in the audience asserted “this is tyranny” and asked: “When do we get to use the guns?... How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” – referring to Democrats purportedly stealing elections. The crowd cheered and applauded this direct call for political violence. Kirk’s response has been controversial. Kirk immediately urged the audience not to resort to violence “because you’re playing into their plans, and they’re trying to make you do this”. He warned that any violent uprising would give the left a pretext to crack down: “justify a takeover of your freedoms… the likes of which we have never seen”.
- During a special livestream of The Charlie Kirk Show on March 30, 2023, Kirk vented fury at Democrats and the “tyrannical” Biden administration. He claimed those pursuing Trump were “acting like Stalinists” and warned “we must make them pay a price and a penalty”. Referring to Trump’s indictment, Kirk declared, “They crossed the Rubicon… They have declared quote-unquote the Roman Civil War.” Media Matters characterized Kirk’s post-indictment monologues as “noticeably more incendiary and alarmist” than usual, reaching a “dangerous new level” of extremist rhetoric. Calling political opponents “Stalinists” and alluding to civil war was seen by critics as flirting with incitement, even if Kirk was ostensibly talking about legal retaliation. Commentators warned that such language – framing routine legal processes as a literal war – could egg on unhinged followers to view political conflicts in apocalyptic, violent terms.
- On his March 31, 2023 broadcast, he told his audience: “We are living in an enemy-occupied country. They have taken over the government and we have to think as dissidents." Describing fellow Americans in power as an “enemy” occupier is the kind of dehumanizing language that often precedes or incites political violence. Critics noted that this phrasing encourages listeners to see themselves as insurgents in their own country.
Charlie Kirk didn't really issue direct/unambiguous calls for people to commit specific acts of political violence. But critics would generally agree that his body of work created a comprehensive "permission structure" for such actions. This was achieved through a three-pronged rhetorical strategy:
1) He provided an ideological justification for lethal force as a necessary and rational political tool, primarily through an absolutist and insurrectionist interpretation of the Second Amendment.
2) He engaged in the systematic dehumanization of his political, racial, and religious opponents, casting them not as fellow citizens with differing views but as existential threats to the nation, Christianity, and "Western civilization" itself. He described the political landscape as a "spiritual battle" and a "war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist". During an appearance with Donald Trump, he claimed that Democrats "stand for everything God hates". In another segment on his show, he asserted, "The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse". Also objectifying/dehumanizing along racial lines: "Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that's a fact". He publicly referred to George Floyd, a man whose murder by police sparked a global movement for racial justice, as a "scumbag". In a tweet shortly before his death, he wrote, "Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America". "We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately"
3) He offered explicit endorsements of specific violent acts and issued calls for extra-judicial retribution, which served to normalize violence as a legitimate response to political and cultural disagreement. Kirk advocated for "bailing out" David DePape, the man convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the brutal hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Praising Kyle Rittenhouse as a “hero”. Critics argued that by hailing a shooter as a hero, Kirk was sending a message that “taking up arms” against perceived opponents is admirable.
One of TPUSA's most notorious initiatives is the "Professor Watchlist," a website launched in 2016 that lists the names, photos, and alleged offenses of academics Kirk's organization deems to be promoting "leftist propaganda" or discriminating against conservative students. While TPUSA framed this as a tool for transparency, its practical effect was to create a digital blacklist. The criteria for inclusion were broad, often targeting professors for their scholarly publications, social media posts, or any discussion of race and politics. The predictable and documented result of being placed on this list was subjection to "campaigns of online harassment".
To critics, the watchlist is an example of how Kirk built, deployed, and maintained over the long-term an infrastructure to enact his political will through mob dynamics and intimidation.
Thank you for the list. I agree there are no smoking guns here. I think, as a matter of charity, you could interpret them in a nonviolent way pretty easily.
For example, with the Jan 6th, as far as I can tell he was bussing people to a rally not to the insurrection. With Rittenhouse, he was defending himself from being attacked so self defense, not a call to go engage in violence. With the election one, he could have been advocating for arresting people, holding a trial and then using the death penalty, not some sort of extra judicial sort of killing.
I don't feel like addressing the rest since it seems like you don't think he really has explicit calls to violence.
Bluesky is 99% people who left twitter because Elon Musk took over. I don't have any hard data but I can't think of any reason why a Bluesky user would celebrate someone on their side being attacked or murdered.
> It sounds like your point is when left wing politicos are targeted and people celebrate it, those are obviously sock-puppets and bots. But when right wing celebrities (for lack of a better word) are targeted, it's the democratic base that comes out in force to celebrate.
When left-wing politicos are targeted, my experience is that right-wing people have a playbook of possible responses:
1. It didn't even happen
2. It happened, but it wasn't one of our guys (with zero evidence to support that claim) - e.g. J6 was antifa, Paul Pelosi was attacked by his gay lover, etc.
3. Tasteless jokes, but nothing rising to the level of "it's good that this happened" or "he deserved it because of his political beliefs". Happy to be corrected on that one.
When right-wing politicos are targeted, my impression is that "the left" is much more celebratory. Maybe that's just my own bias/filter bubble.
It's probably just because this assassination was more high-profile. I don't recall any warnings issued for these events either:
A 26 year old man from Irondale, Alabama was later arrested and charged in connection with the bombing. Prosecutors stated that prior to the bombing, the suspect had been spotted placing stickers on government buildings, displaying "antifa, anti-police and anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement sentiments" and had expressed "belief that violence should be directed against the government" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Marshall#Bombing
10 arrested after ambush on Texas ICE detention facility [..] When an Alvarado police officer arrived on the scene, one of the individuals shot him in the neck. Another individual shot 20 to 30 rounds at the facility correction officers, according to Larson. - https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-arrested-after-ambush-texas-ice...
I could also not find any sign of a warning in the Luigi Mangione case, although I'd argue that one has no clear left-right political placement.
I hear you but also think this attack on Charlie Kirk feels worse than the rest. Partially because of how graphic it was and because it happened in front of his wife and young children. But also because he’s not an elected politician but more of an everyday activist, mostly known for just talking to people calmly and respectfully in open casual chats on college campuses. It is a serious threat to free speech, civil politics, and stability when having respectful conversations makes you a target. It really shows how threatened some people are by free speech, which is America’s most basic and fundamental value.
For what it’s worth, some of the people you named also put out statements about the Charlie Kirk assassination and have responded more strongly to this than the other events you mentioned. Examples:
> We must speak with moral clarity. The attack on Charlie Kirk is horrifying and this growing type of unconscionable violence cannot be allowed in our society.
> Thinking of Charlie Kirk, his family, and the community at UVU after the horrific shooting. We should all come together to stand up against any and all forms of political violence. It’s unacceptable.
>it happened in front of his wife and young children.
>Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?" Kirk asked.
>Kirk, along with his co-hosts Jack Posobiec, Tyler Bowyer and Blake Neff, continued to discuss at what age should children watch the public executions, with one co-host pointing out as young as 12 years old.
You're not making a strong point. He didn't say that the person's own children should watch it, and his own children are under 12. Finally, he was talking about the death penalty, which is different from murder by most people's understanding of the terms.
While I am not in favor of censorship, I do wonder if this is a responsible statement to issue at a time where things can spiral to something worse.
At the same time, the exact words they used may not cover the problematic comments I saw, which were more coded:
> "Glorifying violence or harm violates Bluesky's Community Guidelines. We review reports and take action on content that celebrates harm against anyone. Violence has no place in healthy public discourse, and we're committed to fostering healthy, open conversations," the social media platform wrote in a post.
I am of two minds of this. I respect Bluesky's right to police their part of the ATProto, while also acknowledging this violates the free speech of its users and is a censorship choke point which should be refactored to defend against. A recent example are the most recent events in Nepal.
Public square or insane asylum? Everytime I look into these services I have the same aversion as when I open LinkedIn, it reads like bots exchanging with bots sprinkled with a few real people caught in between unaware they're talking to no one and radicalizinf themselves in the process.
How would you defend against it? Making an alternative social network? Isn’t that only going to lead to more and more echo chambers of limited reach? Or am I not understanding the approach? I am not sure what ATProto is exactly or how it plays a role in this defense.
> In the early days of Bluesky, Black users felt they were being pushed off. Blacksky became a platform for Black users to feel heard and seen. To create Blacksky, we wrote our own implementation of AT Protocol (called “rsky” and pronounced “risky”). An underlying premise of Blacksky’s rsky is to not only “seize the means of production,” as well as the distribution, but to also act as a “dual power” structure.
> Blacksky’s rsky guarantees our community a seat at the table, and ensures that we can leave and easily make our own table if we need to. That’s the true promise of decentralized social media. [My note: Most relevant part, the rest included for context]
> Clearly I think that decentralization is great, not only for the problems it prevents, but also the new possibilities it creates. But if everyone’s running their own servers, apps, and moderation teams, how do we do global social media? That’s where our vibrant open source developer community comes in.
> Blacksky runs our own global relay at https://atproto.africa, which we built from scratch. Every day, our relay stores its own copy of the hundreds of gigabytes of data of all known AT Protocol accounts — 36 million and counting. We also developed what we call our “moderation relay,” which lets us know about all of the moderation decisions ever made by all mod teams globally.
Think of Bluesky not as a Twitter equivalent platform, but a funded experiment and incubator for bootstrapping a protocol where multiple platforms can operate independently of each other. You can scale a community to tens of millions of users for under a few hundred dollars per month in tech spend (storage, compute, transfer). This is very accessible imho.
Broadly speaking, I understand that there might be speech out there that I find exceptionally distasteful, but that is the speech in many cases (but not all) I am willing to protect, because you don't know when the capability to censor will be weaponized. This remains in constant tension so long as humans are humans. There is no solution, only constant evolution.
Some users may be too young to remember this, but up until the 2010s, liberals were generally opposed to all censorship by anyone, and wanted the First Amendment to be interpreted liberally to apply beyond just government actions. It wasn't until about 2017 that you started to hear liberals say, "They're a private corporation; they can do what they want," which you would have heard only from conservatives before that.
Now that some corporations appear to be shifting again and can't be trusted to censor only conservatives anymore (most notably Twitter after the Musk purchase) we're seeing the 20th-century expansive interpretation of free speech making a comeback on the left. Feels comfy, like an old pair of slippers.
Seeing Musk buy Twitter and start promoting right wing speech rather than left wing speech was quite the shock to these people. Suddenly the realisation dawned that corporate censorship could be used against those you agreed with, and in favour of your opponents.
(it was also amusingly the time in which the right went quiet on censorship on Twitter, for much the same reason).
Either way, it's become really apparent that most people don't have any consistent political beliefs or values, and only value freedom of speech so much as 'their' team gets to say what they want without consequences and their opponents get bullied and shut down at a moment's notice.
While there is nuance between the government and a private benefit corp like Bluesky restricting speech, I'm rolling it all together for these purposes. I agree there is legal nuance (de facto vs de jure). As I mentioned, Bluesky is entitled to do so, as it is their platform. So, you take your speech to another platform operated on a distributed protocol. This is no different then creators posting their content to Rumble instead of traditional social platforms, for example (as Charlie Kirk did).
> Founded in 2013 by a Canadian entrepreneur, Chris Pavlovksi, Rumble was designed to be an alternative to YouTube for small content creators. But it quickly began to pride itself on being the opposite of other tech firms.
> According to Rumble’s website, it is “immune to cancel culture” and aims to “restore the internet to its roots by making it free and open once again”. Pavlovksi has described it as “neutral”.
> Rumble is backed by the billionaire and prominent conservative venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who invested in 2021, and the conservative former Fox News presenter Dan Bongino, who has 2.9 million subscribers himself. The platform is valued at more than $2bn (£1.6bn).
("what's good for the goose is good for the gander")
I wonder about this policy: does it only apply to private violence, or does government violence also fall under this guideline? I'm thinking of any discussion of the Ukraine war, ICE raids, etc.
That would imply that celebrating violence from those in power is fine, but celebrating violence from those not in power is a bad thing. Which is support for the powerful against the powerless. They probably wouldn't want this explicitly stated though.
There is nothing wrong with policing speech on platforms. If you don't (or do) want specific kinds of speech on the platform you own, it is fully your right to discourage (encourage) users to behavior a certain way.
The repercussions of that are your own. Quite honestly, the repercussions are likely small in the long run if it helps to better establish civil norms and self governance.
> bsky staff only issued this warning begrudgingly, they were likely high-fiving each other for hours
That is certainly possible. Many tech companies have very powerful and organized internal activists that influenced their actions and culture for years, especially following the 2016 election. I do wonder if the management of these “events” is now done more by a small executive team and a PR or crisis team, rather than everyday employees. As in - there may be two distinct groups, one that acts maturely like with these statements, and the other doing the “high-fiving”.
Man this "us vs them" mentality is getting out of hand, now you're grouped in a mob by default depending on which website you log in. If you have a Twitter account you're a literal nazi who eats babies, if you're on bluesky you're a radical antifa terrorist, both side can't even stand being in the same room as the other.
They're both using the same arguments too, the other are "demons" who aren't able of "common sense" and should be "eradicated" because they don't want to debate things.
I can't believe how seemingly smart and educated individuals can behave like cavemen, even the most brain dead football hooligans seem well behaved in comparison
Leave your online cesspools and go out, most people aren't like you're trying to portray them. A small percentage of the most deranged ones of both sides are fighting online 24/7 (not even including the foreign bots who love to stir some internal shit)
Rebellion against the status quo is what moves things forward - in tech, in politics, in life. It matters little how or against what you rebel, only that you do rebel. It's little wonder why HN and big tech in general are supportive.
I don't know if you've been living under a rock over the last few months but HN and big tech have shifted to the right/anti-woke/pro Trump side of the spectrum.
Don't confuse the "move fast and break things" rebellion of startup culture or the pandering of corporations to progressive ideals (until the winds change) with actual sincere anti-establishment rebellion. HN and big tech absolutely support the staus quo when it aligns with their financial interests.
The freedom the US has to kill anyone anywhere without trial trickles down, and individual citizens believe it is their right to use violence in the same way.
It was inevitable, especially since Israel can reach out and kill whoever it wishes, without consequences.
Seeing the people on social media celebrating Kirk's murder is so saddening and maddening. I am shocked that social media has allowed such widespread celebration of the murder of a US citizen.
Did they issue similar statements encouraging people not to celebrate the plan to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer or when someone threw a Molotov cocktail into Josh Shapiro's Passover celebrations? Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered earlier this year. Did we get a warning against glorifying their deaths?
Political violence is wrong regardless of who or what party is the target. It would be nice if BlueSky demonstrated they shared that belief.
I doubt there were many (if any) legitimate (as in, not bots or sockpuppets) Bluesky accounts celebrating either of those things, so I don't see why a warning would be necessary.
It sounds like your point is when left wing politicos are targeted and people celebrate it, those are obviously sock-puppets and bots. But when right wing celebrities (for lack of a better word) are targeted, it's the democratic base that comes out in force to celebrate.
So only right wing commentators who advocate political violence deserve protection?
[Also... Do you have any data supporting this hypothesis?]
I'm not who you are replying to but the demographics of bluesky is heavily left wing. The users are significantly less likely to make fun of people on their side being attacked.
Also, I've seen more comments in the last 24 hours saying Kirk deserved it than comments about Shapiro despite his attack happening months ago.
Lastly, I don't know much about Kirk, but I haven't seen a single comment he made where he advocating for political violence. Would you mind sharing a few?
Advocating violence against trans people: https://x.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1626672143617384472
Saying that a "patriot" should bail out the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband: https://archive.is/SE3y7
With the trans one, it is not clear if he was advocating for violence or to put them in a mental institution. It sounds more likely he is advocating for violence, but you can't tell.
With the Pelosi one, I don't think he was condoning violence, but wanted him free so there could be an interview with the attacker. "Bail him out and then go ask him some questions". I think this is due to conspiratorial views that there was a fallout between gay lovers.
Neither of these are great, but it is not clear that either are actually advocating for violence.
Forcing someone who is not mentally ill into a mental institution is an act of violence. It’s not much different than throwing someone in jail even though they haven’t committed a crime.
He considers people who are trans to be mentally ill. If they are to the point they may hurt themselves or others, then you can justify it.
You and he are coming at this issue with a different premise which is causing the issue.
Kirk: “Joe Biden is a bumbling dementia filled Alzheimer's corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.”
He didn't say that on Bluesky so I don't see how that is relevant to this conversation.
The parent post asked:
>> Lastly, I don't know much about Kirk, but I haven't seen a single comment he made where he advocating for political violence. Would you mind sharing a few?
That is not advocating for violence anymore than saying a rapist should be jailed or a murder should be given the death penalty. He is not calling for some sort of extra judaical punishment, but to work within the legal system and execute the law.
I'm just here to answer your direct question. As a general rule, I don't carry opinions on celebrities, Charlie Kirk included. So this is a relatively objective summary of what a critic of him who goes digging would be most likely to find. In my own personal opinion, you generally won't find "smoking guns" in terms of black-and-white obvious calls to violence from Charlie Kirk.
Critics would likely point to:
- Helping organize January 6th, claimed that "The team at Turning Point Action are honored to help make this happen, sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president."
- Glorifying Kyle Rittenhouse: “You’re a hero to millions, it’s an honor to be able to have you.” as well as supporting the man who attacked the Pelosi household.
- At an event in Nampa, Idaho (Oct 25, 2021), an audience member posed an alarming question during Kirk’s Q&A session. Kirk did denounce the idea of shooting political opponents – but notably, he did so on strategic grounds rather than moral ones. The man in the audience asserted “this is tyranny” and asked: “When do we get to use the guns?... How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” – referring to Democrats purportedly stealing elections. The crowd cheered and applauded this direct call for political violence. Kirk’s response has been controversial. Kirk immediately urged the audience not to resort to violence “because you’re playing into their plans, and they’re trying to make you do this”. He warned that any violent uprising would give the left a pretext to crack down: “justify a takeover of your freedoms… the likes of which we have never seen”.
- During a special livestream of The Charlie Kirk Show on March 30, 2023, Kirk vented fury at Democrats and the “tyrannical” Biden administration. He claimed those pursuing Trump were “acting like Stalinists” and warned “we must make them pay a price and a penalty”. Referring to Trump’s indictment, Kirk declared, “They crossed the Rubicon… They have declared quote-unquote the Roman Civil War.” Media Matters characterized Kirk’s post-indictment monologues as “noticeably more incendiary and alarmist” than usual, reaching a “dangerous new level” of extremist rhetoric. Calling political opponents “Stalinists” and alluding to civil war was seen by critics as flirting with incitement, even if Kirk was ostensibly talking about legal retaliation. Commentators warned that such language – framing routine legal processes as a literal war – could egg on unhinged followers to view political conflicts in apocalyptic, violent terms.
- On his March 31, 2023 broadcast, he told his audience: “We are living in an enemy-occupied country. They have taken over the government and we have to think as dissidents." Describing fellow Americans in power as an “enemy” occupier is the kind of dehumanizing language that often precedes or incites political violence. Critics noted that this phrasing encourages listeners to see themselves as insurgents in their own country.
Charlie Kirk didn't really issue direct/unambiguous calls for people to commit specific acts of political violence. But critics would generally agree that his body of work created a comprehensive "permission structure" for such actions. This was achieved through a three-pronged rhetorical strategy:
1) He provided an ideological justification for lethal force as a necessary and rational political tool, primarily through an absolutist and insurrectionist interpretation of the Second Amendment.
2) He engaged in the systematic dehumanization of his political, racial, and religious opponents, casting them not as fellow citizens with differing views but as existential threats to the nation, Christianity, and "Western civilization" itself. He described the political landscape as a "spiritual battle" and a "war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist". During an appearance with Donald Trump, he claimed that Democrats "stand for everything God hates". In another segment on his show, he asserted, "The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse". Also objectifying/dehumanizing along racial lines: "Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that's a fact". He publicly referred to George Floyd, a man whose murder by police sparked a global movement for racial justice, as a "scumbag". In a tweet shortly before his death, he wrote, "Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America". "We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately"
3) He offered explicit endorsements of specific violent acts and issued calls for extra-judicial retribution, which served to normalize violence as a legitimate response to political and cultural disagreement. Kirk advocated for "bailing out" David DePape, the man convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the brutal hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Praising Kyle Rittenhouse as a “hero”. Critics argued that by hailing a shooter as a hero, Kirk was sending a message that “taking up arms” against perceived opponents is admirable.
One of TPUSA's most notorious initiatives is the "Professor Watchlist," a website launched in 2016 that lists the names, photos, and alleged offenses of academics Kirk's organization deems to be promoting "leftist propaganda" or discriminating against conservative students. While TPUSA framed this as a tool for transparency, its practical effect was to create a digital blacklist. The criteria for inclusion were broad, often targeting professors for their scholarly publications, social media posts, or any discussion of race and politics. The predictable and documented result of being placed on this list was subjection to "campaigns of online harassment".
To critics, the watchlist is an example of how Kirk built, deployed, and maintained over the long-term an infrastructure to enact his political will through mob dynamics and intimidation.
Thank you for the list. I agree there are no smoking guns here. I think, as a matter of charity, you could interpret them in a nonviolent way pretty easily.
For example, with the Jan 6th, as far as I can tell he was bussing people to a rally not to the insurrection. With Rittenhouse, he was defending himself from being attacked so self defense, not a call to go engage in violence. With the election one, he could have been advocating for arresting people, holding a trial and then using the death penalty, not some sort of extra judicial sort of killing.
I don't feel like addressing the rest since it seems like you don't think he really has explicit calls to violence.
Bluesky is 99% people who left twitter because Elon Musk took over. I don't have any hard data but I can't think of any reason why a Bluesky user would celebrate someone on their side being attacked or murdered.
> It sounds like your point is when left wing politicos are targeted and people celebrate it, those are obviously sock-puppets and bots. But when right wing celebrities (for lack of a better word) are targeted, it's the democratic base that comes out in force to celebrate.
When left-wing politicos are targeted, my experience is that right-wing people have a playbook of possible responses: 1. It didn't even happen 2. It happened, but it wasn't one of our guys (with zero evidence to support that claim) - e.g. J6 was antifa, Paul Pelosi was attacked by his gay lover, etc. 3. Tasteless jokes, but nothing rising to the level of "it's good that this happened" or "he deserved it because of his political beliefs". Happy to be corrected on that one.
When right-wing politicos are targeted, my impression is that "the left" is much more celebratory. Maybe that's just my own bias/filter bubble.
So your data is "I noticed BlueSky is people who left Twitter." This may not be the convincing argument you think it is.
> not to celebrate the plan to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer
Bluesky didn't launch until 2023, so it would have been weird for them to issue any statements of that sort in 2020.
It's probably just because this assassination was more high-profile. I don't recall any warnings issued for these events either:
A 26 year old man from Irondale, Alabama was later arrested and charged in connection with the bombing. Prosecutors stated that prior to the bombing, the suspect had been spotted placing stickers on government buildings, displaying "antifa, anti-police and anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement sentiments" and had expressed "belief that violence should be directed against the government" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Marshall#Bombing
Man, 80, run over for putting Trump sign in yard, say police - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1rw4xdjql4o
Alabama Antifa Sympathizer Pleads Guilty to Detonating Bomb outside State AG’s Office - https://www.nationalreview.com/news/alabama-antifa-sympathiz...
a man armed with a pistol and a crossbow showed up at Fuentes' home - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Fuentes#Alleged_murder_at...
Attempted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Assassin Identifies As Transgender; Hoped To Kill “Nazis” - https://wsau.com/2025/01/30/doj-filing-attempted-treasury-se...
10 arrested after ambush on Texas ICE detention facility [..] When an Alvarado police officer arrived on the scene, one of the individuals shot him in the neck. Another individual shot 20 to 30 rounds at the facility correction officers, according to Larson. - https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-arrested-after-ambush-texas-ice...
I could also not find any sign of a warning in the Luigi Mangione case, although I'd argue that one has no clear left-right political placement.
[dead]
...were people doing that? Something tells me this is just dismissive whataboutism.
Charlie Kirk himself made jokes about Paul Pelosi's attack.
I hear you but also think this attack on Charlie Kirk feels worse than the rest. Partially because of how graphic it was and because it happened in front of his wife and young children. But also because he’s not an elected politician but more of an everyday activist, mostly known for just talking to people calmly and respectfully in open casual chats on college campuses. It is a serious threat to free speech, civil politics, and stability when having respectful conversations makes you a target. It really shows how threatened some people are by free speech, which is America’s most basic and fundamental value.
For what it’s worth, some of the people you named also put out statements about the Charlie Kirk assassination and have responded more strongly to this than the other events you mentioned. Examples:
https://x.com/GovernorShapiro/status/1965859876003000834
> Political violence has no place in our country.
> We must speak with moral clarity. The attack on Charlie Kirk is horrifying and this growing type of unconscionable violence cannot be allowed in our society.
https://x.com/GovWhitmer/status/1965865371464061001
> Thinking of Charlie Kirk, his family, and the community at UVU after the horrific shooting. We should all come together to stand up against any and all forms of political violence. It’s unacceptable.
> But also because he’s not an elected politician but more of an everyday activist
Wait, assassinating elected politicians is... better? Interesting take.
>it happened in front of his wife and young children.
>Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?" Kirk asked.
>Kirk, along with his co-hosts Jack Posobiec, Tyler Bowyer and Blake Neff, continued to discuss at what age should children watch the public executions, with one co-host pointing out as young as 12 years old.
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-death-penalty-public-e...
>when having respectful conversations makes you a target
Is that, above, respectful?
You're not making a strong point. He didn't say that the person's own children should watch it, and his own children are under 12. Finally, he was talking about the death penalty, which is different from murder by most people's understanding of the terms.
While I am not in favor of censorship, I do wonder if this is a responsible statement to issue at a time where things can spiral to something worse.
At the same time, the exact words they used may not cover the problematic comments I saw, which were more coded:
> "Glorifying violence or harm violates Bluesky's Community Guidelines. We review reports and take action on content that celebrates harm against anyone. Violence has no place in healthy public discourse, and we're committed to fostering healthy, open conversations," the social media platform wrote in a post.
I am of two minds of this. I respect Bluesky's right to police their part of the ATProto, while also acknowledging this violates the free speech of its users and is a censorship choke point which should be refactored to defend against. A recent example are the most recent events in Nepal.
Nepal Prime Minister Resigns. Parliament / Ministires set on Fire. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45179679 - September 2025
There is no free speech here, bluesky isn't the government, it can refuse your speech like a restaurant can refuse your order
That doesn't work in practice when platforms like BlueSky serve as the defacto public square.
Public square or insane asylum? Everytime I look into these services I have the same aversion as when I open LinkedIn, it reads like bots exchanging with bots sprinkled with a few real people caught in between unaware they're talking to no one and radicalizinf themselves in the process.
How would you defend against it? Making an alternative social network? Isn’t that only going to lead to more and more echo chambers of limited reach? Or am I not understanding the approach? I am not sure what ATProto is exactly or how it plays a role in this defense.
Are we decentralized yet? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45077291 - August 2025
Blacksky grew to millions of users without spending a dollar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45018773 - August 2025
Introduction to AT Protocol - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44965233 - August 2025
> In the early days of Bluesky, Black users felt they were being pushed off. Blacksky became a platform for Black users to feel heard and seen. To create Blacksky, we wrote our own implementation of AT Protocol (called “rsky” and pronounced “risky”). An underlying premise of Blacksky’s rsky is to not only “seize the means of production,” as well as the distribution, but to also act as a “dual power” structure.
> Blacksky’s rsky guarantees our community a seat at the table, and ensures that we can leave and easily make our own table if we need to. That’s the true promise of decentralized social media. [My note: Most relevant part, the rest included for context]
> Clearly I think that decentralization is great, not only for the problems it prevents, but also the new possibilities it creates. But if everyone’s running their own servers, apps, and moderation teams, how do we do global social media? That’s where our vibrant open source developer community comes in.
> Blacksky runs our own global relay at https://atproto.africa, which we built from scratch. Every day, our relay stores its own copy of the hundreds of gigabytes of data of all known AT Protocol accounts — 36 million and counting. We also developed what we call our “moderation relay,” which lets us know about all of the moderation decisions ever made by all mod teams globally.
Think of Bluesky not as a Twitter equivalent platform, but a funded experiment and incubator for bootstrapping a protocol where multiple platforms can operate independently of each other. You can scale a community to tens of millions of users for under a few hundred dollars per month in tech spend (storage, compute, transfer). This is very accessible imho.
Broadly speaking, I understand that there might be speech out there that I find exceptionally distasteful, but that is the speech in many cases (but not all) I am willing to protect, because you don't know when the capability to censor will be weaponized. This remains in constant tension so long as humans are humans. There is no solution, only constant evolution.
I missed the news where the US Gov bought out blue sky??? How else could BlueSky violate someone's free speech?
Some users may be too young to remember this, but up until the 2010s, liberals were generally opposed to all censorship by anyone, and wanted the First Amendment to be interpreted liberally to apply beyond just government actions. It wasn't until about 2017 that you started to hear liberals say, "They're a private corporation; they can do what they want," which you would have heard only from conservatives before that.
Now that some corporations appear to be shifting again and can't be trusted to censor only conservatives anymore (most notably Twitter after the Musk purchase) we're seeing the 20th-century expansive interpretation of free speech making a comeback on the left. Feels comfy, like an old pair of slippers.
I am most certainly old enough to remember that, and it is absolutely correct.
Seeing Musk buy Twitter and start promoting right wing speech rather than left wing speech was quite the shock to these people. Suddenly the realisation dawned that corporate censorship could be used against those you agreed with, and in favour of your opponents.
(it was also amusingly the time in which the right went quiet on censorship on Twitter, for much the same reason).
Either way, it's become really apparent that most people don't have any consistent political beliefs or values, and only value freedom of speech so much as 'their' team gets to say what they want without consequences and their opponents get bullied and shut down at a moment's notice.
Right. As someone famous might have said once, I ask for mercy when I am powerless, and grant none when I am powerful.
While there is nuance between the government and a private benefit corp like Bluesky restricting speech, I'm rolling it all together for these purposes. I agree there is legal nuance (de facto vs de jure). As I mentioned, Bluesky is entitled to do so, as it is their platform. So, you take your speech to another platform operated on a distributed protocol. This is no different then creators posting their content to Rumble instead of traditional social platforms, for example (as Charlie Kirk did).
https://corp.rumble.com/our-story/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/20/what-is-r...
> Founded in 2013 by a Canadian entrepreneur, Chris Pavlovksi, Rumble was designed to be an alternative to YouTube for small content creators. But it quickly began to pride itself on being the opposite of other tech firms.
> According to Rumble’s website, it is “immune to cancel culture” and aims to “restore the internet to its roots by making it free and open once again”. Pavlovksi has described it as “neutral”.
> Rumble is backed by the billionaire and prominent conservative venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who invested in 2021, and the conservative former Fox News presenter Dan Bongino, who has 2.9 million subscribers himself. The platform is valued at more than $2bn (£1.6bn).
("what's good for the goose is good for the gander")
I wonder about this policy: does it only apply to private violence, or does government violence also fall under this guideline? I'm thinking of any discussion of the Ukraine war, ICE raids, etc.
Governments have a monopoly on violence
That would imply that celebrating violence from those in power is fine, but celebrating violence from those not in power is a bad thing. Which is support for the powerful against the powerless. They probably wouldn't want this explicitly stated though.
That doesn't mean all government use of violence is to be applauded
There is nothing wrong with policing speech on platforms. If you don't (or do) want specific kinds of speech on the platform you own, it is fully your right to discourage (encourage) users to behavior a certain way.
The repercussions of that are your own. Quite honestly, the repercussions are likely small in the long run if it helps to better establish civil norms and self governance.
you know something is wrong when even Bluesky is too conservative for them
Good for twitter/x, the freedom platform
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why issue a warning? it is who these people are, and to a large extent, who uses HN
you've all been inculcated with the notion of "rebel chic" by your professors and you have internalized it
bsky staff only issued this warning begrudgingly, they were likely high-fiving each other for hours
> bsky staff only issued this warning begrudgingly, they were likely high-fiving each other for hours
That is certainly possible. Many tech companies have very powerful and organized internal activists that influenced their actions and culture for years, especially following the 2016 election. I do wonder if the management of these “events” is now done more by a small executive team and a PR or crisis team, rather than everyday employees. As in - there may be two distinct groups, one that acts maturely like with these statements, and the other doing the “high-fiving”.
Man this "us vs them" mentality is getting out of hand, now you're grouped in a mob by default depending on which website you log in. If you have a Twitter account you're a literal nazi who eats babies, if you're on bluesky you're a radical antifa terrorist, both side can't even stand being in the same room as the other.
They're both using the same arguments too, the other are "demons" who aren't able of "common sense" and should be "eradicated" because they don't want to debate things.
I can't believe how seemingly smart and educated individuals can behave like cavemen, even the most brain dead football hooligans seem well behaved in comparison
Leave your online cesspools and go out, most people aren't like you're trying to portray them. A small percentage of the most deranged ones of both sides are fighting online 24/7 (not even including the foreign bots who love to stir some internal shit)
>you've all been inculcated with the notion of "rebel chic" by your professors and you have internalized it
Ok... i don't recall because it was some time ago but i guess we were very liberal with memory management when i studied...
I'm not sure what you think college is but what's in your head doesn't match reality, it matches TV shows.
Rebellion against the status quo is what moves things forward - in tech, in politics, in life. It matters little how or against what you rebel, only that you do rebel. It's little wonder why HN and big tech in general are supportive.
I don't know if you've been living under a rock over the last few months but HN and big tech have shifted to the right/anti-woke/pro Trump side of the spectrum.
Don't confuse the "move fast and break things" rebellion of startup culture or the pandering of corporations to progressive ideals (until the winds change) with actual sincere anti-establishment rebellion. HN and big tech absolutely support the staus quo when it aligns with their financial interests.
The freedom the US has to kill anyone anywhere without trial trickles down, and individual citizens believe it is their right to use violence in the same way.
It was inevitable, especially since Israel can reach out and kill whoever it wishes, without consequences.
Seeing the people on social media celebrating Kirk's murder is so saddening and maddening. I am shocked that social media has allowed such widespread celebration of the murder of a US citizen.