Cw: discussion of common cw tags and subjects, including violence, sexual violence, animal products, and others.

Bluesky's trust and safety (betrayal and bullshit) team is engaged in high fuckery and we're likely going to get some new folks coming in from bksy.

Now's probably a good time to revisit content warnings and when and how to use them.

Content warnings are just that; a warning about the content of a post or submission. They grew out of the older notion of "trigger warnings" as an acknowledgement that no one could reasonably guess what might be triggering to other people. Instead content warnings are a more general heads up that a discussion contains material that may be upsetting or unwanted by some people.

It's a friendly warning so folks can decide whether or not they'd like to engage with the discussion.

Note on "nsfw". When assessing if something is not safe for work ask yourself if a corporate HR rep who hated you would use it as evidence to get you fired.

Animal products - posts discussion animal products like meat or leather should have cw: animal products or cw: meat in the post title or header. Posts should usually be labelled nsfw and it's courteous to put discussions inside a spoiler tag so people can choose if they want to open it or not.

Sexual violence or sexual assault - posts discussion sexual violence, sexual assault, intimate partner violencen, or sexual violence against kids, all need to be labelled with a cw. Sv is commomly used for sexual violence, sa for sexual assault, csa or csam for violence against children. Posts should always have a nsfw tag or be placed in a spoiler tag.

Violence - posts discussing violence, torture, and related topics should have a cw as such and use spoiler tags and nsfw tags as appropriate.

Graphic images - graphic images of violence, combat footage, severe injusry or death, should be labelled as such and should always have an appropriate cw and be placed in spoiler tags and marked with the nsfw.

Bigotry - sexism, racism, tranphobia, misogyny, ethnic bigotry, ableism, and really any structural violence generally merits a cw. If it's graphic or upsetting putting the material in a spoiler tag is polite.

Some other things that may merit a cw

  • common phobias liek spiders and clowns

  • particularly awful politics

  • notorious or hated political figures

  • Hexbear pop culture enemies - for instance superhero movies are often semi-seriously marked with a "capeshit" warning

  • topics discussing religious trauma

  • sexual topics and general horniness as a courtesy to our ace and otherwise not-interested comrades

  • medical trauma and topics that are frequent sites of medical violence.

If there was a "rule" it'd be; if you think someoen might find your post upsetting it's usually wroth writing a one or two word cw and sticking it at the top of the post. It's a courteous way to give people a heads up on what the discussion is about so if it's content they don't want to engage with they can skip it and keep browsing.

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[–] 63 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Hexbear pop culture enemies - for instance superhero movies are often semi-seriously marked with a "capeshit" warning

We should actually stop doing this. The function of Content Warnings is to help people avoid upsetting material, not to signal that something is disapproved of. Using them ironically or "semi-seriously" makes them less effective in their actual function.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago*

    I agree, ironic CWs are kind of a slap in the face to people who need to avoid certain things for whatever reason.

    I think we should start tagging drug use as well, my own trigger.

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    [–] 58 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    Not disagreeing with this but I find it funny:

    Note on "nsfw". When assessing if something is not safe for work ask yourself if a corporate HR rep who hated you would use it as evidence to get you fired.

    Most corporate HR reps would use literally any posting whatsoever in Hexbear as a reason to get you fired.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    this is gonna sound gross for a second, but imagine hexbear was Reddit.

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  • [–] 41 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    ngl, kinda weird to see the newbies with their actual faces for their pfp. I'm not sure if we ever had an explicit rule against that, but it's something that I've noticed.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    Twitter and its descendants are much more about building a personal brand. This place is more like the old internet where no one felt comfortable doxing themselves. Hopefully, our ways rub off on the newbies a bit. Opsec is going to be especially important in the coming fash wave.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    I kinda think it should be an explicit rule against having your actual face, but that's just me.

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    [–] 39 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Certain discussions of weight and eating habits might also merit a content warning – these might trigger people with eating disorders in some way and so I feel it's better to be on the safe side.

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    the normal focus of content tagging is on helping people avoid things, but I want to highlight another function of content tagging— breaking "default ideology" (bourgeois) conceptions of what's acceptable. having terrible things tagged as such helps those who are bothered by them feel they are not alone

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    [–] 35 points 2 years ago (21 children)

    Good stuff, thank you. I'm a BlueSky user, I'm gonna stay there for now but I'll be active here as well. Glad to have found the place!

    For those that asked, Bluesky mods let a certain well known "polite transphobe" "journalist" stay on the platform who is already getting around blocks to harass ppl

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    [–] 33 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    superhero movies are often semi-seriously marked with a "capeshit" warning

    I fuckin love this dumbass website without an ounce of irony. Based.

    On the sexual violence subheading though, I thought I recalled a post about how shortforms in CWs are a bad idea since not everyone is familiar?

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    [–] 32 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    [CW: sexual stuff]I’m really fucking gay im-fuckin-gay

    But jokes beside, it would be a shame if we lost a really good comrade because they were put off by something that is trivial to hide behind a content warning.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago* (7 children)

    Culturally, we're irony and sarcasm-heavy, but often do not label it with tags like /s or /j. If you're not sure, look for context. I think this aspect of the banter here can really throw people for a loop

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    [+] 26 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago

    Tldr: they failed to ban some fascist releasing screenshots of someones medical records which goes against bluesky ToS (ulness you are a fascist, then you can to do whatever you want apparently)

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  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago

    Spoiler Testgood post, thanks for clarifying

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I'm always happy to have new comrades but at this point I'm also wondering what in god's name is happening at bluesky? This is far more than the slow trickle of newcomers we usually get

    Oh okay I just read up, that's fucked

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I wanna hear more about Bluesky's fuckery

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    what happened, did bluesky finally do a compaction cycle and start purging leftists?

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Thank Bast there are CW for spiders. I'm a horrible arachnophobe, and my true dread is scrolling a site and BOOM! unexpected eight legged hell spawn

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    [–] 23 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Damn, this might be the biggest influx of new users we've had since federation, how many followers did the bluesky account that gave us a shout out have?

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Does anyone know if there's a way to filter out posts with cws or specific words? Not really asking for myself but I'd imagine that would be functionally some people would appreciate

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    [–] 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I'm a dum dum not paying attention: What happened on Bluesky now?

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  • [+] 21 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
    [–] 20 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I Really appreciate the specific examples, I frequently have trouble interpreting what needs cw/NSFW and what doesn't, partially because I have autism and partially because I have never really worked in a setting with corporate hr reps. Thank you Frank

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    [–] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    One question for clarification: how about makeup tips and suggestions for products? I'm still learning about things and don't know if certain brands include animal products or if they were tested with animals. Would it be too much if I started adding a CW for makeup tips as tangential to animal rights? Thank you!

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I will not cw spiders they are cute and my friends

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    [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    Always good to be reminded of this stuff, thanks for sharing!

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Are people coming from BS?

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