In defence of BlueSky.

(It isn’t a naturist social media platform).

I have seen a lot of anger and dissatisfaction recently from naturists towards the BlueSky social media platform.

It seems that most of the dissatisfaction comes from the way the BlueSky algorithms categorise much of our non-sexual nudity as pornography.

I don’t know how Bluesky works, but it would seem likely that A.I. will make a judgement on the content, and then if that classification is appealed, a real person will then look at the content and make a final decision.

Given the sheer volume of content that passes through the platform, this would seem the most logical and likely process.

I see many naturists commenting that the A.I. on BlueSky is too stupid to tell the difference between non-sexual nudity and pornography.  I’m not sure that the A.I. is stupid, it just doesn’t have the experience to discern the nuances of non-sexual nudity.  To be fair to the A.I. many people will disagree as to what constitutes non-sexual nudity as opposed to pornography.

While we all might agree that we will be able to identify pornography when we see it, trying to manage a set of rules to define it would be a difficult challenge.  We can all agree that simply showing genitals does not constitute pornography, but many in the naturist community might claim that an erection is not pornography, while others will claim that it crosses a line.

If your image is wrongly categorised as pornography, then you are allowed to appeal the ruling.  Please make sure you do.  It is the only feedback that you have and the only way to highlight the poor performance of the A.I. algorithms.  If you don’t appeal, then nothing will change.  It might not change anyway, but that won’t be because we didn’t try.

I also have seen a lot of comments stating that when an appeal was made, the category was reviewed and changed quickly.  Indeed, BlueSky doesn’t notify you when the category has changed, but I imagine that doing so would slow down the whole process with thousands of unnecessary messages.  They might not be telling us when our appeals are successful, but they are listening and they are acting on many of the appeals.

This may come as a shock to many naturists, but BlueSky is not a naturist site.  It never was and it doesn’t try to be.

Some niche groups seem to have found a home on BlueSky, something that they have found difficult on other platforms.

There seems to be a strong group of animated “Furries” on BlueSky, many of whom use the term “nudist” in their posts.  A lot of these posts are hyper-sexualised or blatantly pornographic.  The way that topical feeds work through the use of specific keywords, means that this furry content often gets displayed in feeds designed to pick up naturist or nudist content.

Furry content is not something that I want to see and I have adjusted my moderation settings and lists to filter it out. It is the responsibility of each user, not of the platform to manage this.  It is up to us to use the tools that they have provided to curate the content on our feeds.

Naturists are a very small percentage of BlueSky users, but thanks to the way that BlueSky works, our feeds often give the appearance that our numbers on the platform are greater than they are.  This has given many naturists the impression that they have found their tribe on BlueSky and that BlueSky is a naturist platform.  It isn’t.

We frequently complained that X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, used to load up our feeds with posts from people that it thought we would like rather than the posts or people we actually followed.  In contrast, BlueSky has much more configurable settings and is often used to only show us the posts from people we follow.   As most nudists and naturists follow other nudists and naturists we only see naturist content on our BlueSky feeds.  The reality is that most of the non-naturist content passes us by, but understand it is there.

I recently posted a graphic on some of the sites I use.  It is not my best work and I am no graphic designer, but it illustrates an issue many naturists don’t seem to understand.  We can’t expect generic social media sites to cater specifically to the naturist community, and even naturist-specific sites suffer from problems of cost and scale.

You can’t have it all…

Many naturists want a social media site with the immediacy and ease of use of Twitter and other such platforms.  They want a direct message feature and they want the site to be free.   Many want the site to exclude pornography, but there are a significant number who don't want any censorship.  Specific naturist sites that are behind a paywall or are by invitation are often criticised as being too cumbersome, too slow, and with too few people engaged to make the site worthwhile.

Something that escapes many online naturists is that it costs money to create a social media site, and it takes money to keep and maintain it.  There is a reason that many social media sites are free, and that is that they make their money selling data.  Your data.  The social media site is how you, the product, are sold.

BlueSky is only one of many social media sites.  It is not a naturist site, and it caters to all of society and its groups, not just naturists.

A quick note to naturists and nudists before you run off crying back to X.  It is up to you to manage your own content settings.  It is up to you to appeal the erroneous classifications that are applied to your posts.  It is up to you to realise that BlueSky is just one of many social media sites, with its own set of rules that need to be understood and navigated to get the best out of the site.

If you are waiting for the perfect free naturist platform with all the features and engagement that you want, then I suggest you may be waiting a very long time.

In the meantime, use the sites that are there.   Use more than one.  Take the best from what is on offer and adjust your settings to give you the best result you can, but don’t expect it to be perfect.

If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word. -Margaret Atwood

Thank you for reading.  Have a comfortable day.