probably unpopular opinion, but... I actually do agree a bit with the critique of bluesky re: the post-debate environment I do not think it was bad faith! but I do think that in our anger at the media for the narrative they have pushed, we have often been too quick to dismiss actual reporting

It was sort of a "the worst person you know may have a point" thing: the Times and CNN are both horrible, a lot of the arguments were ableist (lots of people claiming they knew how stutters work when no) and BS Work Ethic (any given human should be able to give 100% 24/7), but...

We (not me) literally chased a reporter out over it!

It’s easy to conflate the (extremely justified) criticism of the various editorial pages and pundits with the (sometimes justified) criticism of the reporting itself. Definitely some of that on here. Part of that is the news organizations themselves increasingly mix the two, but still.

this may be true and there are good reasons for it to be true (i.e. reporting on opinions is by its nature indistinguishable from manipulation masquerading as reporting on opinions) however the idea that more nazis and bots would somehow make them easier to distinguish is at best...well, laughable

(for some reason, this thread+ that icon, conjures into my mind's eye, a vision of plastic-man twisting around and shrinking his face to truly, deeply inspect each crease and crevice and pore of his own navel. But genuinely in honest dedication to understanding it as deeply as possible.)

Strongly agreed. The environment here was one of reflexive cheerleading; hostility towards dissenting but good faith views; neglectful of real-world news and the opposite of informative.

I remain pissed a Putinish cabal spearheaded the campaign & changed to my voting status to independent to register my virulent disagreement w/ the power given to American oligarchs in this debacle. I've been thinking of doing so for a while, but this made it clear I can't support business as usual

I have a ton of respect for you for saying this. Part of what stressed me out so much about it is I *know* everybody here has good intentions – the best of intentions. A fierce determination to stop Trump. I never stopped believing this was a community with its heart in the right place. 💙

We can never know how much of that was the feedback loop though. If it wasn't for the initial over stated panic would those people have actually gone that way. I also suspect more than a few of those were using his age to punish him over his Gaza policies.

I think I agree. I'm mostly confused by the argument that somehow people on Bluesky were missing information. My impression was that people simply had strong opinions based on the same info everyone else had.