Brooklyn journalist’s presence on Bluesky causes a stir

December 17, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

The app for Bluesky is shown on a mobile phone, left, and on a laptop screen on June 2, 2023, in New York. AP Photo/Richard Drew, File

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A controversial Brooklyn journalist recently became the number-one most-blocked account on rising X competitor Bluesky, igniting a debate over the budding platform’s future. Jesse Singal, formerly an editor at New York Magazine, is known for his coverage of health care for trans youth — as well as for the firestorm of criticism those pieces have attracted.

Singal and supporters say that his reporting highlights medical uncertainties with the state of trans health care, while opponents, including prominent advocates and members of the trans community, say that the articles contain slanted interpretations of the facts, and claim the writer attempts to manipulate the fraught debate over the welfare of trans and gender-dysphoric children and teens in favor of right-wing viewpoints.

Each side asserts that the presence of the other on Bluesky makes them unsafe. Accusations of harassment have long flown fast and furious on social media, and intensified after Singal created an account on the platform last month. Many members of the site’s left-leaning user base identify as LGBTQ+, and migrated from X after that platform was purchased by Elon Musk, who significantly loosened content moderation standards, leading to an explosion of bigotry. Nearly 25,000 of these Bluesky users have now signed a petition calling for Singal’s account to be banned over alleged violations of the platform’s more strict rules. The central allegation is that Singal reported on the therapy notes of a trans teenager without that teen’s permission, which Singal has defended by asserting that the shared sentences are non-identifying of the teen.

Other accusations include that Singal has, on his X account and other platforms, attempted to coordinate the harassment of trans people, by sharing screenshots to his larger audience of comments made by small accounts. Although Singal has courted the controversy – “Think of how mad it will make some of the worst people on the internet” for his readers to join Bluesky, reads one post – the screenshotted remarks he shows frequently contain extreme language, including death threats. Meanwhile, trans users, and, according to critics, particularly users who engage with Singal, receive similarly abusive treatment, including misgendering, bigotry and incitements to suicide. While Singal’s readerbase has been cited as the source of this abuse, Bluesky’s anonymous nature makes it near-impossible to tell whether the writer’s community is actually behind it, or whether other online trolls are pouncing on the opportunity.

Bluesky, for its part, has taken the stance that Singal’s account, which was temporarily banned while the site investigated, has not violated guidelines, and has encouraged users to tailor their experience through the use of blocking and blocklists. Staff have also said that a massive surge of new accounts made after last month’s election, spurred by a perceived rightward swing on X, has made content policing very difficult, with its safety team reporting that it has “received more reports in two days than in all of last year,” and asking for patience while the site adjusts.

Angry users say this isn’t enough, though, and demand the site go further by preemptively banning “bad actors,” with many fearing that without extensive efforts by the moderation team, the site risks becoming more similar to X and potentially leaving marginalized users unprotected. Other users, however, say overeager bannings could risk the site becoming an echo chamber. Whether the site’s future is as a more curated or more freewheeling platform appears to be up in the air, as its user base develops.

Singal has also previously said that the harassment has hit close to home, literally – the writer shared a photo of a flyer insinuating he posed a danger to children, allegedly posted near his Brooklyn house.