Journalist Jesse Singal has not been met with a warm reception since joining Bluesky, a social media platform that developed as a popular alternative for left-leaning posters leaving Elon Musk’s X.
Singal joined the site over a week ago and said he was suspended twice after users mass-reported him.
Now, he’s facing a chorus of calls to be banned from the platform for his past writing on transgender topics.
In some cases, those calls have devolved into death threats.
Singal has previously been accused of penning anti-transgender articles and was deemed by GLAAD someone who “used their platforms, influence, and power to spread misinformation and harm LGBTQ people.”
In its explanation, GLAAD cited Singal questioning whether medical intervention is appropriate for children who say they’re transgender and misinterpreting a study about trans children desisting as some examples.
It’s criticism Singal refutes, noting critics have incorrectly reported on him, and he long ago corrected the mistake GLAAD cites.
According to the data tracker ClearSky, he’s now the most blocked user on BlueSky, with nearly 75,000 users ousting him from their feeds.
A petition to ban him from the site has reached nearly 25,000 names, with signatories stating that the platform needs to remain a safe space for transgender users, who were some of the first posters to leave X when Musk took over.
“Bluesky is one of the few spaces I feel safe and confident in my transness, and it disgusts me to see this safety threatened by the inaction of the Trust and Safety Team against Singal, a known bad actor, transphobe, and misogynist, who has provably violated the Bluesky Terms of Service,” one signatory wrote. “There is no excuse for his continued existence on the platform.”
“We came to Bluesky to escape the bad enforcement of community guidelines that Twitter had since it had changed to X, we do not want history to repeat itself,” commented someone else.
But the longer Singal has remained on the platform, the stronger the push to oust him has become.
On the site, users changed their handles to advocate for the site to block him, with some including a number of defamatory claims.
Others resorted to death threats.
In a statement to the Daily Dot on Monday, Singal said that he chooses “to write about controversial subjects, and as a result, a lot of people have gotten mad at me online over the years, from right-wing Breitbart readers to social-justice lefties.”
“Some of these incidents have been deeply unpleasant. You can’t be a journalist and get mad about the occasional random loon screaming at you over Facebook,” he continued. “But the blowup I’ve experienced on Bluesky over the last few days has been different and much worse than anything I’ve previously encountered online in terms of its sheer scale and the quantity of credible threats of violence.”
In a thread on X, Singal highlighted eight Bluesky users posting about him dying.
One such screenshot showed a Bluesky user arguing that banning Singal would be in his best interest because “the more he keeps tormenting people the more likely it is that one of them will snap and end his life.”
“He is safest when we don’t have to think about him,” the user added.
Another screenshot he shared showed a user saying Singal should not be banned from Bluesky, but rather, “if Jesse were beaten to death with a hammer we wouldn’t jave [sic] to see his posts.”
“i think if we all tried hard enough we could get Jesse Singal to kill himself, but that’s just me,” another screenshot shared by Singal reads.
Singal concluded that “there’s a culture of just total impunity over there when it comes to violence.”
Amid the drama, few are happy at the rapidly expanding platform, from users upset about Singal’s continued presence on it to those angered by Bluesky’s handling of the posts directed at Singal.
“Horrifying what is happening at Bluesky. Sociopaths have stirred up a massive smear campaign against journalist Jesse Singal,” commented one person. “Hundreds of people are piling on with scurrilous allegations.”
“It is pretty surprising to me that [Bluesky] decided to make ‘death threats are OK’ a dimension of product differentiation relative to Twitter,” remarked data scientist David Shor.
“Bluesky users be like ‘It’s so much less toxic and hateful here… now get in loser, we’re hunting Jesse Singal for bloodsport,’” quipped someone else.
And Singal himself has complained about the lack of moderation, writing on X Saturday that he has tried to contact Bluesky to no avail.
“Moderation on Bluesky: Someone talks about the need to kill you. Bluesky takes no action on their account,” he wrote alongside screenshots of the threats. “The situation gets worse and the threats increase. You try to contact someone at Bluesky. No one responds. The guy who threatened to kill you comes back to call you a pussy for complaining.”
Singal told the Daily Dot that he reached out to Bluesky’s team on Saturday, and “to call their response ‘sluggish’ would be far too complimentary.”
“When it comes to addressing violent threats, Bluesky’s moderation system is completely broken, overwhelmed by the large recent influx of new users, or both,” he said.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Bluesky for comment.
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