I suspect our politics are just too different for my attempts to defend the culture itself to be relevant, but it is super easy to cultivate what you see on Bluesky.

You can detach your posts if you get quote-reposted, you can limit who can reply to posts (to followers, people who follow you, people you've mentioned, or only to yourself), blocking someone also means that 3rd parties can't even view the threads (and so can't jump into drama that one side has attempted to disengage from), you can hide replies to your posts, blocklists let you immediately prevent large lists of users from seeing or interacting with you, and there's a culture among many users to immediately block people who are thought to be potential agitators (a very proactive culture of "don't feed the trolls").

If your experience was toxic, you probably just didn't use the tools available to you to avoid that toxicity.

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whimsicalism 2 days ago | parent [-]

i consider myself left-wing and found it very toxic. the ubiquitous blocking features are also a pretty big negative as i found myself blocked by a considerable portion of the site simply for following people in AI

site features can only go so far when there is a broader cultural ethos

	▲	_djo_ 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Honestly, getting on those blocklists is a benefit in and of itself, it means anyone who is radical enough to follow blocklists that block people just because of whom they follow won’t cross your path. There is an extremely toxic component to Bluesky’s user base, unfortunately, with the many attacks on the CEO for not banning Jesse Singal being testament to that. But for what it’s worth in the circles I’ve cultivated there I now see very little of those toxic people, and I don’t see any support for their behaviour. So I hope in time a more open culture will win out.