A Bit of Tedious Drama At Bluesky

The Popehat Report<br>Posts<br>A Bit of Tedious Drama At Bluesky

A Bit of Tedious Drama At Bluesky<br>Bluesky Can Ban Whoever They Want! But They Won’t Stop Me From Saying What I Think. I Think The World Would Be A Better Place Without Elon Musk.

Ken White<br>June 24, 2026

Recently I got suspended for four days from Bluesky for posting this:

My suspension is over now. But I believe that returning after a suspension carries with it an implicit promise that I won’t post that, or something like it, again. I won’t make that promise, so I won’t return to Bluesky.

Regarding Suspension

I’ll talk about what I said and why I meant it. But before that, I have three points about being suspended.

First, I’ll repeat what I’ve said many times: Bluesky and other social media platforms can suspend or ban whomever they want for whatever reason they want. Bluesky’s moderation policies are an expression of its free speech and free association rights, as surely as my decision what to post there (or whom to block there). I may think their expressive choices are stupid, but I think a lot of people’s expressive choices are stupid, and so do you. It’s their right.

Second, I have no idea whether this suspension represented a human being’s decision. Bluesky uses automated moderation because it has to. Bluesky couldn’t use human moderation without charging everyone a ludicrous amount to post on Bluesky. I firmly agree with Mike Masnick’s long-standing rule that good content moderation is impossible to do at scale. A number of twerps and anti-anti-Trump mediocrities pretended to be exercised over the post; there’s a good chance that some sort of mass report campaign resulted in an auto-suspension almost two weeks after the fact. I submitted an “appeal,” which may also have been evaluated by machines, or maybe not. It really doesn’t matter: either humans decided on the suspension, or decided not to lift it, or decided to create the system that imposed it automatically.

Third, I’m not a victim. Don’t cry for me, Bluesky. I said what I said deliberately, knowing the risks. I will miss the parasocial relationships with many cool people, but some of those will be rebuilt elsewhere. It’s social media, not life. Moreover, I’m fortunate. I have lots of channels to express myself. I am in a far better position than the average Bluesky user who gets banned for lashing out — most often, lashing out at transphobia, or racism, or other stuff. Bluesky has a moderation mindset (or at least a moderation AI) that views some rando saying “the world would be a better place if Elon Musk were not in it” as being far worse than Elon Musk and people like him encouraging violence and pogroms. I knew what I was getting into.

Regarding Elon Musk and His Ilk

Now, I’ll address the substance of what I said. I meant every word. Moreover, I was right, and most of the outrage is contrived, dishonest, and in bad faith.

The context for the statement was Elon Musk’s ongoing efforts to use Twitter — his extremely powerful and influential toy, the algorithms of which boost his every thought — to incite racial violence against immigrants in the UK. This is not unusual. Elon Musk regularly encourages, by his own posts or boosting other posts, that the right people should use violence against immigrants and against race-traitor whites.

I could argue this point — try to persuade you — but it’s pointless. The possibilities are these: you already know and you’re appalled, you already know and you support it, or you’ll never be persuaded, any more than a Trump supporter can be persuaded that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen.

The other crucial context is that the current leadership of the United States is increasingly intent on promoting white nationalist hostility and clash-of-civilizations narratives to encourage hatred of immigrants everywhere. Whether it’s Pete Hegseth comparing immigration to the D-Day invasion or Trumpists promoting the noxious Camp of the Saints or the administration turning official social media channels into fonts of Nazi iconography, the Trump Administration supports and promotes the same racial narrative as Musk. Once again: either you know it and hate it, know it and love it, or will never acknowledge it.

Elon Musk is the world’s richest man — a trillionaire, briefly, until a market correction. He and his ideology are also supported by the administration of the most powerful nation on Earth. He is immune to normal social, economic, political, or legal limits. He can use his hugely influential platform to encourage pogroms without social, economic, political, or legal consequences.

It’s simply factual to say, as I did, that the only thing that will stop him is dying. Because my medium was a short Bluesky post, I mentioned him being killed. I suppose it would also stop him if he overdosed on Ketamine or choked on a piece of steak or got ass cancer or crashed one of his vehicles or something. But that would make a...