There’s No Such Thing as a Backdoor for the Good Guys

There’s a saying in security that there’s “no such thing as a backdoor just for the ‘good guys’”. What this means is that, the second a vulnerability is created, even well intentioned vulnerabilities, that means a bad actor can exploit it.

There’s no way for Apple to build a backdoor into iPhones that only the FBI can use, so they didn’t build one despite being sued over it. If the FBI can get in, then anyone with enough know-how can get in.

There are other applications for this thought framework, one of the important ones now being in moderation tools for social media apps.

I’m just going to come right out and say it: forcing Bluesky into being the sole moderator of the platform is completely stupid and we shouldn’t be trying to force them into doing that.

The whole point of a decentralized system is that nobody has control over that kind of thing—at least not across the whole platform. There are plenty of levers to pull like modlists, blocking, muting, and the like, which are all viable solutions to making sure this content doesn’t get surfaced on your timelines.

Just because Bluesky isn’t run by someone like Elon Musk, doesn’t mean that’s always going to be the case. The second Bluesky has the sole discretion over who gets to be on the platform is the second it becomes just like Twitter. In a heartbeat the wrong person can take over and the platform becomes a right wing cesspool.

There are Mastodon servers where people talk about pedophilia, spout racism, coordinate dark political movements, and so on. This kind of evil exists on the platform, just like in the real world; there’s nothing you can do to stop people from being racist, but there are actions you can take to reduce their reach and their harm. Mastodon servers can de-federate from those evil instances. Nobody blames Eugen for them existing. Nobody tells the Mastodon team to do something about it, and ultimately there’s nothing the Mastodon team can do about it. Instead of taking the burden of moderation under their wing and allowing a centralized moderation system, they elected to give it to individual instances and to individual people. With these levers, those instances are shunned, they have no platform outside of their little echo chamber of hate. Bluesky should be working to give users and AppViews that kind of power as well.