Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | News | October 6, 2025
It all started with waffles — specifically, this post:
I don’t spend much time on social media anymore (it’s not good for you, folks!), but when I do, it’s on Bluesky with a carefully curated feed. Still, from what I occasionally see while checking the Discover feed, this post is a pretty funny take on some of the outrage culture on Bluesky — a place where people are regularly scolded for forgetting to provide alt text for their images.
Honestly, that should’ve been the end of it. Bluesky users could’ve shared a self-deprecating laugh and moved on. But that’s not where it ended, because Bluesky’s CEO, Jay Graber, decided to weigh in. The CEO should never weigh in.
First of all, what Graber wants to fix isn’t fixable — it comes with the territory. Power users on any platform often have a vision of what that platform should be, and when it doesn’t align with that vision, they get angry. If Graber wants to keep vocal transphobes on the platform she runs, that’s her right. It’s also the users’ right to be upset about it. What Graber shouldn’t have done, however, was minimize a user’s desire for a platform free of transphobia. That’s just assholery. It’s one thing to allow people with different opinions to express themselves on a free social platform; it’s another to mock those who feel marginalized by that decision.
Naturally, it spiraled from there. Graber posted, “Harassing the mods into banning someone has never worked. And harassing people in general has never changed their mind.” Someone replied, “Social shame is the most powerful tool of social control,” and added, “You have no choice but to apologize. Or we’ll organize a mass move to other apps that connect to each other and it won’t matter to us if you ban us. But it will destroy the value of bsky dot app. So hubris & destruction vs humility & survival. Don’t be stupid just cuz you don’t like being yelled at.”
And again, even on an app she controls, sometimes silence is free — but that’s not what she chose. “Are you paying us? Where?” she asked one user. To the one above, she said, “You could try a poster’s strike. I hear that works.” Again, the tone comes off as petty and defensive. And it’s not like Graber was directing that tone toward trolls or bad-faith actors — she was responding that way to users who feel marginalized by the platform’s policies.
In the midst of this, folks on Reddit claimed Graber was banning users who criticized her. I can’t speak to whether there’s evidence of that, but a user named Link was banned after being critical of Graber. That said, the same user also posted a Charlie Kirk meme that was at least questionable — in context, it could be read as jokingly encouraging political violence against Graber. Some people disagree, but I’d say I wouldn’t feel comfortable if someone posted that in response to something I wrote.
That aside, it’s one thing to quietly moderate a site in a certain way, and another for users to poke fun at the culture of overreaction in some circles. But it’s a whole different story when the CEO gets involved and starts acting flippant and dismissive toward legitimate user concerns.
