Bluesky Enhances Safety with Automated Moderation and User Lists

Bluesky, the startup with ambitions to create a decentralized social network as a competitor to Twitter/X, has announced deploying new safety tools to assist in content moderation through automation. While still in private beta, the company has faced scrutiny for content moderation issues, including the initial failure to ban a member from making death threats and the oversight of racial slurs in user accounts.

In a post from the Bluesky Safety account, the company revealed the introduction of "more advanced automated tooling" designed to identify content violating its Community Guidelines. Bluesky's moderation team will review the flagged content for a final determination.

The post read, "We’ll iterate on this so that mods can review offensive content, spam, etc. without any user seeing it first."

Bluesky also announced the reinstatement of the ability for users to report their posts for mislabeled content, aiding the moderation team in correcting inaccuracies. The company highlighted its commitment to allowing users to note if their posts contain adult content directly from the compose screen on Bluesky's app. Until then, other accounts can submit reports regarding incorrect labels on behalf of users.

Additional features introduced by Bluesky include user lists (generic lists of users), moderation lists (lists enabling users to mute or block multiple users simultaneously), synchronization of users' moderation preferences between devices, and removing adult content labels from posts without images.

In parallel to content moderation enhancements, Bluesky is developing a feature akin to X's, allowing users to control who can respond to their posts. This feature enables users to limit replies to those they follow or users on specific lists, mirroring X's functionality that permits limiting replies to followers, verified accounts, or those mentioned by name.

However, some Bluesky users continue to advocate for private account settings, expressing an increased need following the announcement of a public web interface. This interface allows users without an invite to browse posts, prompting a desire for a private, friends-only account type. Other users are requesting the ability to remove followers and urging Bluesky to enforce strict account bans for guideline violations.