The decentralised social media platform Bluesky, backed by former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, has put forward its proposals for content moderation and safety.
Bluesky runs on the AT Protocol and aims to deliver a social media experience where users take a community-centric approach to moderation. While currently controlled by the Bluesky team, the eventual goal is to allow users to move to other social media platforms on the protocol to prevent a walled garden structure and achieve true decentralisation.
The three Bluesky proposals focus on user lists, reply-gating, and thread moderation; labelling and moderation controls; and hashtags.
User lists delve into how Blueksy users can curate lists and then share these lists or keep them private.
The proposals also covered controlling who could reply to posts, to keep out random users and instead encourage trusted community members to participate. There were several proposed mechanisms to control the quality of replies on a thread.
Meanwhile, a document on labelling practices set down details of the kind of mature content that could be identified and how they might affect moderation practices. Furthermore, a document on hashtags discussed making them more accessible and “consistently useful.”
“All of these proposals are still subject to some technical challenges. The concept of “Block Lists,” for instance, have been held up for weeks due to some unsolved concerns about fan-out costs. We’re sharing these proposals with perhaps 75% confidence that those technical challenges will be solvable,” said Bluesky’s document.
The proposals are published on GitHub.
Bluesky app users will also get a new set of Community Guidelines that prohibits discrimination, encouragement of harm, criminal media, and misleading impersonation. Those who violate the guidelines will be suspended or removed permanently, while their posts may be taken down.
Bluesky is currently in private beta, with select users getting invites in order to join the platform so that features can be improved without dealing with an unmanageable influx of accounts or bad faith actors.
Bluesky’s CEO is Jay Graber, while Dorsey is on the board of directors.
