Social media startup Bluesky, which is building a decentralized alternative to X (formerly Twitter), offered an update Wednesday on how it is addressing various trust and security concerns on its platform. The company is in various stages of developing and testing a number of initiatives focused on dealing with malicious actors, harassment, spam, fake accounts, video security and more.
To tackle malicious users or those who harass others, Bluesky says it is developing new tools that will be able to detect when multiple new accounts are created and managed by the same person. This could help reduce harassment, where a malicious actor creates several different personas to attack their victims.
Another new experiment will help detect “rude” responses and display them to server moderators. Similar to Mastodon, Bluesky will support a network where self-hosters and other developers can run their own servers that connect to the Bluesky server and others on the network. This federation capability is Still in early accessHowever, in the future, server moderators will be able to decide how they want to deal with those who post rude responses. In the meantime, Bluesky will reduce the visibility of these responses on its app over time. Repeated rude tags in content will also lead to account-level tags and suspensions, it says.
To reduce the use of lists to harass others, Bluesky will remove individual users from a list if they block the list creator. Similar functionality was recently implemented in starter packs, which are a type of shareable list that can help new users find people to follow on the platform (see below). britcommerce Starter Pack).
Bluesky will also be looking for listings with abusive names or descriptions to reduce the chance of people harassing others by adding them to a public listing with a toxic or abusive name or description. Those who violate Bluesky’s Community Standards will remain hidden from the app until the listing owner makes changes to comply with Bluesky’s standards. Users who continue to create abusive listings will also face further enforcement, though the company did not provide details, adding that listings remain an area of active discussion and development.
In the coming months, Bluesky will also move to handling moderation reports through its app via notifications, rather than relying on email reporting.
To combat spam and other fake accounts, Bluesky is launching a pilot project that will attempt to britcommerceally detect when an account is fake, scamming or spamming users. Along with moderation, the goal is to be able to take action on accounts within “seconds of receiving a report,” the company said.
One of the most interesting developments is how Bluesky will comply with local laws while still allowing for freedom of expression. It will use specific geotags that will allow it to hide content from users in a certain area in order to comply with the law.
“This allows Bluesky’s moderation service to maintain the flexibility to create a space for free expression, while ensuring legal compliance so that Bluesky can continue to operate as a service in those geographies,” the company shared in a blog post. “This feature will be rolled out on a country-by-country basis and we will aim to inform users about the origin of legal requests wherever legally possible.”
To address potential trust and safety issues around videos, which were recently added, the team is adding features like the ability to turn off autoplay for videos, making sure videos are labeled, and ensuring they can be reported. It’s still evaluating what else should be added, which will be prioritized based on user feedback.
When it comes to abuse, the company says its general framework is to “ask how often something happens versus how harmful it is.” The company focuses on addressing high-harm, high-frequency issues, while also “tracking edge cases that could result in serious harm to a few users.” The latter, while only affecting a small number of people, cause enough “ongoing harm” for Bluesky to take steps to prevent abuse, it says.
User concerns can be raised through reports, emails and mentions to the @seguridad.bsky.app account.