Open-source Twitter alternative Bluesky is about to test one of its more ambitious ideas: letting its users control their own ideas. . The change will allow Bluesky users and developers to work together to create custom tagging tools for the budding social media platform.
The new moderation tools come as Bluesky sees increased growth after getting rid of its waiting list for all users in February. Since then, the service has added nearly 2 million new users and slightly surpassed its total community .
The company said its approach to moderation is based on the same philosophy that led to its adoption. algorithms. Bluesky wrote in a blog post that the goal is to create “an ecosystem of moderation and open source security tools that empowers communities to create their own spaces with their own norms and preferences.”
In practice, these moderation tools will take the form of tagging services. As Bluesky allows users to set moderation preferences — for example, you can choose whether the app “shows,” “warns,” or “hides” public content — developers will be able to create their own filtering systems that others can input. “For example, someone could create a moderation service from Bluesky that blocks photos of spiders — let’s call it Spider Shield,” the company explains. “If you dread seeing spiders in your peaceful nature feed, you can install this moderation service and any tagged spider images will be instantly removed from your experience.”
To make such experiments possible, Bluesky is open-sourcing its collaborative tagging tool , which will allow moderator groups to respond to reports and add tags to content. But the company notes that developers can also create automated tagging systems using the Bluesky API.
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber referred to the concept as “combinable” or “stackable” moderation. “We always pre-moderate, which means we give you a default moderation experience when you log in [to Bluesky]”,” Graber told Engadget last month. “And on top of that, you can customize things.”
According to the company, these new third-party tagging services will be available on Bluesky’s desktop version later this week, with a mobile version coming “soon.” It’s likely that users will see more options in the coming weeks as more developers and teams get their hands on the core tools.
