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The X rival is open-sourcing its content moderation tool, allowing users to choose their own filters and hide certain posts.
While X – formerly Twitter – has been in hot water in recent months over its content moderation practices, another social media platform is giving users more control over this task.
Bluesky, the platform funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has announced plans to make its moderation tool open source, allowing users to create their own independent moderation services.
The social media site was announced in 2019 as a Twitter-funded project that aimed to create an “open and decentralised standard for social media”.
Its latest move aims to address the challenge of addressing moderation in a world with many different countries, cultures and communities. In a blogpost, the Bluesky team said it wants to build “an ecosystem of moderation and open-source safety tools that gives communities power to create their own spaces, with their own norms and preferences”.
Later this week, users will be able to install filters from independent moderation services. These filters will be stackable to help users create “a customised experience”. For example, someone could create a moderation service that blocks photos of spiders. Users could then subscribe to this moderation service, which would hide any labelled spider pictures from their feed.
The moderation tool Bluesky is open sourcing to make this happen is called Ozone. While users can already run ‘mute’ or ‘block’ lists that other users can subscribe to, it can be hard to manage this as a form of moderation service because it becomes tied to a single account.
Bluesky said Ozone makes this system more nuanced, allowing posts to be added instead of just accounts, and allowing the services to be managed by multiple users. “Tooling designed for teams and communities can help take the burden off individuals and make it possible to run a sustainable moderation service,” the company stated.
“We’re excited about opening the ecosystem to empower experts, developers and users with local context to provide their own input that you can additionally subscribe to, on top of Bluesky’s moderation service.”
The announcement follows Bluesky’s move from invite-only to a fully open social media platform. Last month, Dublin-based Aaron Rodericks was announced as the company’s head of trust and safety. Rodericks previously co-led trust and safety at its rival X. At the time of his new appointment, Rodericks said there is an “urgent global need” for a social network that can safely and effectively meet the needs of communities and individuals.
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