Bluesky Safety

Bluesky has grown by over 3M people in the last week — welcome!

With every wave of growth naturally comes an increase in moderation reports. Here’s a status report on how the Trust & Safety team is handling it:

1/ With more users joining Bluesky, we know how important it is to identify which accounts are real. Users deserve confidence that the accounts they interact with are authentic.

Sharing some details about our impersonation policy 🧵

We're rolling out an update shortly to email verification to prevent harassment and trolling from throwaway accounts.

New users may need to verify their account email before they can create a post.

Thanks for your understanding!

1/6 We're seeing an uptick in scams pretending to be Bluesky or @aaron.bsky.team. These scammers are targeting artists via DMs, trying to take you off-app. Our moderation team is reviewing reports of these scammers and will take down their accounts. Here are some important reminders:

Reply to @safety.bsky.app

With this significant influx of users, we’ve also seen increased spam, scam, and trolling activity — you may have seen some of this yourself.

Our team is reviewing these accounts, and you can help us by reporting them by clicking the three-dot menu on each post/account.

🔐 Account Security Thread 🔐
We're seeing an increased number of phishing and social engineering attempts targeting Bluesky users. While we're working hard to protect you, here are essential steps YOU can take to secure your account and stay safe. 1/10
🧵👇

In the past month alone, over 12M people joined Bluesky, with daily active users growing 10x. We received more reports in two days than in all of last year, and have integrated new systems and quadrupled our moderation team to try and keep up. Sometimes, we have to work quickly to correct errors.

In 2024, Bluesky grew from 2.9M to 25.9M users. With this growth came anticipated challenges in scaling Trust & Safety, from adding workstreams to adapting to new harms.

In our newly published 2024 Moderation Report, we share details on what the year looked like for our Trust & Safety team.

Bluesky 2024 Moderation Report - Bluesky

Throughout 2024, our Trust & Safety team has worked to protect our growing userbase and uphold our community standards.

We're excited that verification badges have made it easier to quickly recognize authentic accounts, especially in moments of breaking news.

Now, we're expanding our roll-out. Notable and authentic accounts can apply for verification or to become a Trusted Verifier via the form linked in our blog.

A New Form of Verification on Bluesky - Bluesky

We’re introducing a new layer of verification — a user-friendly, easily recognizable blue check. Additionally, independent organizations can verify accounts directly through our Trusted Verifiers feat...

Bluesky @bsky.app

We’re introducing a new layer of verification on Bluesky — a user-friendly, easily recognizable blue check. In addition to account verification issued by Bluesky, we're also introducing Trusted Verifiers. Select independent organizations can verify accounts directly.

This has been a big year for elections globally, and we’re a few days away from the U.S. Presidential election.

Here’s how our team, led by @aaron.bsky.team who previously led election integrity efforts at Twitter, is preparing:

Direct Messages (DMs) are now available on Bluesky!

Learn more about the built-in safety features and how to use them 🧵:

Bluesky @bsky.app

Now available: DMs! Start a private conversation with a friend directly on Bluesky within the Chat tab. 💬 Update to the latest version of the app (1.83) or refresh on desktop to start chatting!

Glorifying violence or harm violates Bluesky’s Community Guidelines. We review reports and take action on content that celebrates harm against anyone. Violence has no place in healthy public discourse, and we’re committed to fostering healthy, open conversations

Reply to @safety.bsky.app

2/ We are working behind the scenes to help many organizations and high-profile individuals set up their verified domain handles. In the meantime, we’ve updated our impersonation policy to be more aggressive. Impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed.

Reply to @safety.bsky.app

6/ We also hear your feedback: users want more ways to verify their identity beyond domain verification. We’re exploring additional options to enhance account verification, and we hope to share more shortly.

In the latest app update, we added the ability to temporarily deactivate your account. This will hide your profile and posts but keep your handle reserved. Take a breather for as long as you need to!

Read more about how account deactivation works on Bluesky: 🧵 /1

We're rolling out email verification in the latest Bluesky app release (1.52), as part of a larger effort to improve account security and authentication on the network.

Update and verify your email in Settings. In the coming days, you'll also receive an in-app prompt to verify your email.

Reply to @safety.bsky.app

4/ Parody, satire, or fan accounts are allowed on Bluesky, but they must clearly label themselves in both the display name and bio to help others know the account isn’t official. Accounts with only one of these elements will receive an impersonation label.

Programming note: Bluesky’s moderation email is [email protected]. Moderation emails sent from this domain are authentic. You can also use this email to submit more complex reports that don’t fit in the in-app reporting method.

Reply to @safety.bsky.app

It’s clear these changes missed the mark, so we’re rolling them back. We’ll be working on a solution that better balances the varying needs of all our users and will provide more information before we roll out additional changes.

Reply to @safety.bsky.app

5/ Identity churning (changing your account identity with the intent to mislead users) is not allowed on Bluesky. If you set up an impersonation account just to gain followers and switch to a different identity that is no longer impersonation to keep that account, your account will be removed.

Bluesky is built to give users control over their social spaces online. Today, we’re open sourcing Ozone, a tool that lets users collaboratively inspect and label content on the network.

Later this week, we’re opening up the ability for users to run their own independent moderation services.

Bluesky’s Stackable Approach to Moderation - Bluesky

Today, we’re open sourcing Ozone, a tool that lets a team of moderators or curators collaboratively review reports, create labels, and inspect content on the atproto network. Later this week, we’re op...

We’ve invested in cutting down DM spam over the past week, so you should see fewer scammers and spammers in your inbox. Expect more improvements in this area as we build additional tooling.

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This is a big quarter for Trust and Safety here, as we work on a large number of improvements.

Here’s a look at our projects in progress, including ban evasion and multi-account detection capabilities, toxicity and spam detection, sending feedback on moderation reports you submit, and more.

Bluesky’s Current Efforts on Trust and Safety - Bluesky

This is a big quarter for Trust and Safety at Bluesky, as we work on a large number of improvements. Here’s a preview of everything that is in progress.

Texas passed an age assurance law that requires Bluesky to verify the age of users. This law was paused by a judge and then unpaused by an appeals court, so we are preparing to comply.

If you saw an age assurance notice today, that's why. Read about the law here: ccianet.org/news/2026/05...

Appeals Court Pauses Injunction on Texas’ App Store Law that Likely Violates First Amendment - CCIA

Washington – A federal court agreed with the Texas Attorney General’s request to temporarily lift a block of the state’s controversial App Store