Bluesky experienced explosive growth last year, especially towards the end, and the platform had to step up its moderation efforts. In its recently released 2024 moderation report, BlueSky said the number of users increased by about 23 million, jumping from 2.9 million to about 26 million. And the number of user reports received by moderators increased 17x in 2023. 6.48 million in 2024, compared to 358,000 the previous year.
The majority of these reports were related to “harassment, trolling, or intolerance,” spam, and misleading content (including impersonation and misinformation). As Bluesky’s popularity soared, the presence of accounts impersonating other people has become a known issue, and the platform updated its impersonation policy in November to take a “more aggressive” approach to enforcement. At the time, it announced that it had quadrupled its moderation team. According to a new report, Bluesky’s moderation team has grown to about 100 people and hiring continues. “Some moderators specialize in specific policy areas, such as dedicated child safety agents,” the report said.
In other categories, Blue Sky said it had received numerous reports of “unlawful and urgent issues” and unwanted sexual content. There were also 726,000 reports marked “Other.” Last year, Bluesky said it responded to 146 requests out of a total of 238 from “law enforcement, government, and law firms.”
The platform plans to make several changes to the way it handles reports and appeals this year, which it says will “streamline user communication.” For example, we will provide users with up-to-date information about the actions they have taken on the content they report, and in the future, we will also give users the ability to appeal removal decisions directly within the app. Moderators removed 66,308 accounts in 2024, and automated systems removed 35,842 spam and bot profiles. “As we move towards 2025, growing networks will require multiple detection methods to quickly identify and address harmful content, so we are building a more powerful proactive detection system to complement user reporting. ,” says Bruski.
