Bluesky 2025 Transparency Report
by emschwartz on 1/29/2026, 11:48:14 PM
https://bsky.social/about/blog/01-29-2026-transparency-report-2025
Comments
by: comex
In 2024, Bluesky wrote about their "Stackable Approach to Moderation":<p><a href="https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderation" rel="nofollow">https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...</a><p>Now in 2026, their transparency report says nothing about stackable moderation or moderation services. I guess nobody is using them, at least not in significant enough volumes that it would have a meaningful effect on the at least not enough for them to have a meaningful effect on the Trust & Safety team's job.<p>Likewise, they tout "thousands of Personal Data Servers operated by people across the federated AT Protocol network", but that's out of "41.41M users".<p>It's fine, I guess. It's just not meaningfully decentralized.
1/30/2026, 9:40:20 PM
by: gary_0
I absolutely do not understand moving "report spam" under "report misleading". The UX for this is terrible. There are lots of bots posting SEO junk, at a rate and scale that definitely wastes resources, and now bsky has interfered with one of the signals it should be using to combat the problem.
1/30/2026, 9:09:10 PM
by: wiredone
“toxicity and inflammatory” does a lot of heavy lifting for Blueskys moderation team.<p>i find it’s pretty toxic, in a militant way… that doesn’t get moderated of course.<p>That’s “free expression” when it’s about topics blueskyers all agree on.<p><i>waits to be called a nazi</i>
1/30/2026, 8:57:50 PM
by: Diti
Their ban of “non-consensual sexual imagery” made several acquaintances of mine – furry art illustrators – move to harmful communities on questionable Mastodon servers.<p>I’m growing tired of those bans on legal content that isn’t inherently harmful (we are talking about fictional humanized animals here) but considered “icky” by platforms and payment processors.<p>So I don’t care if the AT protocol is technologically superior to ActivityPub (?) – the Mastodon community has a healthier moderation and mindset than Bluesky, in my opinion.
1/30/2026, 9:44:18 PM
by: imagetic
I disabled reposts and quoted posts to knock the noise down to 0. Since then I've enjoyed my time on Bluesky. In many ways it feels like old Twitter with simple filtering and I think that's what people wanted?!?<p>But Twitter felt cringe to me long before it was consumed by Musk and politics. Messing with the feed has backfired all of the big platforms. First Facebook then Twitter and most recently Instagram.<p>They all became a closed loop of content that is force fed. Injecting an ad in the a feed we control wasn't ever enough.
1/30/2026, 10:07:10 PM
by: midius
> As the largest host of accounts and default port of entry for people joining Bluesky, we maintained 24/7 moderation operations throughout 2025, with specialized teams focused on critical areas like child safety.<p>so it's _not_ that hard.
1/30/2026, 8:48:02 PM
by: uwemaurer
Here are some independent stats: <a href="https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth" rel="nofollow">https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth</a>
1/30/2026, 9:05:46 PM
by: dom96
> By the end of 2025, we had verified 4,327 accounts total: 3,567 verified directly by Bluesky and 777 verified by our network of 21 Trusted Verifiers.<p>It would be nice to see some more transparency around the decisions of whether an account gets verified or not. So far it’s feeling like a “cool club” with little rhyme or reason with regards to certain verification decisions.<p>Related to that is also the need to add more trusted verifiers. Are there any plans to allow third parties to provide verification services or is it always only going to be journalistic and educational institutions?
1/30/2026, 9:48:38 PM
by: RNanoware
I haven't been particularly active on any social media for a while. It wasn't an intentional decision on my part as much as finding my social community using those tools less and less.<p>But I remember the early days of MySpace and Facebook with a certain nostalgia, and I'm pained to see the current state of all these tools. Such a thorough report as this gives me a little hope that perhaps an acceptable middle ground can be found for Internet communities at large scales.<p>I don't think I'll be hopping back in any time soon, but perhaps the research and positive advancements in social media aren't over yet.
1/30/2026, 9:01:40 PM
by: direwolf20
They publish this because the EU requires it, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
1/30/2026, 9:29:15 PM
by: vladms
Good they moderate. Most interesting is that they report a 60% increase user increase, up to 41M users. Considering how bad I heard "the other network" is now I wonder why so few.<p>I have a look at Bluesky from time to time and there is (for me ofc) as much info/interesting stuff as I was getting from the other one before the acquisition.
1/30/2026, 8:53:05 PM
by: egorfine
It's truly sad to see social networks being complicit in doxxing their users under the guise of "think of the children" by requiring age checks.
1/30/2026, 10:14:56 PM