BlueSky Sees Rise in New Users and Harmful Content

BlueSky, the rapidly growing social media platform, has reported a significant uptick in harmful content alongside an influx of new users.

In response, the platform announced a widespread moderation effort aimed at removing inappropriate images from its network.

BlueSky's Safety account posted:

“We're experiencing a huge influx of users, and with that, a predictable uptick in harmful content posted to the network. As a result, for some very high-severity policy areas like child safety, we recently made some short-term moderation choices to prioritize recall over precision.”

Users Abandoned X for BlueSky

Following President-elect Donald Trump's recent victory, millions of users abandoned X (formerly known as Twitter), seeking alternative platforms.

This exodus resulted in significant growth for competitors, with Meta's Threads gaining 35 million new users and BlueSky, the decentralised platform founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, attracting 20 million in just three weeks.

This surge added to the more than one million Brazilians who had already joined BlueSky after a court in Brazil banned X in September.

BlueSky saw another spike in October after X owner Elon Musk announced that tweets could be used to train Grok AI, further driving users to the platform.

BlueSky Attempts Moderation Efforts Amidst Reports of Harmful Content

Amid its rapid growth, BlueSky has faced a troubling surge in harmful content, including spam, scams, and trolling, alongside an alarming increase in child sexual abuse material.

According to tech site Platformer, the platform confirmed two instances of child-oriented sexual content in 2023, but by early December, this number had risen to eight.

BlueSky confirmed:

“In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports.”

In response, BlueSky acknowledged that its aggressive moderation efforts might have led to instances of "over-enforcement," resulting in wrongful account suspensions.

Some accounts have been reinstated, while others remain under review for potential appeals.

The company expressed:

“We're expanding our moderation team as we grow to improve both the timeliness and accuracy of our moderation actions.”

To address these challenges, BlueSky partnered with Thorn, a nonprofit based in Los Angeles, in January to combat AI-generated deepfakes and other harmful content.

Thorn’s AI-driven Safer technology, which helps detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) across platforms, was integrated into BlueSky's moderation system.

This technology can identify not only explicit content but also text-based material that may indicate potential threats to children. X, which permits adult content, has also adopted Thorn's technology in an effort to reduce CSAM on its platform.

Thorn's VP of data science Rebecca Portnoff said:

“We've learned a lot from our beta testing. While we knew going in that child sexual abuse manifests in all types of content, including text, we saw concretely in this beta testing how machine learning/AI for text can have real-life impact at scale.”

European Commission Targets BlueSky for Breach of EU Regulations

BlueSky, the rapidly growing social media platform that gained traction after a mass exodus from Elon Musk's X, is now facing scrutiny from the European Commission for failing to disclose essential operational details.

Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier explained:

“All platforms in the EU . . . have to have a dedicated page on their website where it says how many users they have in the EU and where they are legally established. This is not the case for Bluesky as of today. This is not followed.”

This breach of EU regulations comes as thousands, including Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have recently joined the platform.

BlueSky's rise has been fuelled in part by Musk's endorsement of US President-elect Donald Trump and his decision to ease content moderation policies—moves that appear to have attracted a significant number of academics, journalists, and left-leaning politicians to the platform.

The European Commission has written to EU member states to investigate the platform's presence in the region, including efforts to determine if there is an EU-based office.

However, it has yet to directly contact BlueSky.

This intervention is part of a broader trend, as regulators intensify their focus on potential breaches of the EU's Digital Services Act, particularly with Musk's X under investigation for non-compliance regarding the spread of illegal content and misinformation.

Although BlueSky currently does not meet the threshold of 45 million monthly users required to be classified as a "very large online platform" under EU rules, the Commission has stated that if a representative office is identified, it will take further action.