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Bluesky 2025 Transparency Report
- midius 8mo ago> 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. so it's _not_ that hard.
- jajuuka 8mo agoI mean it's easy to say that. Roblox says that too. Bluesky is probably much easier though since it's not as big.
- vladms 8mo agoGood 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. 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.
- cryptoegorophy 8mo agoHow many are daily active users? I can’t find that info.
- sejje 8mo agoHow many are bots?
- luses 8mo ago[flagged]
- kattagarian 8mo agoYou can find more details here: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
- extraduder_ire 8mo agoThese are from posts/follows/likes. According to their CTO, about that same number of accounts on top of that don't do any of that and just visit/read the site.
- wiredone 8mo agothere actually isn’t much good content on the platform in my experience. it’s just people raging about trump and whatever brand they’re looking to try and cancel next. it’s so far from the greatness of the original twitter. no tech community or content.
- direwolf20 8mo agowhile trump should be raged about — in productive ways, ideally — it's not good content. nobody is signing up to see trump rage over and over.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo agoI have never been on twitter so I don't really know but I can agree that we see tech community in twitter but the same isn't really there in bluesky. Although I still have a web/programming which I follow and have found some people interesting from Hackernews and others too in bluesky (emsh,simonw) What is the HN consensus around lemmy? I really like lemmy and think that it might be better for tech stuff (almost similar to HN/reddit you can say and federated) I used to follow lemmy c/technology but I do feel like HN is pretty unique in its own manner. Regarding twitter alternative itself. Maybe mastodon too can be an alternative. Another minor nitpick about bluesky is that its 200 characters limits actually really removes the tech community from too deep discussions imo. Although I guess twitter had that limit for long time too until it got removed but now I do see sometimes some tweets which are really long (sometimes even complete blog?) It actually really (pissed?) me off so much that I ended up making a tampermonkey script which can actually write a long message automatically and split a message into 200 messages chunk and post them in a thread of sorts you can say although its very hacky and messy and it starts to glitch around 10 threads from what I remember.
- extraduder_ire 8mo agoIt's 300 characters. Have you considered writing it on leaflet.pub or something and linking it, if it's not a back and forth? There's already a + button in the post composer to split into multiple posts. I think there's a few tweetlonger-type services that people have tried to make, but with atproto they can at least embed that extra text into the post (100kb limit), so the site only needs to stick around to view it.
- bakugo 8mo agoA lot of people joined in late 2024, resulting in a peak of around 2.7M daily users, but most of those users ended up leaving soon after, likely because the site was just one big echo chamber of far left American politics around that time. It doesn't seem to be as bad anymore, a quick glance at the public feed suggests that the percentage of political posts has gone down, but considering how many times the word "toxic" appears in this linked blogpost, I'm guessing they're still banning anyone who expresses the "wrong" opinions, so the userbase is unlikely to grow much further in the future. It seems to have plateaued at around 1.2M daily likers. Source for the stats: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
- swed420 8mo ago> likely because the site was just one big echo chamber of far left American politics around that time. The US does not have a "far left" in any significant numbers, and never has. At least not in a self-aware sense. Maybe you meant to say liberal, to which I'd agree. That's not to say there isn't a "left" or "far left" on Bluesky, but there's no way it's a majority. I agree echo chambers are a problem there, which is why I only posted there briefly before leaving. One feature that seemed to exacerbate the formation of echo chambers was users sharing and blindly trusting mass block lists to silence things they didn't want to hear (leftists and liberals alike).
- frumplestlatz 8mo ago> The US does not have a "far left" in any significant numbers, and never has. Bluesky does, however. Clearly they've made that their target market, but that's also why growing beyond that base seems to be difficult for them,
- swed420 8mo agoNo. Pre-Musk twitter was a liberal cesspool (and now it's a conservative one). Most of those liberals jumped ship to Bluesky. Again, that's not to say lefists don't exist, but they are a tiny fraction, and always were a tiny fraction no matter what platform. Don't rule out bots that exist in numbers to make the actual left appear like a deranged spectacle as a form of controlled opposition. Both parties of capital interests have a role in and benefit from these.
- frumplestlatz 8mo ago> Good they moderate. I can moderate my own feed -- the majority of people don't need, want, or enjoy an overtly paternalistic hugbox, and especially if moderation tends to be unidirectionally skewed in one political direction. It's not surprising that growth is slow.
- SketchySeaBeast 8mo agoOn one side, sure, there's "overly paternalistic" moderation, but, on the other, there's AI powered revenge porn running rampant, so I'd argue there should be at least some moderation.
- frumplestlatz 8mo agoCalling a juvenile bikini edit "AI-powered revenge porn" is incorrect by definition. Revenge porn involves the non-consensual distribution of real, explicit sexual imagery of an identifiable person with the intent to cause harm. Lumping sophomoric image edits into that category is exactly the kind of moral and definitional inflation being actively used to manufacture pretext for suppressing speech under the guise of "moderation."
- SketchySeaBeast 8mo agoYou're right, we must be accurate in our terms, but that misclassifcation isn't worse than the act itself. The generation of deepfake non-consensual sexual images isn't revenge porn, because the woman in the image didn't even given initial consent. It being used to harass women is still a problem and is the sort of thing that requires moderation. It's not "sophomoric", it's exploitative and, in some states, illegal.
- frumplestlatz 8mo agoYou’ve agreed this isn’t revenge porn. The case for moderation must stand or fall under the correct classification. Harm has not been demonstrated. Annoyance or offense is not injury, and discomfort is not exploitation. Without evidence of systematic, material harm -- and without showing that enforcement would not introduce greater error and speech suppression -- the justification for moderation fails. Vague claims of illegality are irrelevant. A non-explicit image edit is not criminal in any US jurisdiction absent additional elements such as explicit sexual content, fraud, extortion, or targeted harassment; invoking “illegal in some states” -- without naming conduct and statute -- is just noise. "Put them in a bikini" is closer to low-effort mockery than to any recognized category of sexual harm. The level of alarm being applied here is grossly disproportionate to the act itself and is merely being used as a pretext for broader intervention.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- egorfine 8mo ago> Good they moderate. I'm not sure about that. I'd rather decide for myself what I want to read and what I do not. I'd love to not delegate this important decision to corporate overlords.
- wiredone 8mo ago“toxicity and inflammatory” does a lot of heavy lifting for Blueskys moderation team. i find it’s pretty toxic, in a militant way… that doesn’t get moderated of course. That’s “free expression” when it’s about topics blueskyers all agree on. waits to be called a nazi
- Xiol 8mo agoWhat topics cause you the most problems?
- spiderfarmer 8mo agoThe kind of topics that were popular in Germany circa 1939.
- frumplestlatz 8mo agoCase in point. "Everyone to the right of Marx is a Nazi" seems to be the rallying cry of their moderation strategy and user base. Which is fine -- build what you want to be a part of -- but don't pretend it's the neutral position.
- pfraze 8mo agoWhat about the moderation strategy indicates that?
- frumplestlatz 8mo agoTry participating in discussions with a politically disapproved position and see how fast you're shadow-banned. And no, I'm not talking about "1939 Germany" views.
- pfraze 8mo agoDid that happen to you, or to anybody you can point to?
- RNanoware 8mo agoI 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. 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. 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.
- uwemaurer 8mo agoHere are some independent stats: https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth
- pfraze 8mo agoFWIW these are based entirely on the firehose, which means it doesn't count lurkers. Our logged in DAU tends to be double the DAU of record-creators
- biggestfan 8mo agoSo ~3 million DAU? Would you consider publishing your own statistics?
- dsr_ 8mo agoSo the tracking pixels say almost everyone with a GMail address opened your email!
- slater 8mo agoAre they lagging (and thus their latest data points to zero) or are we led to believe that all stats are down since the beginning of this week...?
- pessimizer 8mo agoIt looks like an actual weird drop. Sort of mirroring a weird jump at the end of December. Here's another view that somebody else does: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
- gary_0 8mo agoI 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.
- direwolf20 8mo agoMaybe they're paying bsky. Occam's razor.
- pfraze 8mo agoOccam's razor takes you to a bribery conspiracy?
- hengheng 8mo agoHave you consumed any media in the last decades.
- kingstnap 8mo agoMoney inclusive or incompetence.
- direwolf20 8mo agoyes. bribery is extremely common and simple.
- direwolf20 8mo agoThey publish this because the EU requires it, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
- bdcp 8mo agoSo EU is the MVP
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- egorfine 8mo agoThey also perform age checks because various local laws require it, not because they are evil. They also perform age checks because they are evil and complicit with obviously detrimental local laws, not because they want to protect the children.
- psionides 8mo agoI don't think they fall under DMA at this size yet?
- comex 8mo agoIn 2024, Bluesky wrote about their "Stackable Approach to Moderation": https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderation https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati... 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. 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". It's fine, I guess. It's just not meaningfully decentralized.
- TimorousBestie 8mo ago> 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. It’s spread out over subgroups and niches. I imagine the biggest independent moderation service is blacksky’s, and they’re not exactly best friends with bluesky. I use about five different moderation services, and a handful of independent blocklists. > It's fine, I guess. It's just not meaningfully decentralized. It’s better than the situation on X.
- Diti 8mo agoTheir ban of “non-consensual sexual imagery” made several acquaintances of mine – furry art illustrators – move to harmful communities on questionable Mastodon servers. 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. 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.
- dragonwriter 8mo ago> Their ban of “non-consensual sexual imagery” made several acquaintances of mine – furry art illustrators – move to harmful communities on questionable Mastodon servers. Furry art, including quite explicit furry art, is very common on bluesky and doesn’t seem be especially restricted by policy. I mean, unless they also happen to be depicting nonconsensual sexual interactions, an orthogonal concern to the furry aspect. > 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. Well, you are free to avail yourself of the forums that lack those policies. Now, I know you’ve complained that they are “harmful”, but... Maybe there is a reason that other forums choose to put bans in place.
- gary_0 8mo ago> quite explicit furry art, is very common on bluesky Now there's an understatement. It's bloody impossible to get rid of. People here are sneering at all the political content but they're ignoring the curvaceous elephant in the room. I think maybe bsky has improved things now, but a while back their adult content filters were not up to the task. When I first made an account I almost gave up on it because until I got all the right filter words set up it was nothing but weird porn whac-a-mole (actually that's probably a poor choice of words...)
- riffraff 8mo agoFWIW, you don't need to join questionable communities to have your content on mastodon, e.g. Wordpress blogs can meaningfully participate on activitypub (people con repost, like, reply) so that may be an alternative for your friends, without the need to host a complex app, so long as they can get any Wordpress hosting. Discovery suffers tho.
- dom96 8mo ago> 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. 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. 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?
- tokyobreakfast 8mo ago> So far it’s feeling like a “cool club” with little rhyme or reason with regards to certain verification decisions. That's how Twitter started, and when the policy changed, the "cool club" members threw public tantrums (some of which still seethe to this day). It's all very high-school cafeteria clique to me.
- SketchySeaBeast 8mo agoRegardless, it was weird to try to convert that into a "I paid" check-mark.
- TimorousBestie 8mo ago> Are there any plans to allow third parties to provide verification services or is it always only going to be journalistic and educational institutions? Anyone can put together a moderation service that labels accounts that they’ve vetted or blacklisted. It wouldn’t be that taxing to host one, but the labor to maintain it is a different story.
- dom96 8mo agoYes, anyone can. But unless Bluesky treats it as a trusted verifier then it doesn’t have much practical use.
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- imagetic 8mo agoI 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?!? 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. 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.
- egorfine 8mo agoIt'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.
- extraduder_ire 8mo agoComplicit in the sense of complying with the law. What would you prefer they do? If it makes you feel any better, it's more trivially bypassed than any website age-gate I've ever seen. (that's more complicated than a checkbox)