Bluesky experienced explosive growth last year. This requires the platform to increase its moderation efforts. In its recently published version Moderation report For 2024, Bluesky said it grew by about 23 million users, going from 2.9 million users to nearly 26 million. And its moderators received 17 times as many user reports as in 2023 – 6.48 million in 2024 compared to 358,000 the previous year.
The majority of these reports related to “harassment, trolling, or intolerance,” spam, and misleading content (including impersonation and misinformation). The presence of accounts impersonating other people as Bluesky and the platform rise in popularity with a more “aggressive” approach to combating it. At that time it was said that the moderation team had quadrupled. According to the new report, Bluesky’s moderation team has grown to about 100 and hiring is ongoing. “Some moderators specialize in certain policy areas, such as specific child safety officers,” it says.
Other categories that Bluesky says it has received many reports about include “illegal and urgent issues” and unwanted sexual content. There were also 726,000 reports marked as “other”. Bluesky says it complied with 146 requests from “law enforcement, governments and law firms” out of a total of 238 last year.
The platform plans to make some changes to the way it handles reports and appeals this year, which it says will “streamline communication with users,” such as providing users with updates on actions taken they have taken regarding the content they reported, and later users can also appeal takedown decisions directly in the app. Moderators deleted 66,308 accounts in 2024, while the automated systems deleted 35,842 spam and bot profiles. “As we look to 2025, we are investing in stronger proactive detection systems to complement user reporting, as a growing network requires multiple detection methods to quickly identify and address malicious content,” says Bluesky.
