Bluesky now allows heads of states to sign up for the social networkSocial networking platform Bluesky lifted its ban on sign-ups for heads of state over the weekend.
This applies to recent/prominent heads of state as well,” the company had said at that time.
Bluesky faced moderation challenges early in its lifespan and battled issues like allowing racial slurs in handles.
With the social network now allowing political heads to join the platform, there could be new types of moderation issues that it hasn’t faced yet.
However, Bluesky users don’t have to rely on a central algorithm to look at different kinds of political content, as they can subscribe to different feeds.
The company’s vision for moderation is a stackable ecosystem of services, which is why it will start allowing users to install filters from independent moderation services on top of what Bluesky already requires.
For example, someone could create a moderation service that blocks images of spiders on the network.
Bluesky says installing filters from independent moderation services will be as easy as following another account.
People running moderation services will be able to set custom labels and determine what they do.
Moderation services aren’t tied to individual accounts, so multiple people can manage them together.
Decentralized Twitter/X rival Bluesky is adding to its ranks by scooping up a member of its developer community.
London-based software engineer Samuel Newman, who built the well-received third-party Bluesky client, Graysky, is joining the startup, where he will now help develop Bluesky’s official app along with the rest of the frontend team.
Given his change in position, the future of the Graysky app is uncertain.
Late last year, Graysky also added Trending Topics and a Pro subscription to help the app monetize.
With Newman now joining Bluesky, the hope is that the official client will also gain support for more features.
Would-be Twitter/X rival Bluesky is looking to more directly invest in its developer community in order to foster growth.
The company last week announced “AT Protocol Grants,” a new program that will dole out small grants to developers building on its new social networking protocol.
Initially, Bluesky said it would release $10,000 in grants of $500 to $2,000 per project apiece, based on factors like cost, usage, and more.
The concept of decentralized social networking has been around longer than Bluesky, however, with many projects, including Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, and others, backed by the ActivityPub protocol.
Bluesky says the projects receiving the grants can be useful to either developers or end users and will be paid out via public GitHub Sponsorships.
Emerging decentralized social network and X rival Bluesky has just landed a notable former Twitter leader as its new Head of Trust and Safety.
On Wednesday, the company announced it has appointed Aaron Rodericks, who most recently co-led the Trust and Safety team at Twitter, to this new position.
It’s an indication that the network will approach trust and safety similarly, if not better, than Twitter once did, before Musk’s takeover.
Bluesky says Rodericks will lead the moderation team that provides 24/7 coverage to uphold the Bluesky Community Guidelines and promises reports are reviewed in under 24 hours.
“Aaron’s expertise in trust & safety at global scale brings invaluable experience to our moderation team.
Social network Bluesky, a competitor to X, Threads, Mastodon, and others, is opening up its doors with today’s news that the network is now opening up federation, following its public launch earlier this month.
The move will allow anyone to run their own server that connects to Bluesky’s network, so they can host their own data, their own account and make their own rules.
That sent some former Twitter users in search of alternatives that were more sustainable, like Mastodon and Bluesky.
While this model is similar to Mastodon, Bluesky uses a newer social networking protocol, the AT Protocol, while Mastodon and many other networks today use ActivityPub.
“After this initial phase, we’ll open up federation to people looking to run larger servers with many users,” it says.
With deck.blue, Bluesky users can view posts on the social network in the column-based format popularized by TweetDeck, including things like their home timeline, notifications, likes, lists, or even custom feeds.
But when he examined the options available to Bluesky users, he was dissatisfied with the experiences that had been built so far.
The deck.blue project began last August and within a month of writing the first line of code, it launched.
Initially, the app was called Bluesky Deck, but Bluesky suggested that using Bluesky in the app’s name wasn’t the right move.
So Filho renamed the app deck.blue and hired a designer to work on the branding.
Meanwhile, the app’s broader update for all users brings several new features, including Trending Topics, to see what’s popular on Bluesky right now.
On Bluesky, users can choose from multiple, custom feeds — a sort of algorithmic choice that other microblogging platforms like Instagram Threads and X don’t have.
Of these, the “Trending Topics” section — available from the app’s search tab — is the biggest highlight as it makes the world of Bluesky feel more like Twitter/X.
(It also reflects the community that has sprung up there, as tags like #furry and #nsfw are among the trending topics at this time).
Graysky Pro is an optional subscription that supports the app’s continued development and includes additional features.
One of the more intriguing alternative Twitter platforms to emerge in recent months is Bluesky. This app promises a future of decentralized social networking and choose-your-own algorithms, which could provide…
