Bluesky offers customization for content moderation

Social media platforms continue to make constant innovations to improve user experience today. One of these innovations is a system offered by Bluesky that will allow users to customize content moderation according to their own preferences. According to Bluesky’s statement, the social platform is open-sourcing its moderation tool Ozone, which will allow developers to create additional moderation services that can be selected by users.

Bluesky already has a dedicated team for content moderation and its own rules that users must follow. But the new system will allow users to expand what types of their content they moderate, subscribing to additional moderation services that tag, comment or hide certain types of posts.

For example, Bluesky says one could use Ozone to create a moderation service that specifically blocks images of spiders. A user can then subscribe to this service to remove spider photos from their feed. They can also report the occasional overlooked spider image for the moderation service’s creator to review.

A more personal experience on Bluesky with customizable moderation services

“You can create different types of moderation services and customize your experience to create the type of community you want,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told The Verge in an interview. says. “Beyond that, you’ll be able to mix and match them in different ways, and we’ve introduced open source tools for that.”

Custom filters will sit on top of Bluesky’s existing moderation, but third-party servers will be able to turn off Bluesky’s moderation entirely.

Bluesky says creating a moderation tool is similar to how users create block lists. The main difference is that the moderation service is not tied to an individual account. Instead, it will allow multiple people to manage the service, review a reporting queue, and set custom labels. Developers will even be able to create automatic tagging services if they wish.

Ozone is available as open source as of Wednesday. Bluesky will roll out the ability to enable moderation tools later this week.

“I think this is something that will move the state of the industry forward,” Graber says. “And to my knowledge, no one has ever done exactly what we did; So we made this moderation piece something that any third party, any user, or even anyone who is non-technical can come in and start working on it.”

Following the closed beta launch in 2023, Bluesky gradually added new features. More appear to be on the way, such as the ability to host private streams and servers. The service was made available to everyone in February, so it has managed to reach more than 5 million users. This shows that the platform leads the industry in personalizing and moderating user experience. With these innovations, Bluesky aims to create a user-oriented transformation in the social media field.