As US election day approaches, social networking startup Bluesky, now flush with new capital, is hoping to show that its platform can be a more credible and fact-checked alternative to Elon Musk’s X. For the Trump campaign, Bluesky has tended to lean left, fueled by an influx of disgruntled former Twitter users who don’t like the platform’s new direction. Now, as the U.S. election approaches, Bluesky is preparing for its biggest test yet: its ability to deal with potential misinformation that could mislead users during these important national events, including posts that seek to disrupt the voting process or use new technologies. there is. , like AI, confuses the voting public.
While another competitor to In line with X’s recent blocking changes that have angered some users, Bluesky may be poised to once again benefit from another X exodus as users switch.
To manage election operations, Bluesky hired prominent former Twitter leader Aaron Rodericks as director of trust and safety earlier this year. Rodericks, who already had experience with the policies, tools and teams needed to manage election security at Twitter and co-led the Trust and Safety team, made headlines as a target of the right-wing campaign against It was also decorated. was looking to hire more staff for the 2024 election season. The executive later lost his job at X when Musk cut the election integrity team in half after promising to expand it.
Now, the team led by Rodericks at Bluesky has announced how it prepares to handle the U.S. presidential election, including reviewing content for potential misinformation and other unverified reports and claims.
In a series of posts about Bluesky, the Bluesky safety team detailed its plans for election security, urging users to click on the three-dot menu next to each post and flag posts with misleading, illegal or urgent content under Bluesky’s moderation. We were reminded that we could report this to the service. account. The system also has a priority queue for election-related reported posts.
Bluesky said it will also remove any content that “promotes or glorifies threats or interference with voting, counting or certification” to keep the process “secure and accurate.” We also plan to label posts that contain misleading claims about voting, such as sharing false demands for voter ID or other manipulated media.
Meanwhile, ‘new’ election-related reports that cannot be immediately confirmed are marked as ‘unconfirmed’. For example, if someone reports that there was a long line at the polls or another incident occurred at the polls, it would likely be classified as Unconfirmed during the evaluation. (However, the company did not share whether or how it would update these reports if they were later confirmed by national media.)
The company said it plans to adjust its platform beyond Election Day as it will work to identify and resolve any disruptions to the “peaceful transition of power.”
Bluesky also said it reserves the right to roll out more safeguards in the future to ensure election security on its platform if needed.
Unlike X and Threads, where arbitration is handled solely by the business itself, Bluesky’s decentralized promise is that anyone can run their own Bluesky servers and their own arbitration service. Users can also sign up for multiple moderation services to customize their feeds to their liking.
“Our online experiences don’t have to rely on billionaires making unilateral decisions about what we see,” the company explained in March. “Open social networks like Bluesky allow you to shape your own experience.” That means if you don’t like the way Bluesky runs your app, you can build your own. If you don’t like Bluesky’s arbitration choices, you can build your own independent service instead.
The Bluesky moderation team has also expanded with additional hires following two recent surges that brought more users to the service. The company hasn’t revealed the size of its current moderation team, but CEO Jay Graber hinted at the size of the team in an interview with Nilay Patel’s Decoder podcast in March, saying: Then we have those numbers for support and coordination.”
