Bluesky, a social networking startup and decentralized X competitor, is introducing new features designed to make its platform less toxic and less aggressive in conversation than its predecessor. The company introduced several anti-abuse features on Wednesday, including the ability to hide replies, as X does today, and a way to separate original posts from someone’s quoted posts. The latter limits people’s ability to dunk and send hate to others.
Dunking tweets began as a form of abuse on Twitter, where someone would use the quote tweet feature to add their own commentary in a way that ridiculed, belittled, or contradicted the original post, prompting others to respond with more insults, ridicule, or abusive remarks. Dunking has become a popular way for Twitter users to increase engagement with their posts, especially if the dunk commentary is witty, as it often leads to more likes and replies. However, this type of emphasis is not welcomed by the person being dunked, as non-followers will then flood their replies with hateful or abusive remarks.
Bluesky's latest release (version 1.90) introduces a quote splitting feature that allows users to view all quote posts related to a given post, and remove the original post from other people's quote posts. The company explains in its announcement that this allows users to “maintain control over the threads they started, ideally helping to limit dogpiling and other forms of harassment.” (Of course, it's still possible to take a screenshot to dunk on a post, so it's not going to completely prevent dunking!)
Another competitor to X, Meta's Threads, also offers tools that let users change who can reply to or quote their posts.
One downside to this feature is how quoted posts can be used to correct or clarify misinformation. Instead, Bluesky says, it will rely on a labeling service, that is, labels that a moderation service adds to posts. Unlike X and Facebook, there won’t be just one centralized moderation team. The company has also built tools that allow developers and other communities to build their own labels and moderation services. It’s also helping to build the ecosystem by offering small monetary grants to those who want to build these tools.
BlueSky also said it hopes to integrate features like community notes in the future.
On X, Community Notes serve as a form of crowdsourced fact-checking that relies on a bridging algorithm to find consensus among people who don’t usually share the same views. If both people agree on a Note, it’s more likely to be true. Bluesky didn’t say when this feature would be added to the roadmap, however.
Another new feature coming to Bluesky is the ability to hide replies to your posts. Replies will remain public, but will be placed behind a “hidden reply” screen, making it less likely for users to click through and read them. This is because hidden replies are often spam or unhelpful comments.
Another additional feature is the option to enable priority notifications, which will only send notifications to people you follow. This can help people with a large following see replies and updates that are of most interest to them, but it can also help people whose posts are getting an unexpected amount of attention.
The company says it will add more notification options over time.
Blue Sky is also changing the way replies appear on users’ timelines.
Instead of showing all replies in the following feed, it now only shows replies that include two or more people you follow. The advantage of this feature is that you can now reply to older posts to get them to the top of your follower commissions, so you don’t have to repost replies to surface them. Plus, the company says replies aren’t separated from the top posts.
However, it may make it harder for people to find interesting conversations to participate in, which could affect engagement metrics. Some users are already upset about this change, saying that their following feeds have significantly less content. However, Bluesky said they will listen to user feedback on this, and suggested that if there is enough backlash against the change, the team may consider rolling it back.
