Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

Part of Bluesky’s mission to create a more open and decentralized social web is helping users feel safe and in control of their experience. We always try to balance safety with privacy, and free expression with civility.

To achieve our mission, we also work with governments around the world. In the UK, the Online Safety Act requires that online platforms take specific steps to reduce the risk of children seeing harmful content. Since certain parts of that act come into effect later this month, we’re making some changes for people in the UK.

We’ll use Epic Games’ Kids Web Services (KWS) to give our UK community choices about how to verify their age. If you’re in the UK, you can choose between methods like payment card verification, ID scans, and face scans. (See here to learn more about how KWS safeguards user information.) For people who are under 18 or don’t want to go through this process, we’ll make adult-appropriate content inaccessible, and we’ll disable features like direct messaging.

If you’re in the UK, you’ll see a notification on our platform when this update takes effect, and a way to report unwanted content:

In addition to these updates, we’ll continue to look at how we’re doing to shield children from unwanted content, and how we can improve.