BlogUpdated Terms and Policies

Updated Terms and Policies

August 14, 2025

by Bluesky Team

Since launching Bluesky two years ago, we’ve grown tremendously. As our community has expanded, feedback on our terms of service, community guidelines, copyright, and privacy policies has surfaced opportunities to improve clarity. With more experience under our belt and an evolving regulatory landscape, we’re updating the language in our terms and policies to better explain our approach and provide more detail.

For our Community Guidelines, we’re asking for input from the community. The proposed guidelines enhance clarity, add user safety details, and provide more transparency around moderation. You’ll have until August 28th to submit comments, and then they’ll go into effect on October 15th. You can view our updated Community Guidelines on our Support Page.

Our Terms of Service have been updated to reflect new legal requirements and give users more control in case of disagreements. Changes include clarifying eligibility and age assurance to comply with new regional regulations, as well as introducing a formal appeals process. We’ve also expanded our dispute resolution section to prioritize informal resolution.

The new Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Copyright Policy will go into effect on September 15th. You can view these updated policies on our Support Page.

Below is an overview of what’s being updated:

1. Community Guidelines

We believe the best policies are created in partnership with the people they serve. Our draft Guidelines incorporate lessons from our community's growth and feedback, and your input will help us ensure they're ready to support Bluesky's future. We started by creating a draft that we think improves on our current Guidelines. Below are some of the updates we’ve proposed; here is the form to use for feedback.

  • Clearer Structure: Organized around four key principles—Safety First, Respect Others, Be Authentic, and Follow the Rules—with specific examples of allowed and prohibited content under each.
  • Harm Categories Clarified: Updated with more examples, to align with the UK Online Safety Act (OSA), the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), and the US TAKE IT DOWN Act.
  • Enforcement Procedures: Introduced progressive enforcement model and clarified content moderation logic as required by the OSA and DSA.
  • Appeals & Redress: Aligned with the DSA and now includes out-of-court and judicial remedy guidance for EEA users.

2. Terms of Service (ToS)

  • Eligibility and Age Assurance Section: Updated to clarify compliance with online safety laws and regulations (e.g., US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act [COPPA], OSA, DSA) and to require age assurance where necessary.
  • Moderation and Illegal Content: Added detail on proactive moderation and illegal content responses to comply with the DSA.
  • Complaints and Appeals: Introduced detailed appeals process to comply with the DSA.
  • Dispute process: We have provided users with greater control in the event that we have a disagreement.
    • We’ve added details about using the informal dispute resolution process, including an agreement that we will talk on the phone before proceeding to any formal dispute process. This is because we think most disputes can be resolved informally.
    • We’ve added a specific detail around liability: if a user makes a claim that we did something wrong that caused certain types of harm, they can choose to resolve that claim in court rather than through arbitration.
    • We are giving users a choice when it comes to any dispute we must resolve through arbitration. That means users choose one arbitrator, Bluesky chooses one arbitrator, and those two arbitrators choose a third.

3. Privacy Policy

  • User Rights: Enhanced transparency around data subject rights under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other global privacy laws.
  • International Data Transfers: Updated to explain safeguards used for transfers outside EU and UK.
  • Retention and Deletion: Strengthened clarity on deletion limitations due to decentralized architecture; consistent with DSA and data minimization requirements.
  • Jurisdiction-Specific Sections: Added information that applies to some of our users based on the jurisdiction where they live.

4. Copyright Policy

  • Streamlined Takedown Procedure: Ensures compliance with US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), DSA, and similar laws.
  • Abusive Reporting Clause: Added mechanisms to deter fraudulent takedown misuse, compliant with the DSA.
  • Transparency Reporting: Aligned with the DSA by clarifying that we will include required information in transparency reports.

We're Hiring

Bluesky is an initiative to transition the social web from platforms to protocols. Join a nimble team developing and driving large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation.

Apply to BlueskyArrow Icon