New Anti-Toxicity Features on Bluesky

We are publishing a series of blog posts on Trust & Safety efforts at Bluesky. This is the first in the series.

Trust and Safety (T&S) affects everything — from community policy and spam detection, all the way to the order that replies show up on a post. At Bluesky, the product team works hand-in-hand with T&S to design features that balance safety, ease of use, and fun.

In this blog, we’re taking a look at specifically toxicity (harassment, dunking, etc.) and some steps we’re taking to mitigate it from the product perspective. Be sure to update your app to the latest version (1.90) to access many of these features!

Detaching quote posts

As of the latest app version, released today (version 1.90), users can view all the quote posts on a given post. Paired with that, you can detach your original post from someone’s quote post.

This helps you maintain control over a thread you started, ideally limiting dog-piling and other forms of harassment. On the other hand, quote posts are often used to correct misinformation too. To address this, we’re leaning into labeling services and hoping to integrate a Community Notes-like feature in the future.

Note: Like blocks, quote post removals are public data. The Bluesky app won’t list all the quote post removals directly on your post, but developers with knowledge of the Bluesky API will be able to access this data.

Hiding replies

In app version 1.90, you can now hide replies on your post. Only the original creator of the thread can hide replies. All hidden replies will be placed behind a Hidden replies screen — so they’re still accessible, but much less visible.

Note: Hidden replies – and which posts were hidden by the author – are still public data.

Priority notification filters

If you navigate to Notifications and click the Settings cog in the top right corner, you can now manage your notifications more. With the priority notifications feature, you can filter your notifications to only receive updates from people you follow. We hope this is helpful for people with large followings who are always receiving an influx of notifications, and also for people who may not have expected that their post would get so much attention.

We’ll keep tuning this feature and adding additional options for notifications.

Changes to how replies show in timelines

Historically, in the Bluesky app, we show every reply in the Following feed. This means that every reply has the same visibility as a top-level post, which is often not a user’s intention. We’re reducing the frequency of showing replies in the Following feed to only show conversations that involve replies between at least two people you follow.

Additionally, this update should make it much easier for you to update older threads. Now, when you reply to an older thread of yours, it’ll get bumped to the top of your followers’ feeds. (You’ll no longer have to repost your own reply to surface it to your followers.) This update also prevents replies from being separated from the top-level post, making them easier to understand.

Applying blocks to lists

Bluesky has three kinds of lists: starter packs, curational user lists, and moderation lists.

Now, when you block the creator of a starter pack or a curational user list, you’ll be filtered out of any lists they create. (Blocks still have no effect on moderation lists, because that would defeat their purpose.)

Additionally, we’re updating our policies around acceptable list titles and descriptions and will be labeling lists more aggressively. We’ll share more on this in a blog post next week from the Trust & Safety team.

Future work

Product work, especially as it relates to Trust & Safety, is always a continuous effort. We’re also making some updates on our backend infrastructure to combat ban evasion, botnets, and other forms of toxicity.

We’ll be publishing an update next week from the Trust & Safety team on some of these efforts.