2023-07-22 Incident Report: Timeline of Events
Published: July 22, 2023
To read the letter to the community, please click here.
July 12 Incident Report: Timeline of Events
The timeline below isn’t comprehensive of every post or report that was involved in the week’s events, but we listed all the events that we think are core to understanding what happened. Please let us know if you feel we’ve omitted important context.
To protect users’ privacy, we don’t explicitly name the handles of Bluesky users that were involved in this situation, but to differentiate them from other involved people, we use letters. To refer to the same person multiple times, we use the same letter.
All timestamps are in Pacific Time, and we provide the timestamp in seconds if available.
7/12/2023 5:27 PM
Bluesky user A posts a screenshot of an account that had a racial slur @***.bsky.social as its handle. This account was created on 6/26/2023. At the time of the screenshot, the account had 4 followers, 3 following, and 1 post.
7/12/2023 5:28:51 PM
Bluesky user B reports @***.bsky.social. This is the first report on the profile of the evening, and is followed by 448 more reports.
7/12/2023 5:37:26 PM
Triage content moderator X escalates the report.
7/12/2023 6:25:16 PM
Escalation content moderator Y takes down the account @***.bsky.social.
7/12/202, 6:42:35 PM
Escalation content moderator Y takes down another account using a slur as its handle @**.bsky.social.
7/12/2023 7:44 PM
A Bluesky community member opens a GitHub PR with a code change: “add slurs to reserved words”
7/12/2023 9:06 PM
A Bluesky team member opens a PR with additional changes to the one that the open-source community contributor made.
7/12/2023 9:38 PM
A Bluesky team member merges the PR. This deploys a quick basic fix that adds a list of banned words for handles.
7/12/2023 10:30 PM
A Bluesky team member merges a PR titled “tweaks and additions to slur list.” The file diff shows that some slurs were removed and others were added. The PR receives many comments asking for explanation. The slur lists were in the process of being moved to the backend, and a team member later posts this follow-up explaining the changes.
7/12/2023 11:37 PM
The Bluesky team posts:
7/13/2023 6:19 AM
An account that was created on 7/1/2023 changes its handle to a racial slur @*********.bsky.social
7/13/2023 6:23:19 AM
Bluesky user C reports the account @*********.bsky.social. This was the first report of this account after it changed its handle, and was followed by approximately 700 more reports.
7/13/2023 6:30 AM
Bluesky user D posts a screenshot of the account @*********.bsky.social.
7/13/2023 6:31:42 AM
Triage content moderator Z escalates the report.
7/13/2023 8:51:29 AM
Escalation content moderator Y takes down @*********.bsky.social.
7/13/2023 8:29 PM
A Bluesky team member merges another PR with a more comprehensive technical fix: “Handle validation improvements.” This creates a two-step system for automated filtering and flagging of user handles. This solution combines an automated filter for some handles with a system that automatically flags others for a human moderator to review when they’re created. Keeping a human in the loop will help us take into account context that a purely automated system would miss.
7/14/2023 11:53 AM
The Bluesky team posts an announcement about the updated community guidelines and Terms of Service that went into effect on that day.
7/14/2023 9:38 PM
The Bluesky team posts a longer thread below:
7/17/23 2:39 PM
A Bluesky team member merges another PR that extends the fix above to profile display names, list names, custom feed names, and any rkeys.
To read the letter to the community, please click here.