Community Guidelines

Last Updated: September 19, 2025

Bluesky is a social networking application provided by Bluesky Social, PBC ("we", "us", "our”). Bluesky runs on the Authenticated Transfer Protocol ("AT Protocol"), a decentralized social networking protocol that supports many different kinds of services. Together with the Bluesky Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Copyright Policy, these Community Guidelines ("Guidelines") govern your use of the Bluesky application, website, and services (collectively, "Bluesky"). By accessing or using Bluesky, you agree to be bound by these Guidelines. Please read them carefully.

These Guidelines only apply to social networking that happens on Bluesky. If you’re using another social networking application on the AT Protocol that isn’t Bluesky Social (a “Developer Application”), the terms and conditions of that Developer Application will govern your experience. We are not responsible for the content or practices of Developer Applications.

Our mission is to build technologies for open and decentralized public conversation. We want to foster a vibrant and evolving community that respects individual preferences and adapts to the changing needs of our users. These guidelines are part of your agreement with us and set out some rules for using Bluesky.

We drafted these guidelines to comply with applicable laws and to do three things:

1. Empower user choice: We strive to make choices on Bluesky that align with your personal preferences and values. To do this, we try to make it easy for people to run their own apps, to choose the algorithms that power their feeds, and to migrate between services.
2. Cultivate a welcoming environment: We want to create a safe and friendly space where users feel welcomed, supported, and enjoy participating.
3. Evolve with feedback: As we evolve, our guidelines and standards will, too. We will regularly review and update these guidelines in response to your feedback, emerging trends, and changing laws.

Unless they are otherwise defined in these Community Guidelines, all capitalized terms have the meaning given to them in the Bluesky Terms of Service. Throughout these Guidelines, the terms "including," "includes," "such as," and "for example" mean "without limitation."

Bluesky Community Guidelines

These Guidelines promote a safe and enjoyable experience for everyone. We moderate content on Bluesky Social using human moderators, working alongside automated systems, and we provide customizable options to help you shape your experience.

Our approach to content moderation is grounded in respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, while recognizing that we must follow the law in different jurisdictions. We use proportional enforcement actions that prioritize community safety while preserving space for legitimate expression and open dialogue.

We recognize that no single company can get online safety right for every country, culture, and community, which is why we've built a composable moderation infrastructure that lets you create or subscribe to additional labeling services based on your preferences. This approach gives communities the power to create their own moderation tools alongside our baseline protections. You can learn more about composable moderation in this blog post.

While communities can build their own moderation tools, we remain responsible for setting and enforcing baseline rules that require careful judgment. That means we make difficult decisions every day about whether certain types of content or expression cross into becoming harassment or other prohibited conduct. We always use our best efforts when making these determinations, and our appeals process gives you an opportunity to tell us if you think we have gotten something wrong. Ultimately, however, this discretion rests with us, and we reserve the right to make final decisions about how to handle any specific piece of content or account. You can learn more about our enforcement procedures and appeals process in our Terms of Service.

Our Principles:

1. Safety First: We do not allow content that shows or promotes violence, harm, exploitation, or criminal activity against adults, children, or animals. Do not violate anyone's privacy or share personal information.
2. Respect Others: We do not allow harassment, bullying, hate speech, or discrimination. This includes targeting individuals based on protected characteristics.
3. Be Authentic: We do not allow content intended to misrepresent, defraud, trick, deceive, or mislead.
4. Follow the Rules: We do not allow content or behavior that violates applicable laws, breaks platform policies, compromises our systems, or evades our enforcement actions.

1. Safety First

1. Public Safety: We keep our community safe by stopping people from using our platform for criminal activities.
   1. Do not coordinate, promote, recruit or disseminate content for criminal organizations, terrorist groups, or human trafficking networks.
   2. Do not provide instruction for criminal or terrorist activities:
      1. Detailed tutorials for committing crimes or terrorist acts.
      2. Coordination of harmful acts, including swatting or mob violence.
   3. Do not share violence content for harmful purposes:
      1. Content serving criminal or terrorist organizational operations.
      2. Videos exploiting victims of abuse or violence.
2. Respectful Discourse We create a safe space for discussion by prohibiting threats and content meant to scare or intimidate people.
   1. Do not threaten others with death, serious harm, or express that others should be hurt or killed.
   2. Do not promote, glorify, or incite violence against individuals or groups.
   3. Do not share graphic violent content designed to shock, disturb, or intimidate others.
   4. These rules do not prevent you from posting content that involves violence without glorifying real-world harm, including:
      1. Professional combat sports, martial arts demonstrations, and regulated extreme sports.
      2. Discussion, analysis, or depiction of violence in clearly fictional or artistic contexts such as literature, film, television, video games, and visual arts.
3. Child Safety: We protect kids and teens with strong safeguards against exploitation, predatory behavior, and harmful content, implementing additional measures where legally required.
   1. Do not create, share, or promote content that harms minors: Content that sexualizes, exploits, or depicts minors or minor-aged characters in sexual or intimate contexts, including synthetic, simulated, illustrated, or animated versions.
   2. Do not engage in inappropriate conduct toward minors:
      1. Grooming behavior or soliciting intimate content, personal information, or offline meetings from minors.
      2. Coercing minors to create or share intimate content.
   3. Do not share personal information about minors: Identifying information, real-time location data, or personal details that could pose safety risks.
   4. Do not engage in commercial practices targeting minors, such as prohibited advertising that targets underage users, or promoting gambling, controlled substances, tobacco, alcohol, or deceptive financial services to minors.
4. Adult Content: We provide a safe space for consensual adult expression by requiring clear consent and stopping abuse.
   1. We allow consensual adult sexual content, including fictional depictions, when appropriately labeled and subject to appropriate age restrictions.
   2. We do not allow sexual content involving non-consensual activity including synthetic, simulated, illustrated, or animated versions.
   3. Do not share, threaten to share, or promote tools to create intimate images or sexual content of any individual without their express consent, including synthetic or digitally altered content.
   4. Do not create, share, or promote sexual content involving realistic risk of death or serious injury.
   5. Do not engage in technology-facilitated abuse, harassment, or unwanted advances.
5. Mental Health & Wellbeing: We support a healthier community by prohibiting content that could harm people's mental or physical health.
   1. Do not share content, methods, instructions, or promotion of self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, and extreme dieting practices.
   2. Do not share methods, instructions, depictions, or promotion of dangerous stunts or abuse of dangerous or controlled substances.
6. Privacy Protection: We protect people's privacy by prohibiting unauthorized sharing of personal information and private content.
   1. Do not share home addresses, personal contact info, financial or medical data, or identification documents.
   2. Do not share sensitive private messages or communications you weren't authorized to share, unless sharing is in the public's interest.
   3. Do not share real-time location or other information that could pose immediate safety risks.
7. Animal Safety: We protect animals by prohibiting abusive or exploitative content.
   1. Do not create, share, or promote sexual content involving real animals or realistically depicted synthetic, simulated, illustrated, or animated versions.
   2. Do not share content depicting animal abuse, torture, fighting, staged rescues, or wildlife exploitation.
   3. These rules do not prevent you from sharing content about hunting, fishing, and other legal wildlife activities.

2. Respect Others

1. Anti-Discrimination: We protect people's fundamental rights by prohibiting identity-based harm and hatred.
   1. Do not attack, harass, or incite hatred or discrimination against individuals or groups based on protected characteristics such as age, asylum-seeker/refugee status, caste, disability, disease, ethnicity, gender identity, immigrant status, race, religious affiliation, sex, or sexual orientation.
   2. This includes hate speech, slurs, dehumanizing comparisons, supremacist content, conspiracy theories targeting protected groups, and coordinated harassment campaigns.
2. Anti-Harassment: We create space for everyone to express themselves by prohibiting harassment and toxic behaviors.
   1. Do not stalk, persistently target, or create malicious content designed to humiliate or degrade individuals, including through coordinated campaigns.
   2. Do not abuse Bluesky features (lists, labels, community moderation tools), engage in bad-faith mass reporting, use automated harassment systems, or create single-purpose harassment accounts.
   3. Accounts that engage in extreme or persistent toxic or disruptive behavior may face restrictions or removal. This includes accounts with a high number or proportion of:
      1. Extreme or repeated personal attacks, such as insults or ad hominem attacks
      2. Posts or responses made primarily to anger, provoke, or belittle instead of to contribute criticism or a genuine opinion
      3. The use of hostile or inflammatory language clearly intended to create or contribute to an unwelcoming environment

3. Be Authentic

1. Trust & Transparency: We keep our platform trustworthy by prohibiting deceptive and manipulative practices.
   1. Do not send spam or repeatedly post content in ways that disrupt normal conversations or service use.
   2. Do not create, share, or promote financial scams, phishing attempts, or fraudulent fundraising.
   3. Do not artificially manipulate features or social signals to gain unearned reach or mislead users, including engagement metrics, follower counts, or other measures of community interest.
   4. Do not post undisclosed commercial content, sponsored material, or advertising without clearly identifying its commercial nature to other users.
2. Account Authenticity: We keep our community trustworthy by prohibiting impersonation and deceptive account practices.
   1. Do not impersonate others or official groups in ways that could mislead users, or create fake accounts to deceive others about who you are.
   2. Do not engage in deceptive account practices, including identity churning (changing your account identity to keep followers), handle-squatting, coordinated deception, or other deceptive behaviors.
   3. Do not abuse platform Trust & Safety systems by:
      1. Falsifying documents or misrepresenting your verification status.
      2. Selling, transferring, or sharing accounts.
      3. Attempting to bypass age requirements and age assurance processes (where applicable in certain regions) by misrepresenting your age or helping others do so.
   4. These rules do not prevent you from using alternative identities without misleading other users, including:
      1. Clearly labeled parody, satire, or fan accounts that identify their nature in both display name and bio.
      2. Clearly labeled fictional character accounts.
      3. Historical, educational, or artistic content that uses public figures or institutions with proper context.
3. Information integrity: We allow reliable information sharing while prohibiting content that could undermine civic processes or is likely to cause immediate real-world harm.
   1. Do not share false or misleading information that could cause immediate real-world harm, including coordinating inauthentic campaigns.
   2. Do not coordinate to suppress voting, impersonate electoral officials or campaigns, interfere with democratic processes, or share false information about voting procedures, locations, times, eligibility, or results.

4. Follow the Rules

1. Regulated Goods & Services: We keep our community safe by prohibiting commerce in restricted items. Do not use Bluesky to unlawfully sell, advertise, provide services for, or facilitate commercial transactions for:
   1. Controlled substances, illegal drugs, prescription medications, or drug paraphernalia.
   2. Weapons, firearms, ammunition, or other dangerous materials.
   3. Stolen goods, counterfeit items, forged documents, criminal property, live animals, or other restricted goods.
2. Intellectual property & Copyright: We protect creators' rights by prohibiting content theft and copyright violations. Do not infringe copyrights, steal content, remove attribution or watermarks, violate trademarks or patents, impersonate brands or businesses, or share unauthorized streams or downloads.
3. Site Security: We keep our platform running smoothly by stopping attacks on our systems and interference. Do not attempt to compromise, exploit, bypass, abuse, or disrupt Bluesky's systems, security features, APIs, rate limits, or infrastructure.
4. Repeated Violations & Ban Evasion: We keep our rules fair by prohibiting people from getting around bans and other enforcement actions. Do not create new accounts or use alternative methods to evade bans, suspensions, or other enforcement actions, or help others do so.

5. Protected Expression

These guidelines protect legitimate expression that serves the public interest and supports community wellbeing. The following content is welcome on Bluesky when appropriately labeled and contextually framed:

1. Journalism, Analysis, Education, and Advocacy:
1. Factual reporting, academic research, or educational content about matters of public interest, safety, or legal significance.
2. Anti-violence advocacy, safety campaigns, and prevention resources that raise awareness without providing harmful methods or glorifying harm.
3. Content warnings about dangerous viral challenges or emerging safety threats.
2. Support, Recovery, and Mental Health:
1. Personal recovery experiences or survivor stories shared to promote healing and community support rather than encouraging harmful behavior.
2. Sharing verified mental health resources, crisis prevention information, and support group discussions.
3. Transparency and Public Information: Publicly available information from official sources such as court records, business filings, property records, or related to government transparency and public officials.