Community Guidelines

Last Updated: May 22, 2024

The Bluesky social network (“Bluesky Social”) runs on the Authenticated Transfer Protocol ("AT Protocol"), a decentralized social networking protocol that supports many different kinds of services. Bluesky Social is just one of those services, and these community guidelines only apply to Bluesky Social. Any additional service that runs on the AT Protocol will have their own Terms.

Our mission is to foster a vibrant and evolving community that respects individual preferences and adapts to the changing needs of our users. These guidelines define how the services we provide may be used.

We drafted these guidelines with three principles in mind that we intend to carry forward as our community and product evolve. They are to:

1. Empower user choice: We strive to provide users with the ability to select self-governing services that align with their personal preferences and values. This includes making it easy for users to run their own apps, choose the algorithms that power their feeds, and migrate between services.
2. Cultivate a welcoming environment: Our aim is to create a safe and friendly space where users feel welcomed, supported, and enjoy participating.
3. Evolve with feedback: As both the AT Protocol and Bluesky Social grow and evolve, our guidelines and standards will evolve as well. We will regularly review and update these guidelines in response to feedback from our users, emerging trends, and changing circumstances. We strive to maintain transparency about any changes to our policies.

Bluesky Community Guidelines

Bluesky Social is one service built on the AT Protocol. These guidelines apply only to Bluesky Social. While we won’t always be able to control everything that happens on other services that use the AT Protocol, we take our responsibility to the users of Bluesky Social seriously. Our community guidelines are designed to promote a safe and enjoyable experience. To achieve this goal, we moderate the content on Bluesky Social using our discretion, and you can also adjust content filters within the App according to your preferences in your account settings.

These rules will evolve over time as we continually work to cultivate a healthy and thriving community.

If you come across a user, message, or service that appears to break these guidelines, please report it to us via in-app reporting flows or the in-app feedback form.

1. Don’t use Bluesky Social to break the law or cause harm to others. For example, do not:
   1. Praise or promote material from hate groups or proscribed terror groups
   2. Distribute child sexual abuse material, or any content portraying minors in a sexually explicit context
   3. Engage in human trafficking or sexual exploitation, including any attempt to distribute, participate or normalize child sexual abuse
   4. Engage in predatory or inappropriate interactions or exchanges between minors and adults, online or offline. Do not support or normalize pedophilia or the sexual exploitation of minors.
   5. Trade in illegal goods or substances
   6. Steal or distribute others’ private personal information without their permission
   7. Hack or access systems that you aren’t authorized to access
   8. Scam or cheat others for financial gain
   9. Spam, phish, or otherwise use technical means to disrupt the experience of others on Bluesky Social, or the Bluesky network. This includes operating multiple accounts that interact similarly.
   10. Infringe other’s copyrights, trademarks and/or other intellectual property
   11. Do not engage in voter suppression or share misleading content about election processes. Do not encourage or glorify the intimidation of election participants or real-world disruption of the election processes.
   12. Do not share misleading content falsely attributed to candidates in elections.
   13. Do not circumvent or evade moderation actions, for example by creating new accounts or repurposing an existing account to replace a banned account, or reposting content that has been removed as part of a moderation enforcement.
2. Treat others with respect. For example, no:
   1. Harassment or abuse directed at a specific person or group, including but not limited to, sexual harassment and gender identity-based harassment
   2. Promoting hate or extremist conduct that targets people or groups based on their race, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, or sexual orientation
   3. Threats of violence or physical harm, or content that encourages, promotes, or glorifies violence against people, groups, or animals
   4. Encouraging self-harm or suicide
   5. Depictions of excessive violence, gore, torture, dismemberment, or non-consensual sexual activity
   6. Misleading impersonation of other individuals, organizations, or entities
3. Follow the standards of the app or service you are visiting: Developers may establish community guidelines for their own apps and services on the AT Protocol. Your failure to follow those rules may result in your being restricted from using those apps.

Reporting

We rely on the entire community (developers, creators, users, visitors) to enforce our community guidelines. The reporting system built into the App and available online or the in-app feedback form helps us detect violations of the Bluesky Community Guidelines.

1. User Violations of Bluesky Community Guidelines. You can report suspected violations of the Community Guidelines by reporting posts, accounts, or direct messages with the in-app reporting feature. We will review reports we receive against these Community Guidelines. Bluesky Social will decide when and how to enforce these Community Guidelines, and if we find a violation of the Guidelines will take enforcement action, which may include restricting a user’s ability to use Bluesky Social. If your report relies on or relates to conduct that happened outside of Bluesky, please provide links, context, or any relevant evidence in the details section of your report, so our moderation team can take these factors into consideration.
2. Developer Violations of Bluesky Terms. To report an app or service that you believe is not complying with or enforcing the Bluesky Terms of Service or Privacy Policy, please email Bluesky at support@bsky.app.
3. App-Specific Guidelines. Developers of apps and operators of services may establish their own standards of conduct, separate from the Bluesky Community Guidelines. These services may temporarily or permanently ban violators from their apps or services. To report violations of a third-party app or service’s standard of conduct, please contact the developer or provider of the third-party app or service. Bluesky Social cannot enforce the standards of conduct of third-party apps or services.

Bluesky Labeler Guidelines

Labels are a way for the Bluesky community to have control over their experience by contributing content classifications. We expect that the people and organizations operating labeling services will do so for the overall benefit and safety of the Bluesky community.

1. Do:
   • Keep labels straightforward and non-abusive.
   • Aim for labeling guidance that is impartial and based on clear, observable content and behavior.
   • Apply labels impartially, ethically, and consistently. The less bias you have when applying a label, the more trust that users can have in your labeling service.
   • Be upfront about what you're labeling, why, and how, to help users decide whether to subscribe to your judgments.
   • Consider proportionate interventions when applying labels. Use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. In general, it’s best to start with content before labeling an entire account.
   • Should you choose manual moderation, accept reports against the labeling parameters you have designed, assign labels, and review appeals in a timely manner.
2. Do not:
   • Use labels in a way that is abusive, harassing, or targeting of specific accounts, groups, or protected characteristics.
   • Design labels that use profanity, spurious allegations, derogatory terms, or harmful tags.
   • Do not label maliciously (i.e. knowingly mischaracterizing content as harmful or problematic when it plainly does not go against your stated policies or guidelines)
   • Accept compensation for specific labeling actions - or attempt to extort individuals to have labels applied or removed.
   • Claim to represent Bluesky or to show false affiliation with other entities.
   • Deploy labeling services in a way that undermines Bluesky’s network stability.
   • Use labeling accounts or services to evade moderation or blocks on your main account, or deploy labels in an attempt to do so.

Violations of this guidance may result in remediations such as deletion of labels, temporary or permanent suspension of accounts, and steps up to and including defederation of your labeling service.

Bluesky Developer Guidelines

Developers who federate their apps or services on the AT Protocol must adhere to the Bluesky Developer Guidelines in order to communicate with Bluesky services:

1. Don’t spam. We trust that you will create a great app that will grow organically. Apps that interact with users should be opt-in. Our definition of spam includes:
   1. Generating automated or bulk interactions, including any that would cause a notification to a user like a message, follow, like or reply
   2. Any method to automate generating followers or interactions, including account generation tools
   3. Spambots
   4. Evading rate limits or disrupting the Bluesky network
2. Apps with user-generated content or social networking features must include:
   1. A method to report illegal content
   2. A method for blocking forbidden content from being shared in the app
   3. A method for blocking abusive users from the app
3. All services must have a method for deleting content a user has requested to be deleted.
4. Developers must have a system for appropriately responding to all user reports of violations within their apps.
5. Developers must maintain updated contact information accessible to the public including an email address that is regularly monitored.
6. Developers should maintain reasonable security measures to protect against unauthorized access or disclosure of any end-user information or app data.
7. Failure to respond appropriately to known violations of Bluesky Social’s Terms of Service, Privacy Policy or Community Guidelines may result in suspension of access to services or features run on Bluesky’s infrastructure. Developers should keep records of all reports of violations and their responses, and Bluesky may at any time request such data to ensure compliance with its policies.

We may notify you when we update these guidelines, and by using Bluesky Social, you are agreeing to check this page periodically to see changes in the guidelines, which we reserve the right to modify as we see fit. It is up to you to follow the spirit of them: make Bluesky a welcoming and empowering place for all users. Thanks for doing your part.