Bluesky is under fire for allowing usernames with racial slurs – Many users have threatened to abandon the Bluesky app over its moderation inconsistencies, according to the recent protest by its users the app’s moderation tool has failed to flag usernames with evident proof of racial slurs.
Several users — especially Black users — find it to be very frustrating frustrated that Bluesky has failed to apologize for permitting racial slurs to slip through its moderation tools despite the fact that they violate the platform’s community guidelines. It’s the latest blunder for the social media platform, which has faced criticism for its tardy response to hate speech and threats against underrepresented communities and users.
As expected, the app is supposed to monitor and control racist activities and slurs on its platform but has however acted contrary to that expectation which is the reason they have been under fire for removing several racist, transphobic, and ableist slurs from its list of flagged words in its update last week.
“Our community guidelines published yesterday reflect our values for a healthy community, and we’re working on becoming better stewards every day,” Jay Graber, Bluesky CEO said in a post on Saturday.
Users reported an account last week that used a racial slur as its username. Users had flagged the account after it had been active for 16 days. Bluesky deactivated the account the next day.
“User handles that are slur words are a form of harassment,” Bluesky said in a post. “We’ve deployed a change so that these handles can no longer be created in the app.”
Bluesky has revised its list of banned words, which now includes slurs, expletives, and celebrity names that cannot be used as usernames when registering a new account. However, the update did not take current accounts into consideration, and one user was able to modify their handle to a racial slur hours after the upgrade.
Many users flagged that account, asking how it managed to get past Bluesky’s banned words filter.
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The update also deleted numerous racist, ableist, and transphobic slurs off the list of words that users are not permitted to use in their handles, as many users pointed out on GitHub. The modification sparked heated debate in the GitHub comments, with some users claiming that many words considered insults in English have harmless meanings in French and Spanish. Others pointed out that the list simply prevents users from using flagged words in their usernames, not in postings. Bluesky finally closed the discussion and labeled it “too heated.”
“The next time I hear someone say code can’t be racist or ableist, I’ll just point them to this commit,” GitHub user siobhandougall commented on the update before Bluesky locked the thread. “Anything to say about it? Or are you just gonna lock comments so you can all pretend there are no consequences?”
Swaths of users vowed to leave the platform in response to Bluesky’s gaffes and lack of apologies for failing to implement a slur filter. Rudy Fraser, the creator of Blacksky – a bespoke feed for Black Bluesky users — stated that if Bluesky did not respond, he would terminate his account.
“Someone else can host the feed if they’d like,” he posted. “Bluesky’s silence has made y’all bold.”
Others threatened to abandon the platform entirely. Dril, a well-known Twitter user, declared a “posting strike from here until they make everyone not racist or whatever.”
Some users actually followed through. Aveta, a software developer who helped create Bluesky’s user base by inviting hundreds of Black Twitter users in the app’s early days, lamented the app’s decreasing Black community.
“All the beautiful people that [I] helped invite over that left,” she posted. “Literally this is my community, black tech. damn man.”
The following day, Bluesky updated its terms of service and community standards. The community guidelines prohibit users from using the platform to “break the law or cause harm to others,” according to a post by the firm. Users must also “treat others with respect,” and Bluesky prohibits behavior that “targets people based on their race, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, or sexual orientation.”
Users questioned Bluesky in the comments about if it will enforce the community guidelines and whether it will recruit more human staff to its trust and safety team instead of depending on automated moderation.
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The corporation did not respond to user comments, but the next day, it created a thread claiming that racism and hatred have “no place on Bluesky.” The firm also stated that it has increased its trust and safety team, improved and clarified policies, and prioritized moderating tools.
“On Wednesday, users reported an account that had a slur as its handle. This handle was in violation of our community guidelines, and it was our mistake that allowed it to be created,” Bluesky stated in the thread, which was posted after midnight EST. “40 minutes after it was reported, the account was taken down, and the code that allowed this to occur was patched. To make this a great place as we grow, we’ll continue to invest in moderation, feedback, and support systems that scale with the number of users on the app.”
Bluesky did not tender an apology public. Embittered users don’t anticipate it from the platform.
“I’m not sure why anyone is waiting on the Bluesky staff to apologize,” software developer Angie Jones posted. “Obviously, they aren’t sorry, nor regretful. You think they forgot to exclude that word?! Of course not.”
At least one Bluesky developer has issued an apology. Bryan Newbold, who was severely criticized on GitHub for posting the prohibited words update, explained that the change replaced the “publicly contributed list of slurs” with a “emergency list” based on detecting slurs used at Black people. According to a GitHub comment, the emergency list also included antisemitic slurs. The list of forbidden terms was a “temporary measure” that has since been replaced by a “more complex mitigation” that will “certainly need to be revised over time.”
On Sunday, Newbold responded to the criticism in a Bluesky discussion.
“I have made decisions, and made mistakes. those have caused harm to real people, including Black folks, including really great [and] knowledgeable Black folks who supported Bluesky,” he wrote. “I’m sorry. feel pretty bad about it. it sucks. re/earning their trust, and everybody else’s trust, will be hard.”
