Bluesky Introduces Tools to Combat Toxicity and Plans to Incorporate a Feature Similar to ‘Community Notes’ in the Future

Emerging social networking venture Bluesky, positioning itself as a decentralized alternative to X, is rolling out innovative features aimed at fostering a more positive atmosphere, striving to reduce hostility and aggressive exchanges often seen on its forerunner. This Wednesday, the team unveiled a selection of tools to combat misuse, such as the ability for users to conceal responses, akin to what X currently enables, and a novel approach allowing users to unlink their original post from another’s quoting post, which is intended to curtail malicious targeting and abusive behavior.

Originally emerging on Twitter, dunk tweets are a form of online harassment where users employ the quote-tweet functionality to belittle, negate, or mock the original message, encouraging a cascade of further disparaging and sometimes abusive comments from others. This method quickly became a strategy for amplifying engagement, often rewarding the dunker with increased interactions and visibility, albeit at the expense of the original poster, who may face unwelcome attention and a barrage of negative responses from beyond their immediate followers.

Bluesky’s latest update (version 1.90) includes the introduction of a ‘detach quote’ feature, enabling users to survey all quote posts linked to their post and disassociate their original message from any quote post. The company elaborated on this in their announcement, highlighting its potential to give users better command over their initiated discussions, ideally curtailing group attacks and similar harassment tactics. Nonetheless, the company acknowledges that screenshotting and mocking posts remain a possibility, indicating that this measure alone might not fully eliminate such behavior.

Threads by Meta, also a contender in the space against X, similarly equips its users with capabilities to control who may respond to or rebroadcast their posts with additional comments.

One limitation of detaching quote posts relates to the potential for correcting or dispelling misinformation. Bluesky, however, plans to lean on labeling mechanisms — applying tags through moderation services to posts. This diverges from X and Facebook’s approach of a singular, centralized moderation team. Bluesky is also paving the way for the creation of individualized moderation tools by encouraging developers and communities, offering financial incentives for those interested in developing such solutions.

Furthermore, Bluesky is keen on incorporating a feature similar to Community Notes in the foreseeable future.

On X, Community Notes act as a community-driven fact-checking mechanism, relying on an algorithm to identify consensus between disparate viewpoints. This endorsement improves the credibility of information. Bluesky has yet to schedule this feature’s introduction.

Additional enhancements on Bluesky include the functionality to obfuscate replies on one’s postings. Though still publicly accessible, such replies will be relegated to a “Hidden replies” section, thus decreasing their visibility and the likelihood of user engagement, especially as hidden comments often consist of spam or irrelevant remarks.

Moreover, a feature to prioritize notifications from followed accounts is being introduced, benefitting those with extensive followings or individuals experiencing unexpected surges in post interactions, facilitating easier engagement with preferred content.

The company has plans to incrementally introduce more notification management options in the future.

Bluesky is also modifying the representation of replies within user timelines. Rather than displaying every response in the Following feed, now only interactions involving at least two followed accounts will appear. This approach allows users to revive older posts at the top of followers’ feeds through commentary without necessitating reposts to draw attention to them, simultaneously avoiding the disconnection of replies from the initial post. Nevertheless, this might limit discovery of engaging dialogues, potentially affecting engagement metrics. Feedback from some users indicates dissatisfaction with reduced content visibility on their Following feed, though Bluesky has expressed openness to reconsidering these changes based on user responses.