Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter/X competitor, today announced that it will open source Ozone, a tool that allows individuals and teams to collaboratively review and label content on the network. Later this week, the company plans to enable individuals and teams to run their own independent moderation services, meaning users will be able to subscribe to additional moderation services on top of Bluesky's default moderation. Masu.
Bluesky said in a blog post that the changes will give users “unprecedented control” over their social media experiences. The company's vision for moderation is an ecosystem of stackable services, so it plans to allow users to install filters from independent moderation services in addition to what his Bluesky already requires. As a result, users will be able to create a customized experience based on their preferences.
For example, someone might create a moderation service that blocks images of spiders on the network. If the sight of a spider makes you jump in fear, you can install a moderation service to remove all labeled spider photos from your feed.
“No one team can ever perfectly moderate and curate an entire world with a wide variety of situations, cultures, and tastes,” the blog post says. “That's why we're excited to open up an ecosystem that allows experts, developers, and users to leverage their local context and provide their own input that can be additionally subscribed to on top of Bluesky's moderation service. doing.”
Moderation service filters will initially be available on the desktop version of Bluesky and will soon be available on mobile.
BlueSky says installing a filter from an independent moderation service is as easy as following another account. The moderation service allows users to report content, so if you see an image of an unlabeled spider, you can report it to the service.
Bluesky already allows you to run mute and block lists that other users can subscribe to, but they are often tied to a specific account, preventing you from collaborating and preventing others from viewing you. It can be overwhelming if you start tagging directly. Additionally, unlike blocklists where you just add accounts, Ozone allows you to label specific posts.
Individuals and teams creating moderation services have access to the report queue, eliminating the need for users to tag directly each time. The person running the moderation service will be able to set custom labels and decide what to do. Moderation services are not tied to individual accounts, so multiple people can manage them together.
Bluesky notes that a moderation service will likely start as a community-run project, but also hints that “there's nothing stopping a moderation service from gaining paying subscribers.” Masu.
The open source tools can be found in the GitHub repository here.