Bluesky, the X alternative, says it has ‘quadrupled’ its moderation team

Bluesky has updated its impersonation policy to be more “aggressive, ” the company said.

Bluesky has expanded its moderation team as curious social media users, many of whom are seeking an alternative to Elon Musk’s X, flock to the app.

The official account for Bluesky’s Trust & Safety team published a thread on Friday that shared details about its impersonation policy.

The company said the policy has been updated to be more “aggressive,” adding that “impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed.”

“We have also quadrupled the size of our moderation team, in part to action impersonation reports more quickly. We still have a large backlog of moderation reports due to the influx of new users as we shared previously, though we are making progress,” a post read.

The company said that satire, fan, and parody accounts are allowed on Bluesky, but they must label themselves as such in the display name and bio for transparency. Identity churning — or changing an account’s identity to mislead users — is prohibited on the app.

“If you set up an impersonation account just to gain followers and switch to a different identity that is no longer impersonation to keep that account, your account will be removed,” a post read.

Bluesky also responded to users who have asked for more concrete verification methods.

“We also hear your feedback: users want more ways to verify their identity beyond domain verification,” a post read. “We’re exploring additional options to enhance account verification, and we hope to share more shortly.”

Bluesky has more than 20 million users as of November 2024.

Representatives for Bluesky did not respond to a request for comment from B-17.

Bluesky began as a Twitter project in 2019 but has gained traction recently as some social media users grow weary of X due to concerns over hate speech and misinformation.

X’s approach to moderation faced criticism when Musk took control in 2022. After his arrival, Musk laid off content moderators and staffers on the moderation team. However, X’s head of business operations told Bloomberg in January that it planned to hire 100 employees tasked with content moderation and build a content moderation center in Austin.

While Bluesky is still chasing X’s success, it could challenge Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s own Twitter knockoff.

Bluesky announced in October that it had over 13 million users. One month later, Bluesky’s COO told B-17 that it had “blown past” its user growth projects and had surpassed 21 million users. The COO said the company had to acquire more servers to keep operations running smoothly.