Shillong, July 18: Bluesky, a project backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is receiving criticism for removing racist, ableist, and transphobic slurs from its list of flagged words in a controversial update last week.
Users expressed anger at Bluesky for not apologizing despite allowing racial slurs to bypass its moderation tools, violating the platform’s community guidelines.
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber responded, stating that their community guidelines reflect their values for a healthy community and that they are committed to improving their stewardship.
Recently, users reported an account with a racial slur as its username. Bluesky deactivated the account after it had been active for 16 days, acknowledging that such user handles are a form of harassment. They implemented changes to prevent the creation of slur word handles going forward.
Bluesky also updated its banned word list, which includes slurs, expletives, and celebrity names, preventing them from being used as usernames when creating new accounts. However, the update did not consider existing accounts, allowing one user to change their handle to a racial slur shortly after the update.
Questions arose about how the account could bypass Bluesky’s banned words filter.
Despite the controversy, Bluesky announced that it raised $8 million to support its mission and growth, even as Meta launched its Twitter rival Threads on Instagram.
