Twitter/X's decentralized rival, Bluesky Announced Tuesday that it is open source Ozone, a tool that allows individuals and teams to collaboratively review and tag content on the web. The company plans to open up the ability for individuals and teams to run their own independent moderation services later this week, meaning users will be able to subscribe to additional moderation services on top of Bluesky's default moderation.
in a blog postBluesky said the change will give users “unprecedented control” over their social media experience. The company's vision for moderation is a stackable ecosystem of services, so it will begin allowing users to install filters from independent moderation services on top of what Bluesky already requires. As a result, users will be able to create a personalized experience tailored to their preferences.
For example, someone could create a moderation service that blocks spider images on the web. If you are someone who gets scared when you see a spider, you can install the moderation service and make all tagged spider images disappear from your feeds.
“A team will never be perfect in moderation and curation for everyone, with their wide variety of contexts, cultures and preferences,” the blog post reads. “That's why we're excited to open up the ecosystem to empower experts, developers and users with local context to provide their own comments that you can subscribe to in addition to Bluesky's moderation service.”
Moderation service filters will be available on the desktop version of Bluesky to start and will soon be available on mobile devices.
Bluesky says installing filters from independent moderation services will be as easy as following another account. Moderation services will allow users to report content, so if you see an unlabeled image of a spider, you can report it to the service.
While Bluesky already allows people to run a mute list or block list that other users can subscribe to, it often gets tied to a specific account, which doesn't allow for collaboration and can be overwhelming if people start tagging you. directly. Plus, unlike a blocklist that only lets you add accounts, Ozone lets you tag specific posts.
Individuals and teams who create a moderation service will have access to a queue of reports, eliminating the need for people to tag it directly each time. People running moderation services will be able to set custom tags and determine what they do. Moderation services are not tied to individual accounts, so multiple people can manage them together.
Bluesky notes that moderation services will likely start out as community-run projects, but hints that “there's also nothing stopping a moderation service from having paid subscribers.”
The open source tool can be found in the GitHub repository. here.
