Bluesky is apparently ready for a bigger challenge.
It says it’s allowing heads of state to sign up now, a little over two months after it opened for general signups.
In May last year, the site asked its users not to give invitation codes to “recent/prominent heads of state,” stating that it was its policy not to accommodate them.
When Bluesky instituted its heads-of-state policy, the site was still in its showing-everyone’s-ass phase, and its moderation approach wasn’t in place, yet.
Bluesky lets users handle moderation themselves by building out their own filters based on its open-sourced Ozone tool.
It also does feeds differently than most social networks.
As Bluesky updates its policy, world leaders are already on other platforms, including, sort of, Mastodon.
US President Joseph Robinette Biden’s account started using Threads’ limited fediverse integration earlier this month, for instance.
It seems like Bluesky is prepared for a more difficult task. A little more than two months after it opened for general signups, it says heads of state can now sign up. It was the site’s policy, as stated in May of last year, to not allow invitation codes to be given to “recent/prominent heads of state.”.
The website was still in its showing-of-everyone’s-ass phase and lacked a moderation strategy when Bluesky implemented its heads-of-state policy. As a result, rather than the various degrees of controlled chaos that social networks offer, Bluesky was, as The Verge’s Elizabeth Lopatto noted last year, dominated by, well, a ton of creepily attractive images of the puppet star of the 1980s sitcom Alf, a cat-eating alien. It didn’t appear prepared to handle world leaders in addition to notorious shitposters like Dril.
Now that things have changed, the platform provides moderation in a special way. Bluesky allows users to construct their own filters using its open-source Ozone tool, allowing them to manage moderation independently. In contrast to most social networks, it handles feeds in a unique way. Users can apply user-created options in addition to the Discover and Popular With Friends tabs, rather than being forced to use a one-size-fits-all algorithm like the default Threads For You feed.
This week, the website unveiled additional features, such as the ability to long-press a link to share it and hashtags in profile bios.
World leaders are already on other platforms, such as Mastodon, sort of, while Bluesky updates its policy. Threads’ limited fediverse integration was first used by US President Joseph Robinette Biden’s account earlier this month, for example. Commander-in-Skeets is not yet in place because Biden doesn’t appear to have joined.
