Decentralized rival Twitter/X Bluesky was announced on Tuesday that it is open-sourcing Ozone, a tool that allows individuals and groups to collaboratively review and flag content on the network. The company plans to open up the ability for individuals and groups to run their own independent monitoring services later this week, meaning users will be able to sign up for additional monitoring services beyond Bluesky’s default monitoring.
In a suspension, Bluesky 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 beyond what Bluesky already requires. As a result, users will be able to create a customized experience tailored to their preferences.
For example, one could create a moderation service that blocks images of spiders on the network. If you’re someone who freaks out at the sight of a spider, you could install the moderation service and remove all tags with spider images from your feeds.
“One group will never be perfect at moderation and curation for the entire world, with its wide variety of contexts, cultures, and preferences,” the blog post says. “We’re excited to open up the ecosystem to enable experts, developers, and users with a local context to provide their own contributions that you can subscribe to in addition to Bluesky’s moderation service.”
The moderation service filters will be available on the desktop version of Bluesky to start and will soon be available on mobile.
Bluesky says installing filters from independent monitoring services will be as easy as monitoring another account. Moderation services will allow users to report content, so if you saw an image of an untagged spider, you can report it to the service.
Although Bluesky already allows users to run a mute list or block list that other users can subscribe to, it’s often tied to a specific account, which doesn’t allow for collaboration and can be overwhelming if people start tagging you direct. Plus, unlike a blocklist that just lets you add accounts, Ozone lets you flag specific posts.
Individuals and groups creating a moderator service will have access to a report queue, which will eliminate the need to directly tag you from individuals each time. People running moderation services will be able to set custom tags and specify what they are doing. Moderation services are not tied to individual accounts, so multiple people can manage them together.
Bluesky notes that moderation services will likely start as community-managed projects, but hints that “there’s also nothing to prevent a moderation service from having paid subscribers.”
The open source tool is in the GitHub repository here.
