Alex Winter took upon himself the task of producing an statement regarding moderation at Bluesky. Here's the full text and his introductory tweet:
"Please read. We hoped that one of the many members of the Bluesky community from Gaza could be first to share this letter, but we were worried that their account would get taken down if they did. This letter is for @moderation.bsky.app , Bluesky leadership and the wider community here. Thanks!"
[CLICK here if you would like your name added to this letter] النسخة العربية من هذه الرسالة متاحة أدناه.
Open Letter to the Bluesky Team About Their Treatment of Palestinians in Gaza
The signatories of this letter are all members of the Bluesky community, many of us have actively participated on the platform since its inception. We came to Bluesky because it was a breath of fresh air, a place that felt different from many of the other social media platforms. The lack of a central algorithm, the ability to build and use custom feeds, and the lack of penalty for link promotion contributed to an environment that allowed diverse and interesting voices to find their footing and community on Bluesky. While some of the signatories of this letter have had no issues with speaking their mind publicly on Bluesky, unfortunately that is not true for all the signatories because many are Palestinians currently living in Gaza.
These Palestinians are journalists, artists, engineers, teachers, grandmas, entrepreneurs, a man who owned an ice cream shop, a pediatrician who has been featured on CBS Morning News, aid workers, architects, waiters, pharmacists, students–and perhaps most essential to the backbone of Bluesky, posters. All of these people provide unique and interesting voices to the Bluesky community. However, unlike the other signatories of this letter, these Bluesky community members have struggled to keep their accounts on the platform. Most of them have lost multiple accounts and/or have had their accounts labeled as spam. Some cannot even make an account without it immediately being removed from the platform.
Gazans undertake immense efforts to simply be on Bluesky. Sometimes, they walk for miles just to have access to the internet. They scale rooftops where they are exposed to potential military attacks just for the opportunity to get better cell signals–one signatory of this letter tragically lost her brother this way. They use what little money they have to pay for their phone and internet plans instead of using that money on the food and shelter they desperately need. Gazans are forced into this inhumane choice because they need this connection to the outside world in order to survive.
Many use this platform to raise much-needed funds, others use it to connect and tell stories of what is happening in Gaza when Western media won’t. Palestinians have posted firsthand accounts of the reality of their lives in Gaza including bombings, displacements and evacuations, injuries, the death of their loved ones, and bearing witness to the deteriorating health of their children only to later have all of that documentation suddenly erased when their accounts are deleted.
We understand that some Gazans post in a way that may trigger some of Bluesky's internal automated spam rules when posting fundraising links. However, treating a group of extremely vulnerable people the same way that the platform treats t-shirt bots and phishers is not only incredibly cruel, it has also exacerbated the situation of desperate people just attempting to survive.
Gazans have also been aggressively targeted and unfairly reported by bad actors. Many accounts openly encourage the reporting and targeting of any Palestinian. Several groups exist for the express purpose of looking for Palestinian accounts to report.
We believe Bluesky owes Gazans, and the entire community who benefits from their voices, a greater duty of care especially in the context of the horrors they are enduring. We ask Bluesky to implement the following changes:
- Provide information on all Bluesky-affiliated websites in Arabic that explains the rules and expectations of the site in clear language.
- Investigate the accounts that are mass-reporting Palestinians on Bluesky. The mass reporting of Palestinians on Bluesky is a group effort to render the platform a hostile place for a community based on their ethnicity. As such, it is racism, and should be understood as such. Reports against Palestinians who have broken no community guidelines must be understood as racism, and the accounts that submit those reports should be disregarded in the future.
- Many Bluesky users encourage Gazans to tag or reply to them, and this is not always understood as unwelcome behavior. If an account is reported as Spam for tagging or replying to others, treat only reports from the tagged/mentioned account as legitimate, seeing as they were the only ones who received a notification.
- Send emails regarding disciplinary action every time it is taken. Gazans do not always get an email explaining what they did wrong, and those that do are required to parse a language they do not speak in order to understand their violation. Have these emails contain an easily visible link to information about their violations in Arabic.
- Respond to appeals in a timely fashion, many Gazans simply never hear back from Bluesky after they appeal a decision.
- In addition to removing Gazans for alleged spam behavior, Bluesky has also sometimes indicated that they are deleting an account for being a scam or acting in a fraudulent manner. If Bluesky is removing someone for an alleged fraud or scam violation, evidence of how they have done this needs to be provided to the user. Many Gazans have been suspended on these grounds with absolutely no justification.
- Prioritize temporary penalties for rule violations as a warning instead of permanently suspending accounts. This could include: Temporarily limiting their ability to post, reply, or DM on Bluesky, or giving temporary suspensions after communicating clear expectations for future behavior.
- End IP bans on any account from Gaza and allow them to make new accounts where they can comply with Bluesky rules and continue to be valued members of the community.
We understand that even if all these changes are made, many Gazans may still violate Bluesky rules in the future, but we hope that Bluesky will abandon their punitive approach to these violations and instead embrace an attitude of education, cooperation and community care– one that works to ensure people in Gaza can participate in a way that keeps their voices heard.
We also call on the Bluesky community to help and support these accounts however they can. We want to continue to build a healthy community with better community members and this cannot be done if Gazans continue to be shunned. We can use this as an opportunity to show how to protect all vulnerable groups in the future.
We hope that Bluesky does not follow the path of other social media platforms and instead forges ahead with a different philosophy. After all, that is the reason so many of its users are there. Bluesky's ethos of "No Caesars” should apply to all members of its community.