Government censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there is currently a flaw thanks to the structure of the social network.
Earlier this month, Bluesky limited access to 72 accounts in Türkiye at the request of the Turkish government authorities, according to a recent report by Association of freedom of expression. Consequently, people in Türkiye can no longer see these accounts, and their scope is limited.
The report indicates that 59 Bluesky accounts were blocked to protect “national security and public order”. Bluesky also made 13 other accounts and at least one invisible post in Turkey.
Since many Turkish users have migrated from X to Blue Questions raised Among the community As for whether the social network is as open and decentralized as it claims. (Or if It’s “like Twitter” after all.)
However, the technical foundations of Bluesky are currently facilitating the bypass of these blocks that it would not be on a network like X – even if it is not as open as the Mastodon alternative social network, another decentralized Rival X.
A mastodon user could move their account to different servers to avoid censorship targeting the original mastodon instance (server) where he first made publications that attracted censors.
Users of the official Bluesky application can configure their moderation settings, but have no way to withdraw from the moderation service that Bluesky provides. This includes its use of geographic labellers, such as the newly added Turkish moderation labeller which manages the censorship of accounts mandated by the Turkish government. (Laurens HOF has a great ventilation of the way it works in more detail here On the Fediverse report.)
In other words, if you are on the official Bluesky application and Bluesky (the company) agrees to censor something, there is no way to withdraw from this to see publications or hidden accounts.
Work around censorship in the atmosphere
Other applications of Bluesky Tieces, which constitute the greater open social network known as AtmosphereI don’t have to follow these same rules. At least not for the moment.
Because Bluesky is built above The Protocol ATThird -party customers can create their own interfaces and views of the content of Bluesky without applying the same moderation choices. Meanwhile, the censored accounts in question are not prohibited Since Bluesky Infrastructure, such as relays and PDS (that others outside the company can also manage).
Instead, the accounts are moderate by geographic labelles at the customer’s level. Currently, Bluesky does not require any third -party application to use its geographical moderation labelingThis would oblige the applications to geolore their users, then apply the appropriate regional restrictions. This means no application that does not implement Geographic labelies Do not censor these blocked Turkish accounts.
In other words, applications like Skets,, Ouranos,, Deer,, SkywalkerAnd others can currently be used to bypass Turkish censors.
This “solution” is unfortunately delivered with several warnings.
The choice of application developers not to use geographic labellers is not necessarily intentional. The addition of geographic labelles would be an additional work on their part, and most simply have not yet taken the trouble to implement them. In addition, these third -party applications have much smaller user bases than the official Bluesky application, which allows them to fly under the radar of government censors. This also makes decisions like this less worrying for application developers – at least for the moment.
If these third -party applications have become sufficiently popular, a government like that of Turkey could also approach them and demand an action. And if they do not comply, they could risk that their application is blocked in the country. (Several Bluesky application developers have told us that they will not worry about adding geographic labellers until the approach is applied about a potential deletion of the App Store, for example.)
Because avoiding labellers is apparently not a permanent solution, a developer, Aviva Ruben, built another Bluesky customer called Deer It works differently. Here, users can choose to fully deactivate the Official Moderation Service of Bluesky and the labellers in favor of the use of other third -party labelles instead.
In addition, the application allows users to configure their location manually in its settings – an option that would allow users to avoid blocks and censorship based on geolocation.
“I like the current policy, but I fear that it no longer becomes restrictive or will change in the future – an excellent reason to continue to push views of alternative applications,” said Ruben, referring to the need for alternative means to access and see Bluesky data.
Although today’s censure concerns are focused on Turkey, the Bluesky community must prepare for a future where a government, including the United States, could request that the company hides posts beyond those who are clearly illegal, as Csam.
Ruben says that Deer.Social would add an “without location” option to the application at this stage, so that users can choose to avoid all geographic labellers.
Despite these possible gaps, censorship arrived in Bluesky. And since the official application reaches the greatest number of people, it is a notable evolution.
