The government’s censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there is currently a gap thanks to how the social network is structured.
Earlier this month, Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the request of Turkish government authorities, according to a recent report from the Freedom Freedom Association. As a result, people in Turkey can no longer see these accounts, and their achievement is limited.
The report shows that 59 Bluesky accounts were blocked due to the protection of “national security and public order”. Bluesky made 13 more accounts and at least one invisible post from Turkey.
Given that many Turkish users migrated from X to Bluesky in the hope of escaping the government’s censorship, Bluesky’s bow to the Turkish government’s demands has raised questions between the community if the social network is just as open and decentralized as it claims to be. (Or if it’s “just like twitter” after all.)
However, Bluesky’s technical bases currently make it easier to bypass these blocks than it would be on a network like x – even if it is not as open as the alternative social network mastodon, another decentralized rival X.
A mastodon user can move their account to different servers to avoid target censorship in the original mastodon example, where they first made posts that attracted censors.
Users in the official Bluesky app can configure their moderation settings, but have no way to give up the moderation service that Bluesky offers. This includes its use of geographical labels, such as labeling the newly added moderation of Turkish moderation that deals with censoring accounts mandated by the Turkish government. (Laurens HOF has a large division of how it all works in more technical details here in the report of Fediversity.)
Simply put, if you are in the official Bluesky and Bluesky app (the company) agrees to censor something in your region, there is no way to give up to see hidden posts or accounts.
Working about censorship in the atmosphere
Other third -party Bluesky applications, which make up the largest open social network known as the atmosphere, should not follow the same rules. At least, not for now.
Because Bluesky is built on top of the AT protocol, third -party clients can create their interfaces and images in the contents of Bluesky without applying the same moderation choices. Meanwhile, the censored accounts in question are not prohibited by Bluesky infrastructure, such as relay and personal data servers (which others outside the company can also execute).
Instead, the accounts are moderated by geographical labels at the client level. Currently, Bluesky does not require any third party app to use its geographical modification labels, which will force applications to geolocate their users and then apply the appropriate regional restrictions. This means that any application that does not implement existing geographical labels is not censoring these blocked Turkish accounts.
In other words, applications like Skeets, Ouranos, Deer.Social, Skywalker and others can currently be used to bypass Turkish censors.
This “solution” comes with some warnings, unfortunately.
Choosing app developers not to use geographical labels is not necessarily intentional. Adding geographical labels would be extra work on their part, and most are simply not worried about applying them yet. Moreover, these third -party applications have much smaller users’ bases than the official Bluesky app, which allows them to fly under the radar of government censors. This also makes decisions like this less concern for application developers – at least at the moment.
If these third -party applications were growing popular, a government like Turkey can also approach them and seek action. And if they were not to implement, they may risk their app in the country (eg, some Bluesky app developers told us they will not worry about adding geographical labeling until Apple approaches them for a possible removal from the app store).
Because avoiding labels seemingly not a permanent solution, a developer, Aviva Ruben, is building an alternative bluesky client called deer.social that works differently. Here, users can choose to completely disable Bluesky’s official moderation service and labels in favor of using other third -party labeling in the country.
Plus, the app allows users to configure their location by hand in its settings-an option that would allow users to avoid blocks and geolocation-based censorship.
“I like current politics, but I’m afraid it will get more restrictive or change in the future – a great reason to continue to push in alternative applications,” Ruben said, referring to the need for alternative ways to access and see Bluesky data.
Although today’s government censorship concerns are concentrated in Turkey, the Bluesky community should prepare for a future where any government, including the US, may require the company to hide posts beyond those illegal, such as CSAM.
Ruben says deer.
Despite these potential gaps, the censorship has arrived in Bluesky. And given that the official application reaches the largest number of people, this is a noticeable evolution.
