Jack Dorsey’s BlueSky app, touted to be one of the biggest rivals to Twitter, is under fire for allegedly allowing usernames with racial slurs in them. Over the course of the last week, several users have pointed out that BlueSky has allowed users’ usernames even with the n-word—hinting at a potential moderation issues in the platform.
As per Mashable, this is happening because BlueSky is failing to block the ability for users to keep certain usernames. And when the company first received reports detailing the misconduct on Wednesday, BlueSky took 40 minutes—after being first reported—to remove the account, and the code that reportedly allowed this to happen was patched.
Speaking to Mashable, the company said, “The next day, we continued to work on a more comprehensive technical solution that uses a combination of banned words and human review upon account creation.”
It added, “We’re continuing to invest in moderation and support systems that scale with the number of people in the app to ensure a fast response time to future incidents.”
The company has also been accused of having an “anti-blackness” problem. Data Mesh Radio Host, Scott Hirleman, in a LinkedIn post, said that BlueSky CEO, Jay Graber and his team “have an incredibly bad anti-blackness problem.”
“It says you are hiring. Where is the posting for your head of Trust and Safety? Why is this such a big problem every week or two it seems? If you don’t want to run a social media platform, split the company in twain and go focus on the protocol and fund the platform with another team that cares,” Hirleman added.
BlueSky currently operates under an invite-only model, likely implemented to prevent a flood of new users as it aims to scale its systems and enhance user protection from bad actors. However, as the platform grows, issues, including the problem of usernames with slurs, are surfacing.
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