Amid the furor over the 2024 election, many leftists abandoned pro-free speech X for a social media alternative, and the results are stunning.
Platform Bluesky is attempting to cater to its most anti-free speech users, claiming it will increase censorship to “max capacity,” but apparently it can’t crush speech fast enough to satisfy its user base. Many leftists, especially after the 2024 election turned into a landslide victory for Republicans, lashed out at President-elect Donald Trump’s ally and X owner Elon Musk, leaving X behind.
Many chose to create accounts on Bluesky instead, and the platform soon announced that its censors couldn’t handle the deluge of censorship demands, though it plans to keep trying. The platform even encouraged users to report content for censorship.
On Nov. 15, Bluesky Safety, the platform’s censorship team, posted, “Bluesky has grown by over 3M people in the last week — welcome! With every wave of growth naturally comes an increase in moderation reports. Here’s a status report on how the Trust & Safety team is handling it[.]” The account then acknowledgedthe massive flood of censorship requests and promised to “dial” its censorship group up to “max capacity.”
Bluesky Safety explained, “In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports. We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as CSAM [child sex abuse material] is removed quickly.”
There is “increased spam, scam, and trolling activity” on the platform, Bluesky Safety asserted, urging anti-speech users to “help us by reporting them by clicking the three-dot menu on each post/account.” Bluesky Safety concluded by promising increased censorship, “We appreciate your patience as we dial our moderation team up to max capacity and bring on new team members to support this load.” But when users are determined to be offended and demand censorship, they won’t stop even after moving to a more restricted platform.
One high-profile, pro-free speech account already blanketed with censorship on Bluesky is The Babylon Bee. The Bee’s Editor-in-Chief Kyle Mann posted a screenshot on X Nov. 19 showing that each of the top three posts made by the satire outlet on Bluesky were censored for what the platform apparently considers “Intolerance.” Mann joked that The Bee’s “debut on Blue Sky is going great.” Intolerance is a highly subjective standard, and Bluesky’s Community Guidelines do not even seem to include anything specifically on intolerance, making the humorless censorship of The Bee’s jokes even more mystifying.
The Babylon Bee is a member of the MRC-led Free Speech Alliance.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Bluesky here and demand that it be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
