Don’t Buy The Claims Against Bluesky

As Bluesky’s userbase continues to grow, the media has quickly found itself attempting to run fearmongering pieces against the new social media platform. This is unsurprising, as history has shown numerous examples of this happening previously (just ask TikTok) — but what is surprising is the utter shamelessness of the content in question. Take the 11/26/2024 article “BlueSky Sees Surge in New Users and Child Sexual Abuse Material” from the website Decrypt, a piece which makes the point that objectionable and horrific content on the platform has grown along with its userbase.

To which the response of any reasonable person is: Yeah, that makes sense given the basics of mathematics. Obviously when the number of users increase, the amount of people posting any kind of content — including the worst possible media in existence — is going to increase along with it. However, Bluesky moderators — as this article admits — are doing everything possible to remove this material from the platform, making them no different than the team behind any other social media website.

Now, if evidence arose that the amount of this content was disproportionate to what would be expected, such findings would be concerning. Similarly, if people found reason to believe the moderation team was allowing this material to fester on the platform without objection, that would have be a…