Experts on cybersecurity and online foreign influence campaigns are urging Bluesky, the social media company whose app has exploded in popularity in recent weeks, to increase moderation to counter potential state-sponsored influence efforts.
In the past month, Bluesky, a microblogging platform with its roots in Twitter, has seen its largest increase in new user registrations since its public release in February. More than 25 million people are now on the platform, with nearly half of them joining after the 2024 US presidential election.
Rose Wang, chief operating officer of Bluesky, said in a recent interview that Bluesky does not intend to push any political ideology.
“We don’t have any political viewpoint that we’re trying to promote,” he said in early December.
Exploiting users’ political leanings
Many people who have joined BlueSky have cited user experience as one of the Reasons for migration from social media platformHe has also said that he joined the platform after Election Day because he is critical of Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump. Some commentators in the US have questioned whether Bluesky risks becoming left echo chamber,
Some experts argue that the platform’s liberal-leaning users may be exploited by foreign propagandists. Joe Bodnar, who tracks foreign influence operations for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VOA Mandarin that Russian propaganda often appeals to anti-establishment leftists in the US on controversial topics such as Gaza, gun violence and America’s global dominance.
“The Kremlin wants to make those arguments even more forceful,” Bodnar said. “Sometimes that means they play on the left.”
So far, at least three accounts belonging to Russia-controlled media outlet RT have joined Bluesky. Sputnik Brazil is also actively posting on the platform.
VOA Mandarin found that at least two Chinese accounts belonging to state broadcaster CGTN have joined the platform.
Bluesky does not specify validation labels. One way to authenticate an account is for the person or organization to link it to the domain of their official website.
There are at least four other accounts that claim to be Chinese state media outlets China DailyThe Global Times And People’s DailyNone of the three publications responded to VOA’s email inquiring about the authenticity of these accounts.
Additionally, Beijing has flirted heavily with the Western left on some global issues. China has consistently called for a ceasefire in Gaza and accused the West of supporting Israel.
But people familiar with Chinese and Russian state media say the left-leaning user base on Bluesky may actually give Beijing and Moscow a harder time pushing their narratives.
Bodnar said, “Bluesky is not the most hospitable place for Russian fiction.”
Shawn Haines, a British citizen who used to work for Chinese state media outlets, shared a similar opinion in a recent blog post about Bluesky.
“With its predominantly Western liberal leanings, the platform will also a tough challenge For those who wish to advance an openly nationalist viewpoint,” he wrote.
Most Chinese and Russian state media accounts have only hundreds of followers, with RT en Español topping the list with nearly 7,000.
Can ‘decentralization’ be harmful?
China and Russia are finding ways to reach the American public through covert disinformation campaigns on social media. During this year’s elections, disinformation campaign Claims involving China and Russia were promoted that cast doubt on the integrity of the voting process.
A similar strategy may be coming to Bluesky soon.
“I don’t think Bluesky is any more susceptible to influence campaigns than X or other social networks,” Jennifer Victoria Screll, a researcher in AI-supported influence operations, told VOA Mandarin. But Scurrell, of ETH Zurich’s Center for Security Studies, said Bluesky’s decentralized moderation approach is flawed.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey started Bluesky as an internal project to give users more power over moderation. Bluesky then became independent in 2021.
“Our mission is to develop and operate large-scale technologies of open and decentralized public interaction,” the company says on its website.
To do this, Bluesky “decentralized” its moderation authority, giving users the tools to customize their experience on the site.
BlueSky offers a universal basic moderation setting for every user, which labels content such as extremism, misinformation, fake accounts, and adult content. Users can choose whether to view content labeled by BlueSky. Users can report to Bluesky content or accounts that they believe violate Bluesky’s guidelines.
Additionally, users get to create their own moderation settings to label or filter certain content and accounts. Other users can subscribe to these customized settings if they wish.
Skrill, who helps test security vulnerabilities for OpenAI as a contractor, told VOA Mandarin that the decentralized approach to moderation could be a double-edged sword.
“Social values are diverse, contextual, and local, making decentralized moderation an attractive concept,” he wrote in his response to VOA.
He warned, however, that outsourcing content moderation to users “raises serious concerns” because this approach would give bad actors the same power as ordinary users.
He wrote, “What if the entire node is taken over by malicious actors spreading disinformation or manipulated content,” or “if the system is hijacked by an army of bots?”
VOA Mandarin emailed Bluesky a list of detailed questions about its moderation policy against potential foreign influence efforts, but did not receive a response.
Experts have urged Bluesky to implement measures to counter potential foreign influence campaigns.
recently blog postSarah Cook, an independent China watcher and former China director at Freedom House, urged Bluesky to label state media accounts, a practice adopted by many social media companies, so that users can identify these accounts. Learn about relations with foreign governments.
Eugenio Benincasa, an expert on Chinese cyber threats at ETH Zurich, claims that studying how Chinese tech companies help Beijing monitor social media platforms and manipulate online discussions could help Bluesky better prepare .
“To develop effective security measures, it is important to thoroughly study the evolving influence strategy, enabled by tools such as public opinion monitoring systems, to identify vulnerabilities that may have been overlooked or are emerging,” Benincasa said.