• by Colin Kirkland , April 16, 2024

Shortly after opening up to the public, decentralized social networking service Bluesky is lifting a year-long rule banning heads of state from joining the platform. The decision comes ahead of major political elections in countries across the world.

“By the way…we lifted our 'no heads of state' policy,” the company posted late last week.

Bluesky implemented the policy a year prior when it existed as an invite-only platform, working to build out its unique protocol and compete with social messaging apps like X, Threads and Mastodon.

"We appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm in sending invitations, but our current policy is that we cannot accommodate heads of state to join us in our beta yet," the company originally stated. “This applies to recent/prominent heads of state as well.”

Since going public in early February, Bluesky has hired a head of Trust and Safety and updated its moderation policies, attempting to make the app a safer place while allowing its users to run and host their own servers on the platform’s network.

This concept is referred to as federation and allows Bluesky users to not only host their own account and data, but to create their own rules and guidelines surrounding membership and content moderation, with the ability to “hide,” “warn,” or “show” certain categories of content like violence, spam, nudity, etc. Last month, Bluesky announced Ozone, a tool that allows users to build their own moderation and labeling services.

Unlike non-decentralized social networks, like X, Bluesky doesn’t use a central algorithm to suggest content to users, who must instead choose to subscribe to different feeds.