Bluesky, the X alternative, says it has “quadrupled” its moderation team

• Bluesky said it has “quadrupled” its moderation team in a post on Friday.

• The app works to address handle-squatting and impersonation accounts.

• It also explores how to improve account verification based on user feedback.

Bluesky expanded its moderation team as curious social media users, many of whom are looking for an alternative to Elon Musk’s Xcall the app.

The Bluesky Trust & Safety team’s official account published a thread on Friday that shared details about its impersonation policy.

The company said the policy has been updated to be more “aggressive”, adding that “impersonation and squatting accounts will be removed”.

“I also quadruple the size of our moderation team, in part to act on impersonation reports more quickly. We still have a large number of moderation reports due to the influx of new users, as we previously shared, although we are making progress,” the post read.

The company said satire, fan and parody accounts are allowed on Bluesky, but must label themselves as such in their display name and bio for transparency. Impersonation – or changing the identity of an account to mislead users – is prohibited in the app.

“If you have set up an impersonation account just to gain followers and switch to another identity that is no longer impersonation to keep that account, your account will be removed,” one post said.

Bluesky also responded to users who asked for more concrete verification methods.

“We’re also hearing your feedback: users want more ways to verify their identity outside of domain verification,” read a post. “We’re exploring additional options to improve account verification and hope to roll out more soon.”

Bluesky representatives did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Bluesky started as a Twitter project in 2019, but has gained popularity recently as some social media users get tired of X because of concerns over speech inciting hatred and misinformation.

X’s approach to moderation was criticized when Musk took over in 2022. After his arrival, Musk fired content moderators and moderation team staff. However, X’s head of business operations told Bloomberg in January that it plans to hire 100 staff to moderate content and build a content moderation center in Austin.

While Bluesky is still chasing X’s success, it could challenge natureMeta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s own Twitter impersonation.

Bluesky announced in October that it has more than 13 million users. A month later, COO of Bluesky told Business Insider that it had “exceeded” its user growth plans and surpassed 21 million users. The COO said the company needs to purchase more servers to keep operations running smoothly.

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