As US election day approaches, social media startup Bluesky, now flush with new capitalhopes to demonstrate that its platform can serve as a more reliable, fact-checked alternative to Elon Musk’s X. While the latter is dominate with Musk’s support for the Trump campaignBluesky tends to turn leftthanks to its influx of disgruntled ex-Twitter users who don’t like the platform’s new direction. Now, with the US election upon us, Bluesky is preparing for its biggest test yet: its ability to handle potential misinformation that may mislead users during these critical national events, including any posts intended to disrupt the voting process or those who use new technologies. , as AI, to confuse the voting public.

While X’s other competitor, Meta’s Threads app has distanced itself from politics — even going so far as to stop recommending political content to users — Bluesky has capitalized on the demand for a real-time social network that prioritizes such discussions. Timed with X’s recent changes to the lock feature, which angered some users, Bluesky could be poised to see yet another X exodus as users make the switch.

To manage its election operations, Bluesky earlier this year hired a notable former Twitter leader as Head of Trust and Safety, Aaron Rodericks. Already experienced in the policies, tools and teams needed to manage election security at Twitter, where he co-led its trust and security team, Rodericks once made headlines as the target of a right-wing campaign on X after announced on LinkedIn how he was looking to hire more employees for the 2024 election season. The CEO later lost his job at X when Musk cut half of electoral integrity team after promising to expand it.

Now at Bluesky, the team led by Rodericks has announced how it is preparing to handle the US presidential election, including reviewing content for potential disinformation as well as other unconfirmed reports and claims.

In a series of posts on Bluesky, the Bluesky Safety team detailed their election safety plans, reminding users that they can report posts to Bluesky’s moderation service for misleading and illegal or urgent content by clicking the three-dot menu next to each post and account. There will also be a priority queue in its system for any election-related reporting.

To keep the process “safe and accurate,” Bluesky says it will also remove any content that “encourages or expresses intimidation or disruption of voting, tabulation, or certification.” It also plans to flag posts with misleading claims about voting, such as those that share incorrect voter ID requirements or other manipulated media.

Meanwhile, “emerging” election-related reports that cannot be immediately verified will be labeled “unconfirmed.” For example, if someone reports that there are long queues at the polling station or other incidents at the polls, they will likely be labeled as unconfirmed at the time of assessment. (However, the company did not share whether or how it would update these reports if national media later confirmed them.)

The company says its plans to moderate the platform extend beyond Election Day, as it will work to identify and address potential disruptions to the “peaceful transition of power.”

In addition, Bluesky says it reserves the right to implement more safeguards in the coming days, if necessary, to ensure the safety of elections on the platform.

Unlike X and Threads, where moderation is handled only by the business itself, Bluesky’s decentralized promise is that anyone can run their own Bluesky server and own moderation service. Users can also subscribe to multiple moderation services to customize their feed to their liking,

“Our online experience should not depend on billionaires making unilateral decisions about what we see,” the company said. explicitly in March. “On an open social network like Bluesky, you can shape the experience for yourself.” In other words, if you don’t like the way Bluesky runs its own app, you can create your own app. And if you don’t like Bluesky’s moderation options, you can build your own independent service instead.

The Bluesky moderation team has also been expanded with additional hires following two recent growths that brought more users to the service. While the company hasn’t said how big its moderation team is today, CEO Jay Graber alluded to the team’s size in a interview with Niley Patel’s Decoder podcast in March, when she noted, “We have about 18 years in engineering and operations, and then we have about that number in support and moderation.”