Bluesky, censorship and country-based moderation

A deep dive into the April 2025 "censorship" on Turkish Bluesky illustrates that government censorship on ATmosphere apps is limited and will become even less effective as more people exploit its decentralised nature.

Context in brief:

• March 2025, the Turkish "government ordered X to restrict access to various X accounts ... associated with the protests" to their arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, triggering an exodus of X users to Bluesky
• on April 5, "44 Bluesky accounts had been ordered to be blocked by the Turkish judicial system"
• mid April, Bluesky PBC's Turkish moderation labeler, which had been under development, "became active... started hiding accounts, making the accounts invisible for people in Turkey. Between April 14 and 17, Bluesky PBC made 18 accounts and 2 posts invisible in Turkey."

Predictable outrage followed at what many saw as account takedowns and bans. The truth is more nuanced, and Laurens' post takes the opportunity to explain how Bluesky's approach to composable moderation works, and the "implications of government censorship more broadly".

Within the composable moderation stack lie "geographic moderation labelers... only applies these labels if content is in violation of local laws", despite not contravening Bluesky’s own guidelines. So "Bluesky PBC judges a government’s request to remove content on its legal validity... [not ethics]... If it is legally valid, Bluesky PBC will comply and limit access to that content in the applicable jurisdiction."

Critically, on Bluesky PBC's own apps (website, mobile apps) these labellers are mandatory. These apps also check where the user is via IP address, so "When someone uses the Bluesky app while they are on a Turkish IP address, they will be automatically subscribed to the Turkish moderation labeler".

However:

• as soon as you move across the border, the blocked content becomes visible to users of Bluesky apps, which is why using a VPN also works
• other clients exist which pay no attention to geographic moderation labelers, providing "a simple way to bypass the geographic content restrictions", even without a VPN.

Moreover, "The output of the geographic moderation labelers is easily publicly accessible", making "The content that governments want to censor ... easily accessible for the rest of the world... [see] PDSls or ...Query Labeler Service", and expect custom feeds and lists composed of the content your governments doesn't want its citizens to see.

While ATproto therefore makes government censorship difficult in theory, it won't matter in practice if the vast majority of people use a single company's apps and hosting solutions, creating "a single chokepoint where governments can apply pressure for censorship requests".