Bluesky adds self-labeling for posts and a dedicated media tab for profiles

Bluesky, rival of Threads and X — formerly Twitter — has started allowing users to self-tag their posts so they can be automatically filtered.

The company has started with NSFW categories, through which, users can tag a post with content warning categories such as “Suggestive,” “Nudity,” or “Porn.” The social network said users can tap the shield icon in the composer window to select the tag. Self-tagging will expand categories of labels over time, the company said in a post.

Bluesky has a detailed moderation settings page, which allows users to hide or show a warning to them when they encounter posts related to different categories — including explicit sexual images, nudity, spam, violence and suggestive.

While Bluesky was filtering out some of the content automatically for users based on their settings, the new labels will also help in proactively adding warnings to posts or hiding them completely.

Bluesky, which launched to the public earlier this year, has been at the center of various moderation controversies — especially criticized by the Black community for failing to constrain hate speech. Last month, the platform was slammed for allowing racial slurs in usernames before it modified the service’s policy to ban such handles.

The social network’s move to allow self-labeling of posts is similar to Tumblr’s introduction of “community labels” last year. With that feature, Tumblr aimed to provide filters to people who might not want to see certain content.

Apart from the new self-labeling feature, the social network is adding a much-awaited “Media” tab to profiles, which lets visitors look at images and videos a user has posted.

Additionally, the company is adding more information about blocked quoted posts. However, some users pointed out that they would rather not see blocked quoted posts at all.

Last month, Bluesky added a new algorithmic feed called “Discover,” which presents trending content from accounts you follow and posts from accounts “near your social graph.” While the social network is still operating in invite-only mode, it hit 1 million app installs last month.