Bluesky hits 40 million users, introduces ‘dislikes’ beta

Social network Bluesky, which made a new announcement on Friday 40 million users milestoneIt will soon begin testing “likes” as a way to improve personalization on its flagship Discover feed and others.

The news was shared with many others Update and change conversation controlsThat includes small tweaks to replies, improved detection of toxic comments, and other ways to prioritize conversations more relevant to the individual user.

With the “Dislike” beta launching soon, Bluesky will consider new signals to improve user personalization. As users post “dislikes”, the system will learn what types of content they want to see less of This will help inform more than just how the content feeds are ranked, but also the ranking of the answers.

The company explained that the changes are designed to make BlueSky more “a place for fun, genuine and respectful exchanges — an order that follows a month of turmoil on the platform as some users Again criticized the platform’s decision to moderate. Although Bluesky is designed as a decentralized network where users exercise their own moderation, some subset of Bluesky users want the platform itself to ban bad actors and Controversial statistics Instead of blocking users leave it up to them.

Bluesky, however, wants to focus more on the tools it gives users to control their own experience.

Today, this includes things like moderation lists that allow users to quickly block a group they don’t want to interact with, content filter controls, mute sounds, and the ability to subscribe to other moderation service providers. Bluesky allows users to isolate quote posts to limit unwanted attention, which has long influenced its “toxic culture.dunking“X (formerly Twitter).

In addition to dislikes, the company said it is testing a mix of ranking updates, design changes and other feedback tools to improve conversation on its network.

This includes a new system that will map out “social neighborhoods” in Bluesky, meaning connections between people who interact with and reply to each other frequently. Bluesky says it’s prioritizing replies from people “closer to you” to make the conversations shown in your feed more relevant and familiar. The new “dislike” may have some effect here as well, Bluesky said.

This, in particular, is an area where competing threads, from the meta, have occasionally challenged.

As newsletter writer Max Reed As mentioned last yearThreads landed its users in a confusing feed where conversations they weren’t connected to would sometimes appear mid-story. Reed commented that “it’s often impossible to determine who is replying to whom and where and why you’re seeing certain posts. They appear from somewhere and lead somewhere,” he wrote at the time.

Bluesky’s plan to map out social neighborhoods could solve this problem at scale.

The company also says its latest model does a better job of identifying replies that are “toxic, spammy, off-topic, or posted in bad faith” and demotes them in threads, search results and notifications.

Another change to the reply button will now take users directly to the entire thread instead of the compose screen, which may encourage users to read the thread before responding.

Bluesky says it’s an easy way to “reduce content and redundant replies” — another criticism leveled at Twitter/X.

Also, the company is tweaking the reply settings feature to make it more visible to users so they can control who can respond to their posts.