Bluesky issues its first transparency report, noting rise in user reports and legal demands

This week, Bluesky published its inaugural transparency report, highlighting key actions taken by its Trust & Safety team and various initiatives, including age verification compliance and influence operation monitoring. The social media platform, which competes with X and Threads, experienced a remarkable growth of nearly 60% in 2025, soaring from 25.9 million to 41.2 million users. This figure includes accounts hosted on Bluesky's infrastructure as well as those utilizing their decentralized network based on the AT Protocol. In the past year, users generated a staggering 1.41 billion posts, accounting for 61% of all posts made since the platform's launch. Out of these, 235 million posts featured media, which constitutes 62% of all media content shared on Bluesky to date. Notably, the company reported a dramatic fivefold increase in legal requests from law enforcement and government agencies, rising from 238 requests in 2024 to 1,470 in 2025. While Bluesky had shared moderation reports in previous years, this marks the first time a comprehensive transparency report has been released. The document delves into various aspects beyond moderation, such as regulatory compliance and account verification processes. Compared to the previous year, where moderation reports surged by 17 times, the current report indicates a 54% increase in user reports—from 6.48 million in 2024 to 9.97 million in 2025. This uptick in reports closely followed the platform's overall user growth of 57% during the same timeframe. Approximately 3% of users, equating to 1.24 million individuals, submitted reports in 2025. The predominant categories included reports of misleading content (including spam) at 43.73%, harassment at 19.93%, and sexual content at 13.54%. A miscellaneous 'other' category captured 22.14% of reports that did not fit into these classifications. In the misleading category, spam made up a significant portion, with 2.49 million reports. Additionally, within the harassment reports, hate speech was the most prevalent, with about 55,400 instances reported. Other concerns included targeted harassment, trolling, and doxxing, though many harassment reports fell into ambiguous areas of anti-social behavior. Bluesky noted that the majority of sexual content reports were due to improper labeling, which prevented adult content from being adequately tagged for better user control over moderation. Reports concerning violence totaled 24,670, categorized into threats, glorification, and extremist content. The report also revealed that Bluesky's automated system flagged 2.54 million potential violations. Encouragingly, the platform observed a 79% decline in daily reports of anti-social behavior after implementing a system that limited the visibility of toxic replies. Month-over-month, reports per 1,000 active users decreased by 50.9% from January to December. In terms of moderation efforts, Bluesky removed 3,619 accounts suspected of engaging in influence operations, primarily those linked to Russia. The company had previously declared its intent to enhance moderation and enforcement, and the data supports this claim. In total, Bluesky took down 2.44 million items in 2025, a significant increase from just 66,308 accounts the prior year. This year, Bluesky issued 3,192 temporary suspensions and 14,659 permanent bans for evading restrictions. The majority of these permanent removals targeted accounts engaging in spam, impersonation, and other inauthentic behaviors. Interestingly, the report indicates a preference for labeling content rather than outright banning users, with 16.49 million labels applied to content last year, a 200% increase from the previous year.