Jack Dorsey's BlueSky Under Fire For Allowing Usernames With Racial Slurs

Dorsey, the former Twitter head is facing backlash in the wake of the removal of numerous racist, ableist and transphobic slurs from its list of flagged words in an update last week.

An account with a racial slur as its username was spotted by users last week and it was active for 16 days. ( Image Source :Getty )

Jack Dorsey-backed BlueSky which is in the middle of a controversy as many users are threatening to quit the Twitter rival. BlueSky has apparently failed to flag slurs in account usernames due to which several protesting users are protesting. Among those protesting against BlueSky are many people of colour who are "frustrated that Bluesky hasn’t apologised for allowing racial slurs to slip through its moderation tools even though they violate the platform’s community guidelines", says a report by TechCrunch. 

Dorsey, the former Twitter head who backs the decentralised platform is facing backlash in the wake of the removal of numerous racist, ableist and transphobic slurs from its list of flagged words in an update last week. "Our community guidelines published yesterday reflect our values for a healthy community, and we are working on becoming better stewards every day," Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said in a post last week.

An account with a racial slur as its username was spotted by users last week and it was active for 16 days before BlueSky users flagged it. The company removed the account the same day.

To recall, Twitter's German alternative Mastodon as well as BlueSky got a big push earlier this month after a new Twitter "mess" that was a result of Elon Musk's announcement to restrict the number of tweets for users on the platform they can see in a day. Musk temporarily enforced limits on post readings to prevent "data scraping and system manipulation". 

Meanwhile, Instagram Threads, which is also a rival to Twitter, is following the latter's footsteps and imposing rate limits, or limits on how many posts users can view. Meta-owned Instagram Threads, which has been recently launched has announced that it has to impose rate limits in the wake of spam attacks. The announcement was made by Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, who posted that the platform has to get tighter on a number of things, including rate limits.