Alright, we should be back up and running. Thank you for your patience!

Hi all! Skywatch automation is currently down as we deal with some scaling issues. We hope to have it back up in short order, but in the meantime, you may see content that is typically labeled on your timeline. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

We would like to raise two proposals to our users. The first, is the depreciation of the "Disinformation Network Label". This label is confusing in combination with fringe media and we are proposing depreciation:

We appreciate that there are apparently quite a few german speaking accounts which follow us, but regretfully, we don't have the language or cultural competency to label accounts and posts that are in German, or pertain to German politics at this time.

This is so cool - @skywatch.blue wrote up how Skywatch uses Osprey and why Osprey is helpful. Huge thanks for open sourcing some Osprey tools! Osprey sidebars for batch analysis: github.com/skywatch-bsk... Claude skills to use with Osprey: github.com/skywatch-bsk... github.com/roostorg/osp...

Fixed a broken rule and we should catch the accounts reposting 100s of users in a go now.

Folks: Please stop reporting @attie.ai. This is out of scope for us.

PDS hosters: folks should not have PDS_INVITE_REQUIRED=false in their config unless they know what they are doing. at a minimum you need CAPTCHAs on all signup routes, to block/disable the createAccount API flow, etc. we know this should be smoother.

I've realized I've been telling PDS admins how they can tackle these spam accounts from being created on their PDS, but just realized I never explained that as the end user, YOU can also hide them from your views with @skywatch.blue. Wrote how below.

Been inundated by spam / scammer accounts lately? We've recently added some labels to help clarify why accounts get labeled: Bulk Following, Engagement Abuse / Hacking and Spam. We also encourage you to use our Platform Manipulation label!

FYI: the automod is currently lagging behind substantially. It’s slowingly catching up, but will probably be another few hours

Thank you for running a great labeler! tangled.org/baileytownse...

Reminder, if you run a PDS, you can tail @skywatch.blue with @baileytownsend.dev's label-watcher, and you can can get alerted when we apply an inauthentic-fundraising, spam, bulk-following, engagement-abuse, or platform-manipulation label to an account on your PDS.

@nora.zone you haven't been labeled in almost a year, other than the bluesky-elder label.

🫡

Hi all, we're switching our backend auto moderation platform up. This will allow us to match on more complex patterns and combinations and hopefully increase our accuracy / reduce false positives. In the short term, bear with us as we dial in the new rulesets!

Stop reporting communists and claiming they're MAGA accounts with absolutely no proof (and no, disagreeing with you does not count as proof).

Be aware that there are accounts attempting to steal session keys. This particular method won’t work using the Bluesky app for a couple of reasons, but third party apps may be vulnerable to similar attempts. We will attempt to automatically label these as Platform Manipulation.

We have updated the Sports Betting label to “Sports Betting and Prediction Markets”. Posts containing links to prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket will now be labeled and can be muted by toggling your labeler preferences.

And we're back, thank you for your patience!

Hi all, our backend is down and we're not sure why, so if you're receiving errors with appears and reporting, that's why. More updates as we figure out what broke.

some might know how @roost.tools is approaching open safety tool development, but many more may not! @annebdh.bsky.social lays it all out here, including our governance structure, how people can get involved, and how working in the open doesn't mean more abuse! roost.tools/blog/open-by...

We've introduced a new label and associated blocklist: Intolerance. We have also depreciated the Dehumanizing Rhetoric and Discriminatory Language labels in favor of this one, which will capture a broader swath of behavior that users want out of their timelines.

A general reminder that the labels do what they say on the box. There are very few new false positives being added to the MAGA list and most folks are discovering accounts that were labeled months ago that have not yet been discovered.

Just an update here: We're currently going through all the lists and labeled accounts to remove as many false positives as we can detect. This is a slow and tedious process which will likely continue for the next week or so.

A general reminder. We do this for a good reason. Please read: Whitney Philips' "The Oxygen of Amplification"

Looking forward to a great panel tomorrow at the @parispeaceforum.bsky.social Forum, hosted by ROOST President, @camillefrancois.bsky.social. Stay tuned for more! #onlinesafety #AI #AItransparency #opensource #trustandsafety #techforgood

Today’s the last chance to give us your thoughts! Fill out the Skywatch Survey!

Skywatch was mentioned in this week's Connected Places by @laurenshof.online. We're grateful for the mention and for anyone more widely interested in what's currently going on in the ATProto Community and Fediverse, we can't say enough nice things about Laurens' writing! Check it out!

5) If you haven’t yet, please take the Skywatch User Survey! We will run it for another week!

Hi all, a few updates. 1) We have refined the allowlisting of the MAGA label to catch fewer false positives, but the labeling criteria being what it is this will never be perfect. We are working through appeals but also dealing with a significant uptick in legitimate reports.

We all hate surveys but some are actually important and useful. If you are using Skywatch, take 10 minutes to respond and if you are not, why not may I ask?

Do you use Skywatch? Have you previously used Skywatch? Have you heard of Skywatch? If you answered yes to any of these questions, we'd love to hear from you and have put together a short survey. Please fill it out to help us figure out how to better serve our users!

Do you use Skywatch? Have you previously used Skywatch? Have you heard of Skywatch? If you answered yes to any of these questions, we'd love to hear from you and have put together a short survey. Please fill it out to help us figure out how to better serve our users!

Hi all, we are aware of the increase in false positives related to the MAGA label. We are working on adjusting the auto labeling criteria. While we make a good faith effort to handle negation, the label does what it says on the box, and we may miss some uses cases as they become more prevalent.

We should be back up, and it looks like the issue did not prevent reports from coming in. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Skywatch's backend is down today. We're currently troubleshooting, but if you make an report or an appeal, be aware that you may need to repeat the action once we've fixed it.

Look, I'm not interested in debating Jay's post, but you should be pointing out who these people are because @skywatch.blue will absolutely help deal with the problem and @asukafield.xyz will help deal with the problem.

Working on upgrading the language detection tooling to something slightly better in the hopes French speakers don't keep getting got by the "contains-slur" label.

Hi all, we're aware that there is a specific PDS that has been set-up to aggressively spam replies and had managed to evade our labeler. We've resolved the issue and are replaying the last 24 hours of the firehose to label them accordingly.

Hi all: the relative merits of any given article in a source widely understood to be fringe media or a purveyor of disinformation is largely irrelevent, we are labeling based on the quality of the overall site and do not make exceptions.

Are YOU attending #TrustCon 2025? ROOST's Head of Product @julietshen.bsky.social will be participating in several sessions next week, including "Trust the Mods!" a workshop on best practices for content review systems on July 21st at 11:00 am PT. Learn more here: www.trustcon.net/event/0f932a...

We will be reducing the number of labels we offer to just those which do not require substantial moderator input to apply.

We have made the decision to delete the block list associated with the Suspected Inauthentic label. The nature of how lists work on bluesky and the scale of that list (80K+ accounts) was making it difficult to remove accounts from other block lists.

We are pleased to report that this list has been restored!

Hiding behind the labeler: Labeler subscribers who routinely pick fights with other users and then report the other user when they hit back will have their reports muted and may be labeled if their behavior is sufficiently troll like.

If you are looking for the block list associated with the TERF-GC label, please be aware that it has been temporarily been hidden by Bluesky as potentially “violat[ing] our Community Guidelines.” We have of course appealed and hope to restore this service to you in short order.

This person said a mean thing about my political affiliation—e.g., "this person is ranting about liberals" will not result in label action being taken absent behavior which fits one of our label categories.

Hi all, when you make reports to the labeler, please provide context and don't just submit a blank report. This is especially true if you're reporting an account and the reason is non-obvious. Thank you!

Heya Skywatch users! @laelaps.fyi is another great independent labeler, and they’re looking for someone they can pay who can help them clean up some of their documentation. If you’re interested, please check out the form below!