Bluesky, a rapidly growing social media platform, is being criticised for failing to comply with transparency requirements, which are part of the European Union’s (EU) Digital Services Act (DSA).
A spokesperson for the European Commission said that Bluesky hasn’t given the important information that the DSA needs, even for platforms categorized as small or below the threshold of a “Very Large Online Platform.”
In particular, Bluesky hasn’t made a special page on its website to show how many users it has in the EU and where it legally operates, which is something all platforms in the EU need to do.
“Every platform in the EU, even the smaller ones, must have a page that tells how many users they have in the EU and where they legally operate. Bluesky hasn’t done this yet,” the spokesperson said.
The European Commission hasn’t reached out to Bluesky directly yet. Instead, it’s asking the 27 countries in the EU for their thoughts on investigating the platform’s presence and compliance.
Not meeting DSA requirements might result in fines or limited access to European markets. This failure could harm Bluesky’s growth and reputation, especially since the platform is growing quickly.
Originally started as a Twitter project to create an open social protocol for decentralized social media, Bluesky later became an independent company focused on user autonomy and privacy.
Bluesky has grown rapidly, now with over 20 million users and adding more than a million new users each day. Led by CEO Jay Graber, Bluesky has a small team of about 20 employees, each managing around a million users.
Bluesky stands out with its customizable algorithmic feeds, letting users create or follow personalized content streams instead of relying on just one algorithm. This feature has led to over 50,000 custom feeds, showing its dedication to user-controlled content.
The platform also promises not to use user-generated content to train AI models, instead using AI internally for content moderation to improve user safety.
