Bluesky just hit a major milestone, 40 million users, and it’s marking the occasion with a bold new experiment. The decentralized social network will soon roll out a “dislikes” feature in beta, designed to make its Discover feed and conversations more personal and relevant.
According to the company, the new tool isn’t about public shaming or negative engagement. Instead, “dislikes” will serve as a private signal to help the platform’s algorithm learn what users want to see less of. When someone dislikes a post, the system will quietly take note, shaping not just their feed, but how replies are ranked in discussions.
The feature arrives alongside a wave of updates aimed at improving how people interact on Bluesky. The company says the goal is to make the platform a space for “fun, genuine, and respectful exchanges.” That message follows recent unrest on the platform, where debates over moderation policies reignited tensions among users.
Unlike centralized networks, Bluesky’s moderation is decentralized, meaning users can run their own moderation services and choose which rules to apply. Some users, however, have pushed for the company to take a stronger hand against bad actors. Bluesky’s leadership has made it clear: its priority is giving people more control over their own experience.
Today, users already have access to robust moderation tools, including customizable block lists, content filters, and muted words. They can even subscribe to external moderation services or use moderation lists to instantly block groups of accounts. Another popular tool lets users detach quote posts, a move meant to discourage the “dunking” culture that defined much of Twitter’s discourse.
Along with the “dislikes” beta, Bluesky is also testing a series of ranking updates, design tweaks, and new feedback mechanisms to fine-tune conversations across the network. One of the most interesting experiments is something the company calls “social neighborhoods.” It’s a system that maps out how users interact, who replies to whom, and then prioritizes responses from those “closer” to your network. The goal is to surface more relevant, familiar conversations rather than random threads from strangers.
That’s a challenge Meta’s Threads has struggled with. As writer Max Read observed, Threads often drops users into confusing mid-conversations with no context, posts “that appear from nowhere and lead to nowhere.” Bluesky hopes its neighborhood mapping approach will fix that, helping users feel more connected as the network scales.
Bluesky also revealed that its latest ranking model can better detect replies that are “toxic, spammy, off-topic, or posted in bad faith.” Those comments will now be downranked across threads, search results, and notifications.
Another small but meaningful update changes how the Reply button works. Instead of taking users straight to the compose box, it now opens the full thread first, encouraging people to read before they respond. Bluesky says this will help reduce redundant or context-less replies, a problem that continues to plague other social platforms.
Finally, the company is improving visibility of its reply controls, making it clearer that users can decide who’s allowed to respond to their posts.
With these combined updates, Bluesky is positioning itself not just as another Twitter alternative, but as a platform actively rethinking how people connect online, one dislike at a time.
