Decentralized Social, Centralized Problems: Bluesky’s Free Speech Meltdown

Introduction: Web3’s Twitter Replacement Is Having an Identity Crisis

Bluesky was supposed to be different.

Born from Twitter’s open-source dreams and funded (ironically) by Jack Dorsey himself, Bluesky positioned itself as the antidote to Big Tech censorship — a decentralized, federated, user-owned future of social media.

Fast-forward to 2025, and Bluesky is on fire. Not the good kind.

The platform recently hit headlines for:

• Mass bans
• Broken moderation tools
• Censorship allegations
• Troll raids
• And a wave of disillusioned Gen Z users saying “this ain’t it.”

Turns out, building Twitter without Musk doesn’t magically fix the internet.

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1. What Even Is Bluesky? (And Why Was It Hyped?)

Bluesky was designed to:

• Be decentralized (via the AT Protocol)
• Let users own their identities and content
• Enable custom moderation “views” so no single algorithm rules

It attracted:

• Disillusioned Twitter users
• Web3 devs
• Creators tired of algorithmic feeds
• And, briefly, the entire queer and indie artist communities of Tumblr-vintage fame

It had big Web3 energy, even without the tokenomics.

For a while, it worked. Until it didn’t.

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2. The 42,000 Moderation Reports Heard Around the Web

In early 2025, Bluesky revealed that it received over 42,000 content reports in just 24 hours — more than Twitter saw in all of 2023.

Why?

• A coordinated troll raid flooded the site with hate speech
• Mods responded with mass bans
• Legit accounts were flagged as bots or “spammy”
• Appeals were ignored or rejected with boilerplate emails

Users who fled Twitter’s chaos now faced the same censorship, gaslighting, and algorithmic opacity — just with better fonts.

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3. Decentralization Theatre: Is Bluesky Really Free?

Bluesky’s pitch was that you could run your own server and set your own rules.

But:

• 99% of users are still on the main Bluesky server
• Custom “views” aren’t truly decentralized — they’re curated by internal staff
• Federation is technically possible… but poorly documented

In practice, moderation is just as top-down as Twitter, but with less transparency.

You can get banned for being “spammy” — a term never clearly defined. Appeals go unanswered. And developers have no access to moderation logs.

Freedom, apparently, comes with a filter bubble.

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4. Who’s Getting Banned — and Why It Matters

Users flagged in the purge included:

• Meme accounts
• Anti-establishment activists
• Trans creators with large followings
• Crypto educators sharing “unverified financial info”
• Satire bots

The common theme? Nonconformity.

Critics say Bluesky is enforcing vibe-based censorship — banning people who don’t fit its default progressive-leaning, academia-adjacent social circles.

One viral post said:

“If your tone isn’t NPR-approved, good luck staying on Bluesky.”

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5. Bluesky’s Leadership Is MIA

To make matters worse:

• CEO Jay Graber has gone silent on major decisions
• Transparency reports are vague
• Internal mod teams are underfunded and understaffed

Developers say there’s no clear roadmap for:

• Community governance
• Appeal mechanisms
• Moderator accountability
• Decentralized ID exportability

It’s Web2 problems in Web3 clothes — and users are noticing.

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6. The Fediverse Is Watching (and Laughing)

On Mastodon, Lemmy, and Nostr:

• Users are roasting Bluesky’s “fake decentralization”
• Devs are pointing out that federation isn’t enough — governance matters
• Critics are calling Bluesky “Mastodon for libs who hate conflict but love control”

Even Jack Dorsey, who originally bankrolled Bluesky, has pulled away and unfollowed its official account.

He now backs Nostr — a protocol with no central servers and no mods.

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7. Gen Z Users Are Already Bouncing

Remember all those artists, creators, and alt weirdos who migrated to Bluesky in 2023?

They’re leaving.

On TikTok and Threads, users are posting:

• “I got banned for being too online.”
• “Mods said I was a bot. I was just posting memes.”
• “Decentralized? More like Decentrally Dictated.”

The promise of freedom and federation turned into gatekeeping, inconsistent policies, and no actual culture.

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8. What Decentralized Social Needs to Get Right

Bluesky’s flop highlights a harsh truth: tech alone isn’t enough.

To build a real alternative, Web3 social needs:

• Transparent, community-driven moderation
• Open access to mod logs and dispute resolution
• True portability of identity, followers, and content
• Monetization tools for creators that don’t rely on ad revenue

Right now, we’re stuck with:

• Discords pretending to be DAOs
• Tokens pretending to be communities
• And platforms pretending to be free

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9. Is There Still Hope for Bluesky?

Technically, yes.

The AT Protocol is solid. Federation is still in early stages. Mods are experimenting with new tools.

But culturally? The trust is broken.

Without a radical transparency shift and some serious mod retooling, Bluesky risks becoming the very thing it tried to replace — a gatekept content mall with slightly better vibes and worse scalability.

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Conclusion: Decentralized in Name Only

Bluesky sold us the dream: A Twitter that couldn’t be censored. A social graph that couldn’t be deleted. A feed owned by you.

Instead, we got:

• Vague bans
• Invisible mods
• Federation vaporware
• And culture wars wrapped in UX sugar

The Web3 generation wanted freedom. What they got was another platform trying to run the internet like a curated garden.

Until someone builds the real thing, we’re still just posting in walled gardens with different walls.