The collaboration will grant the social media platform access to IWF’s world-leading tools and datasets for finding, blocking and removing sexual abuse content of children online.
Rapidly growing social media platform Bluesky has joined the fight against child sexual abuse material by becoming a Member of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). The move comes as the ‘insidious spread’ of child sexual abuse imagery reaches record levels across the internet.
Bluesky has seen rapid growth in the last few months and has increased from 13 million users in November to more than 30 million by the end of January 2025. The platform reports that this growth has resulted in a predictable uptick in harmful content, and Bluesky has increased the size of its content moderation team and safety tooling in response.
By joining with the IWF - Europe’s biggest hotline dedicated to finding and removing child sexual abuse material from the internet - Bluesky can ensure that its millions of users are protected from seeing horrific images and videos of child sexual abuse while helping to prevent their spread and the repeated victimisation of child sexual abuse survivors.
This is a critical step as the volume of child sexual abuse material online continues to grow at terrifying speeds. In 2024, the IWF discovered more webpages containing child sexual abuse than ever before in its 29-year history. IWF analysts acted to remove 291,270 webpages last year, a five per cent increase on the 275,650 webpages identified in 2023.
Derek Ray-Hill, Interim CEO of the IWF, said: “It is a sad reality that the insidious spread of child sexual abuse images and videos continues at pace on the internet. Last year, the IWF found record levels of URLs containing the sexual abuse of children, more than ever before.
“Every time this imagery is viewed, shared or sold, child abuse victims all over the world suffer repeatedly. We are in the midst of a child sexual abuse crisis and governments, the tech industry and society need to come together to find solutions and tackle this issue as one.
“Our tried-and-tested tools for detecting and removing criminal content are a first step in ensuring that the internet is a safer space for children and we are pleased to see Bluesky making a commitment to child protection online and prioritising the safety of their users.”
Aaron Rodericks, Bluesky Head of Trust and Safety said: “This partnership marks a significant step forward in our fight against CSAM, and we look forward to working with IWF to keep our users safe from harmful content and ensuring a safer online environment.”
Bluesky will be taking several IWF services, including the URL List, a comprehensive list of webpages known to contain child sexual abuse content. The platform has also identified child sexual abuse depicted in non-photographic imagery (NPI), such as cartoons, as an area of particular concern, and is taking steps to access IWF hashes of NPI. A hash is a unique digital code that identifies a picture of confirmed child sexual abuse that tech companies can stop from being uploaded, downloaded, shared, viewed or hosted online.
