Bluesky launches Find Friends feature to find people you know on the platform
All social media platforms are about connections, and Bluesky is no different. The problem that a social platform with a focus on privacy and security has is that it can be hard to track down people you know that you would like to connect to.
It is with this in mind that Bluesky is launching a new contact import feature called – somewhat uninspiringly – Find Friends. One of the aims, apart from connecting people, is to help cut down on spammy methods of tracking people down.
Introducing the new feature, Bluesky says: “Social media started as a way to connect with people you actually know. Over time, that got lost in the noise of algorithms and engagement incentives. We're carrying those original values forward, but in a new way that protects your privacy and keeps you in control”.
It continues:
Contact import has always been the most effective way to find people you know on a social app, but it's also been poorly implemented or abused by platforms. Even with encryption, phone numbers have been leaked or brute-forced, sold to spammers, or used by platforms for dubious purposes. We weren't willing to accept that risk, so we developed a fundamentally more secure approach that protects your data.
The process is not a complicated one, but it is reliant on consent on both sides. It works by uploading your contacts to Bluesky, and the site will crosscheck to see if anyone who is in your address book has done the same.
The organization explains:
If you choose to use Find Friends, you'll verify your phone number and upload your contacts. When someone in your contact book goes through the same process and Bluesky finds a match, we'll let both of you know. This can happen immediately, or later via notification if the match happens down the road.
Find Friends will initially be limited to mobile app users in the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Bluesky points out that the way in which the feature works means that it will become more useful over time, so early adopters may be disappointed to start with. It explains what makes its “privacy-first by design” approach different:
- It only works if both people participate. You'll only be matched with someone if you both have each other in your contacts and you've both opted into Find Friends. If you never use this feature, you'll never be findable through it. Your coworker can't use it to look you up unless you've uploaded their number from your contacts.
- You verify your number first. Before any matching happens, you prove that you own your phone number. This prevents bad actors from uploading random numbers to fish for information about who's on Bluesky.
- Your contact data is protected even if something goes wrong. We store phone numbers as hashed pairs — your number combined with each contact's number — which makes the data exponentially harder to reverse-engineer. That encryption is also tied to a hardware security key stored separately from our database.
- You can remove your data anytime. Changed your mind? You can delete your uploaded contacts and opt out entirely.
Providing more detail, Bluesky says:
What about inviting friends who aren't on Bluesky yet?
When you invite a friend through Find Friends:
- That invite won't come from Bluesky. It comes directly from you when you choose to send it in a text message.
- What if you're already on Bluesky but got an invite anyway? That's because we don't store or track individual phone numbers, so we have no way to tell your friend you're already here. Think of it as a friend reaching out directly — they don't know you've already joined the party.
- There's no "opt out" for receiving invites because they're sent directly via text message outside the Bluesky app. These are personal text messages between friends, not automated messages from Bluesky, so we don't have a way to block them and we have no way to send follow up messages.
