Last year, I wrote about how to view and share pronouns on Bluesky. Bluesky is the social network that I spend the most time on nowadays and, as I write this, recently surpassed 30 million users.
The Pronouns Labeller uses an interesting feature of Bluesky called labels, which can be applied to individual posts (or skeets) and whole accounts. They can be used in a positive way, such as sharing pronouns, but can also be applied as a potential warning to other users. Today, I’m listing some of the labellers that I use – all of these are listed on the (unofficial) Bluesky Labellers page, which ranks them by popularity.
To use these, you’ll first need to subscribe to the labeller whilst logged in to Bluesky – there’ll be a big ‘Subscribe to labeller’ button on their profile. Once subscribed, you can configure which labels you want to see, and optionally hide all posts with a certain label (or all posts from users with that label).
If you want to apply a label to your own account, then there may be additional steps, usually detailed on a pinned post on the profile.
- TTRPG Class Identifier. It’s somewhat telling that this is the most popular labeller on Bluesky. Once you follow, you’ll be given a class from a table-top role-playing game (such as Dungeons and Dragons) which will display as a label on your profile. There are commands that you can send to re-roll your class, and you can choose your race too. More details available here.
- Nations. Allows you to add your country’s flag as a label, and see others’ flags. You can also add the standard pride flag emoji, and/or the trans pride emoji to your account too.
- Sorting Hat. I have my issues with the author of the Harry Potter books, due to her views about trans people, but this lets you tell the world which Hogwarts house you would belong to, and see others.
- XBlock Screenshot Labeller. Labels posts containing screenshots from other social networks, so that you can have them labelled and optionally hidden.
- Developer Labels. Show off what programming languages you know on your posts.
- Private School and Landlord labeller. Subscribing to this will reveal which private (fee-paying) school various (mainly UK) users attended, so you can see who benefitted from a paid-for education. Nepo Baby Labeller works in a similar way.
- Birthdays. Will show you if it’s a user’s birthday.
- Profile Labeller. Warns you about potential bots, and people whose posts are bridged in from other social networks.
Anyone can make a label, and there’s a Label Starter Kit on GitHub if you want to make your own. If I had the time and the skills, I would consider writing a labeller which allows users to show which British university they graduated from, for example.
Labels are one thing that I particularly like about Bluesky – especially as users can contribute their own. It’s quite a unique feature – I’m not aware that others have anything similar. Sometimes, a bit of extra context on each post is welcome.
