The social media platform is seen as an alternative to X that is not owned by the world’s richest man or a member of Trump’s inner circle
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The social media platform Bluesky has added more than 700,000 new users in the week since Donald Trump was elected president. Here’s what to know.
What is Bluesky?
Bluesky was a project started by Jack Dorsey when he was CEO of what was then Twitter in 2019. It became an independent company in 2021, and In late 2022 Twitter and Bluesky agreed to part ways. Its founding mission continues to be to “develop and drive large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation.”
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In simpler terms, that makes it an alternative to X (formerly Twitter), with a similar design and function. Even its logo, a white butterfly on a blue background, recalls Twitter’s former logo of a stylized bird.
How many users does it have?
Counting the latest influx, the company says it now has 14.5 million users worldwide, up from 9 million in September. (X has close to 600 million active users.)
Why are people going there?
X is owned by Elon Musk, who has close ties to the president-elect and has been offered a role in cutting bureaucracy and costs within the U.S. federal government, a move widely seen as involving large numbers of job losses.
Those who are not fans of Musk (or Trump) see it as an alternative that is not controlled by the world’s richest man. Software engineer Jay Graber has been the CEO of Bluesky since its inception.
Speaking to The Guardian, social media researcher Axel Bruns said it also offers a more effective system for blocking or suspending problematic accounts and for policing harmful behaviour online.
“It’s become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to provide, but without all the far-right activism, the misinformation, the hate speech, the bots and everything else,” he said. “The more liberal kind of Twitter community has really now escaped from there and seems to have moved en masse to Bluesky.”
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Bluesky reported that it gained three million users in the week after X was suspended by the courts in Brazil. It also reported 1.2 million new users in a two-day period last month, coinciding with an announcement from X that users would now be able to view posts from people who had blocked them.
“We’re excited to welcome all of these new people, ranging from Swifties to wrestlers to city planners,” Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu said at the time.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and professor at New York University, told the Guardian she had 250,000 followers on X and 21,000 in her first day on Bluesky, adding: “I am still on X but after January, when X could be owned by a de facto member of the Trump administration, its functions as a Trump propaganda outlet and far-right radicalization machine could be accelerated.”
Is Bluesky the only other game in town?
No. There’s also Threads, which was launched in July of 2023 by Meta; its CEO is Mark Zuckerberg. Though it gained tens of millions of users within its first few days, growth later slowed. Still, in August the company with the stylized “@” logo announced it had passed more than 200 million users.
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There’s also Mastodon, whose roller-coaster membership stood at 2.5 million in December 2022, but dropped to 1.4 million the following February. It has since rebounded, and last month founder and CEO Eugen Rochko said it had been undercounting its membership to the tune of several million.
Like Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon tend to syphon users away from X. So when Musk’s platform runs into trouble or controversy, or does something to annoy its users, the other platforms stand to benefit.
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