Social media platform Bluesky has gained more than 700,000 new users in the week following the US election, as users seek to escape misinformation and offensive posts on X.
The influx, largely from North America and the United Kingdom, has helped Bluesky reach 14.5 million users worldwide, up from 9 million in September, the company said.
Social media researcher Axel Bruns said the platform offered an alternative to X, formerly Twitter, including a more effective system for blocking or suspending problematic accounts and controlling harmful behavior.
“It has become a haven for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to offer, but without all the far-right activism, misinformation, hate speech, bots and everything else” , said.
“The more liberal Twitter community has really escaped from there and seems to have moved en masse to Bluesky.”
Bluesky started as a project within Twitter but became an independent company in 2022 and is now main property by CEO Jay Graber.
The platform has previously benefited from discontent with X and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, closely linked to US President-elect Donald Trump’s successful election campaign. Twitter lost millions of users after changing its name to X and its usage in the United States fell by more than a fifth in the following seven months.
blue sky reported attracting 3 million new users in the week following the suspension of X in Brazil in September and a another 1.2 million in the two days after X announced it would allow users to see posts from people who had blocked them.
“We’re excited to welcome all of these new people, from Swifties to fighters to urban planners,” said Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and professor at New York University, had 250,000 followers on X, but she gained 21,000 followers on her first day on Bluesky this week.
“I’m 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 accelerate,” he said.
Bluesky remains second only to Threads in the social networking category on Apple’s US App Store, which reported reaching 275 million monthly active users in November, compared to 200 million in August.
The independent platform has recently added features including direct messaging and video support to become more like X and distinguish itself from its Meta-owned competitor.
Ben-Ghiat has found the site’s “starter packs,” or groups of people with similar experience and interests, to be a refreshing way in.
“(They) promise to give Bluesky some of what he valued on Twitter/X: informed opinions on a topic from multiple points of view,” he said.
Bruns, a professor at the Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Centre, said the explosion in user numbers had created “growing pains” as new users learned to navigate the site, but ultimately was contributing to the momentum of the site.
“It really feels like a throwback to those days of initial enthusiasm for social media in a lot of ways, and that’s what, right now, quite a few people are drawn to,” he said. “It just makes it a more vibrant and active place.”
On Monday night, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted that she was “back” on Bluesky, saying, “OMG, it’s nice to be in a digital space with other real human beings.” 27,000 people liked his post.
