Users are leaving X (formerly Twitter) in droves amid warnings from EU and anti-hate speech campaign groups about misinformation and extremism on the platform and more recently Elon Musk’s involvement in the 2024 US president-elect Donald Trump’s successful election campaign. 

More than one million new users joined Bluesky in the week following the US presidential elections. 

Bluesky, a decentralised X alternative is a social media platform that has come a long way since its early days of invite-only signups and this week, grew past the 19 million mark. 

Much like X, users can interact on Bluesky by posting, replying and messaging one another on a vertical user interface. But what sets Bluesky apart are the features and settings you won’t find on X such as Elon Musk, the ability to choose your own algorithm or moderation tools, leaving users in control of their experience. 

Last Year, the EU issued a warning to Elon Musk after Twitter – was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms.

“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.” – Social Media Researcher, Axel Bruns to the Guardian

Early Days

Bluesky began as a research project inside Twitter in 2019, by then chief executive and co-founder, Jack Dorsey. He announced that the company would fund developers to create an “open and decentralised standard for social media”. In 2021, Bluesky was launched as a separate independent company and is now primarily owned by the chief executive, Jay Graber. In 2023, Bluesky had an “invite-only” launch for users. Last February, Bluesky changed from invitation-only to becoming available to the general public.

Bluesky in comparison to X:

User-Created Algorithmic Feeds/Custom Feeds:

Bluesky offers users the chance to moderate their experience, including the ability to select the algorithm that drives what you see, helping create custom feeds, for example a feed for cat photos or one for memes.

Verification

Bluesky also allows users to have website addresses as their handles, which it anticipates could act as a verification tool for journalists, athletes and public figures. 

Block Feature

Bluesky reported an influx of 1.2 million users in the two days after X announced it would allow users to view posts from people who had blocked them. Bluesky allows users to detach an original post of theirs from someone else’s quote post, preventing unwanted interactions.

Elon Musk

The platform has previously benefited from dissatisfaction with X and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who is closely tied to the US president-elect Donald Trump’s successful election campaign.

 “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.” – Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and professor at New York University

Ambiguity for the future of X has left a userbase dwindling and looking for a new home. Bluesky has given a solution to the unfortunate necessity of leaving the toxic landscape of Twitter.