In the week following Donald Trump’s election victory, around a million users have signed up for Bluesky. Much like on X, Bluesky allows individuals to post, reply, and message each other via a vertical user interface.
The platform emerged from Twitter after Jack Dorsey, then CEO, announced in 2019 that the company would back developers to build an “open and decentralised standard for social media”. Bluesky officially took off as an autonomous entity in 2021 and is quickly becoming a go-to space for those who no longer wish to use X.
Compared to X, formerly Twitter, Bluesky offers users the chance to more heavily moderate their experience. This includes the ability to select the algorithm that powers your experience, helping create custom feeds, for example a feed for mutual followers, a feed for cat photos or one for your special interest.
“We aim to replace the conventional ‘master algorithm’, controlled by a single company, with an open and diverse ‘marketplace of algorithms’,” the platform says. X’s verification feature has also drawn criticism after it became possible to purchase a blue tick, which had been the previous signifier of an account’s legitimacy.
Bluesky allows users to have domains (website addresses) as their handles, which it anticipates could act as a verification tool for journalists, athletes and public figures who have a company’s website in their handle. Meanwhile, as X appears to deregulate the user experience, recently changing the block function to allow users to see the posts of public accounts who have blocked them for example, Bluesky proudly shows off its “anti-toxicity” features.
These include empowering users to detach an original post of theirs from someone else’s quote post, preventing unwanted interactions.
Since Musk’s takeover of X in late 2022, both the platform and the tycoon have faced heightened scrutiny, with Musk himself interacting with dubious content and notorious misinformation spreaders. Following the tragic Southport stabbings, which saw three young girls tragically killed, he shared several images and memes related to anti-immigration protests and unrest in Britain.
Moreover, X users have noted a surge in “bots” cluttering the site, with comment sections increasingly filled with AI-generated gibberish.
Several MPs have already made the move to Bluesky including safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, Liberal Democrat technology spokeswoman Layla Moran and Mother of the House Diane Abbott. On November 13, Bluesky announced it had more than 15 million users.
The platform also said it saw one million users sign up in the week following Trump’s election victory. US actress Jamie Lee Curtis has been vocal about her decision to leave X after she shared a screenshot confirming she had deactivated her account in a post on Instagram.
She can be found on Bluesky with more than 29,000 followers and has posted about her departure from X in a post which said: “#WeDontNeedX.” TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham, Irish comedian Dara O’Briain and Countdown star Susie Dent are also among its users.