Looking for a new social media platform because X, Threads and Mastodon just aren't cutting it? You could try Bluesky.
People seeking to avoid chaos, noise and political bluster in the aftermath of the U.S. elections are noticing a different mood on the Bluesky social platform, where the vibe is seemingly welcoming and there are noticeably fewer trolls.
The site announced it had rapidly added more than a million new users in the week after Election Day, and has emerged as one of the fastest growing rivals to Elon Musk’s X and similar platforms.
If you're tempted to check out the new space, here's a guide on how Bluesky works:
Maybe you're not ready to commit to adding yet another social media account. No problem — you can still look around on Bluesky without signing up because all posts and profiles are public.
You might get a sense of deja vu because the platform's look and feel are very similar to X. That should be no surprise because Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was an early Bluesky champion. (Dorsey's no longer involved with Bluesky, which is owned and run by its executive team as a public benefit corporation.)
If you take the plunge and get an account, you'll need a username. You'll notice Bluesky handles are a little bit different because they end by default in the site's domain, .bsky.social.
You can personalize your handle to make it more memorable, by using your own website's domain or buying a custom one through Bluesky. But it might not be something most newbie users need or want to do right away.
Bluesky boasts that it gives users “algorithmic choice” to tailor the content they're shown instead of leaving it up to the whims of a centralized system.
“Our online experience doesn’t have to depend on billionaires unilaterally making decisions over what we see,” it says.
What it means is that you can follow custom feeds set up by other users, or design your own. If you tap #Feeds in the menu on the left, you'll see some default offerings like Cat Pics and Gardening. My Bangers is a list of your most popular posts by likes and Catch Up shows the site's most popular posts from the past 24 hours. You can find more by doing a search and tapping the Feeds button.
There's also the usual “Discover” feed of suggested posts and a chronological feed of accounts that you follow.
To help new users settle in, Bluesky has starter packs of recommended feeds and accounts to follow, which anyone can create and share. They don’t show up in Bluesky's search results but can be found in directories online.
Or someone might share one with you. After I signed up, a colleague pointed me to one for major news outlets. There are tens of thousands of starter packs, ranging from broadly appealing topics like Taylor Swift to niche interests like cargo bikes or U.K. comedians. You can follow the whole pack or scroll down the list to choose individual accounts.
What about people you followed on X? There's a browser extension tool called Sky Follower Bridge that will help you find X users who've migrated to Bluesky. But check before clicking the follow button to make sure it's not a different user using the same display name or handle.
Ready to join the conversation? You can write posts or reply to others but keep it short because there's a limit of 300 characters — 20 more than on X. You can also upload photos and videos, though videos can't be longer than 60 seconds. GIFs and emojis are, of course, available too.
You can still @ people by typing in their username, like posts by tapping a heart icon or use hashtags to highlight a theme. Bluesky has added a menu to hashtags, so when you click on one you'll get different options for seeing, or muting, posts on that topic.
Bluesky's decentralization ethos extends to the content control options it offers.
For starters, users can choose in their settings menu whether to see replies, reposts or quote posts in their feed. Specific words or tags can be muted temporarily, or forever, while accounts can be muted or blocked individually, or in bulk by adding them a moderation list. You can even fine tune the level of adult content that shows up in your feed.
Bluesky has a team of content moderators to police the site for material that's illegal or breaks the rules. But it's also taking a different approach by open sourcing its content moderation system in an attempt to resolve problems with traditional moderation services which it says “lack transparency and user control.”
So, individuals or groups can set up their own content filters, or labelers, that go beyond what Bluesky offers. These labelers can be used to categorize content or users, which can then be blocked or hidden. But they could also be used for informational or creative purposes, like curating or verifying content.
There are labelers to identify images generated by artificial intelligence or to fact check news posts. You can find lists of labelers online. After I subscribed to a U.S. politics labeler, some posts in my feeds were flagged “!Donald Trump” or “!Democrat politician” and hidden unless I click Show.
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44 Comments
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Belrick
A lot of left leaners running to this site from X. I won't be surprised if it goes the way of Wewe and others though. Trying to go into competition with X is like throwing a glass of water against the rain.
nishikat
For people who don't use social media, what things are the left bringing up on BlueSky and leaving X for...specifically?
Wick's pencil
Yeah, go to Bluesky if you like censorship and want to be left in the dark.
dutch
the number of X users is roughly 611 million and trending up. Elon Musk has even floated the idea it could hit 1 billion at some point.
But want to know why you are reading so much about Bluesky right now? Its not because people are flocking there. (other than people proudly claiming to be MAPs - a cute acronym meaning pedophile)
There is a full on gaslighting operation in media to sink the most shining example of free speech and journalism in the world;
X.
Just Google "X users, or number of users" etc .
You don't get a number. You get hit in the face with advertisements for Bluesky.
the communists are losing badly rn, but the war is certainly not over.
Arrrgh-Type
I largely stopped using Twitter/X after receiving a push notification about an Elon Musk tweet, which is an account I didn't even follow on the site.
If you're cool with your phone getting lit up by accounts that you don't even follow, then by all means stay on X.
Somewhat mentioned here is that Bluesky has robust blocking options, which have been gradually eliminated or watered down from X. This goes a long towards weeding out the cranks and trolls, and lends itself to the "cheery" atmosphere described above. However, if you're cool with your timeline being full of cranks and trolls, well, it's your choice to stay on X. Have at it.
virusrex
Discussions without being forced feed whatever it is Musk wants to push, and without worrying about being censored for trying to discuss things that Musk wants to censor. A prime example are scientific discussions that are migrating in masse thanks to mechanisms BlueSky put in order precisely to facilitate this.
Twitter is well recognized for censorship of anything Musk disagrees with, from links to outside sites to gender diversity, in comparison other sites of similar functionality are much less restrictive, including Bluesky.
Yet the measures he keeps putting in place correspond much more to hiding the actual number of users (as in not bots) and engament, exactly as if people were leaving in mass as reported.
https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-hides-x-engagement-figures-user-exodus-1990065
So the evidence that people are leaving the service is false because of a conspiracy is creating it, while the lack of evidence to prove the conspiracy proves it exists? That is the same excuse all groups of people trying to impose baseless claims use to supposedly justify those claims.
And you will get the news that are currently popular, while making a proper question (like "How many users does X have?") still gives you first the data.
dutch
What discussions have been forced on X users? And what discussions have been censored by free speech absolutist Musk?
Be specific please. This is important.
it is obviously false as X is now the most widely used social network and platform for journalists in the world.
You know it. I know it. You know I know it. I know you know I know it.
youre being obtuse. You know as well as I do that Google is a search engine designed to funnel thought and narrative in one particular direction.
GBR48
Governments are going to start blocking the larger social media systems, so we may all have to keep moving to new, smaller ones. Unless we get a proper peer-to-peer distributed one.
Alfie Noakes
Many of the the people leaving X "because of Trump/Musk" are just "extreme centrists" who want a digitally sterile, insulated environment where they don’t have to confront the uncomfortable realities of the genocide the governments they voted for are waging in Gaza and Lebanon.
dutch
"It's much cleaner with engagement numbers turned off," posted X owner Elon Musk, adding, "You can still see view count if you care."
Musk to X's 611 million users;
"YOU are the media now!"
Ken
Pause, you must be talking about existing accounts because people are leaving Twitter, the active users is nowhere near where it used to be. Musk made the excuse of buying Twitter to get rid of fake accounts but thinking about it now that sounds like a dumb reason. More people would have left if there was an alternate way to keep Twitter followers but have them transferred onto a different form of social media but the greed of the one who sold Twitter to Musk along with Musk knowingly aware that he wanted to cause chaos and disturb people with how much misinformation and toxicity that he wanted to ingrain into twitter
daikaka
Bluesky have more censorship than China. With the left constantly moving even further to the left, what is allowable today could be subject to a ban 6 months down the line.
dutch
Reminds me of the Iraqi Minister of Information in 2003; "We have the Americans on the run! We have taken Jerusalem!"
Ken
You're literally giving inaccurate information, less people are using twitter
virusrex
The last time you had to accept gender diversity is being censored in tweeter when the only argument you could try to use to disprove it was an imaginary tweet that nobody else could see that supposedly proved you were right.
How does this disprove that people are leaving in important numbers? for that you would need evidence that the exodus is not happening, which is becoming more and more difficult since Musk is choosing to make engagement more obscure.
Again, when your argument is that the lack of evidence proves the conspiracy you are also accepting you have no argument and just an excuse.
Yet it was terribly easy to prove making a proper question give you the answer you were trying to misrepresent as being "hidden", which of course disproves your point completely. If you were funneled away from the data you would not get it by asking properly.
Because this in any way disproves the argument? that makes no sense, the ability is the whole point that is being discussed and the argument in no way depends on forcing this choice.
When your argument is based on imaginary things you think you know from other posters you are also accepting you can't actually address the arguments, so you have to make up things to have something to cricitize.
How exactly? what topics, terms, discussions are being censored?
dutch
2024 "X users are down!"
2020 "The covid IFR is 2.7%!"
Yrral
Musk got screwed by Dorsey,by not getting a no compete clause and walk away with billions from Musk
dutch
so screwed he has the most powerful media platform on earth and helped get President Trump elected 3 weeks ago.
wallace
As of 2024, Twitter (now known as X) has 335.7 million monthly active users (MAU), which is a 5.14% decrease from 2023:
Ken
Twitter is losing value, sponsers and daily users so he is screwing over Twitter
dutch
well then. Lets sit back and watch it crash and burn.
Whats your prediction? This time next year?
2026?
rainyday
Dorsey had already resigned and been replaced as CEO of Twitter more than a year before Musk took it over.
dutch
Can one imagine the numbers for X if it WASNT BLOCKED IN CHINA!!!
1 billion?
1.5 billion?
I'd say the latter quite comfortably
dutch
This is hilarious!
from a user;
the radical left created an X clone so they wouldn't be faced with opinions they don't like!
Now its an already empty echo chamber
Ken
Very true words. Musk being openly scared of any sort of criticism goes to show he doesn't give a squat about freedom of speech. China most likely won't allow Twitter because they caught on to Twitter doing similar tactics as for controlling what the users see and flushing out criticism of specific individuals. But had America's chaotic influence spread to the Chinese users the CCP wouldn't like that
KnightsOfCydonia
great explanation, can't wait to give a go.
dutch you seem to so emotional about this, so many posts moaning about bluesky. what gives?
nishikat
OK....
Meta loses ground to Bluesky as users abandon Elon Musk’s X
Bluesky is growing so fast it's racing to get hold of more servers, its COO says
X users jump to Bluesky - but what is it and who owns it?
Traffic on Bluesky, an X competitor, is up 500% since the election. How will it handle the surge?
(result titles of Google News search of x bluesky users)
Thanks for the suggestion
dutch
You're almost there, nishikat. Do you see it yet?
nishikat
What's this? Future MySpace? Of Micro$oft might by X for pennies on the dollar (and change back to Twitter)?
OK, got it. Musk is a scam. What happened to the Boring Company or HyperLoop? Among a bunch of other scams? BYD outselling Tesla already. The self landing rocket developed back in the 90s and Musk claims he invented it (and his worshipers believe him).
Zaphod
"Arent cutting it" seems a nice euphemism for "not censored enough".
I tried it, and it seems like a leftist echo-chamber, worse than the pre-x Twitter, where at least some opposing opinions were tolerated. If that is what you want, go for it. Seems perfect for people who limit their news intake to MSNBC, Huffpost, BBC, and Daily Beast...
Some dude
i use Threads. It's OK, a bit vanilla, but that's way better than the toxic cesspit that X became after the new first lady Elonia bought it.
Might give Bluesky a look before the trolls migrate over there and ruin it like they do everything else they touch.
Forgotten
Wow, I bet nobody knew how to use Bluesky. Thanks for the instructions. Is this a paid Ad?
Bad Haircut
BlueSky... just another safe space for people who don't like having their beliefs challenged.
But I wonder how many moderate left-wingers will tire of it soon or head back to X when they're either kicked off BlueSky for some perceived slight or can't keep up with the race to be more ideologically pure than thou.
Maybe I'll head there and see how long it takes to get banned.
Bad Haircut
Went over for a quick look, and saw a couple of extremes with little in between: some stunning astronomy and landscape photos, and deranged left-wing nonsense from people still in mourning over an election their side deserved to lose.
nishikat
What does left wing mean? Wanting universal government healthcare?
jib
It's a horrible app with an awful purpose.
virusrex
What purpose is that? let people post things?
Tokyo Guy
X, f'r instance, has turned into a fascist echo chamber run by a manchild who's got more money than some countries and yet shows so much insecurity that it's comical.
Facebook is now just...boring.
Threads is, as someone here said, vanilla. Not offensive, kind of lukewarm, but at least it avoids the worst trolls...for now.
lostrune2
Remember, Musk himself said at least 20% of Twitter are bots
There's nothing been done to change that
virusrex
A bit of context that explain the exodus for a segment of the users
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03784-6
“All the academics have suddenly migrated to Bluesky,” says Bethan Davies, a glaciologist at Newcastle University, UK. The platform has “absolutely exploded”.
Raw Beer
"Academics" do not like being proven wrong.
Some dude
"Academics" do not like being proven wrong.
Au contraire. If they're genuine academics, they welcome it.
If they are however, Science Bros (you know, the ones who think that Joe Rogan knows more about medicine than someone like Antony Fauci), then they're the ones who hate being proven wrong. Which tracks, as they are wrong about most everything anyway.
Raw Beer
Yes, that's why I added the ""
Those who run away from debate are not real academics.
virusrex
Meanwhile actual academics simply don't like being censored by people unable to accept reality and instead look for places where actual scientific discussion can be held, which usually means proving each other wrong all the time.
And stay in twitter, where disinformation is pushed continuously and actual scientific discourse is censored when it contradicts the billionaire that bought the platform, one of the people that most hate being proved wrong.