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Bluesky is give birth a present moment — a moment that ’s already stretched on for nearly three month .
Over the summertime , the social media app sawa wave of fresh sign - ups in Brazilafter X ( formerly Twitter ) wastemporarily bannedthere . And in the United States , unhappiness with change at X , and with owner Elon Musk ’s tightlipped relationship with President - Elect Donald Trump , seem to havedramatically accelerate Bluesky ’s growth .
According to SimilarWeb , X ’s trafficandaccount deactivation both peaked the day after the presidential election . Bluesky , meanwhile , say it ’s start add a million young drug user every day ; on Saturday , the companyannouncedthat it now has 18 million total users , and it ’s presently the No . 1 free app on Apple ’s App Store .
This has , unsurprisingly , caused some problems , with periods of unhurriedness or downtime , as well aschallenges for content moderation and safety . Inan interview with The New York Times , CEO Jay Graber acknowledged that there are “ always some growing pains , ” but she said her 20 - person full - time squad takes “ pride in our power to scale cursorily . ”
Alongside the proficient issues , longtime user seem to be writhe with what this speedy growth means for the Bluesky community . Yes , there have beentriumphant postsabout App Store rankings and the late celebrity sign - ups , but alsoself - depreciate discourseabout the qualifications for being “ Bluesky elder,”hand - wringingwhen the wrong kind of users show up , and plead / scoldingremindersto “ do n’t plight , just block ” when dealing with troll .
I ’ve even noticed that my own weird human relationship with Bluesky is modify . While I ’ve drop more time there than on any other social media app in the past year , my follower tally stalled at around 200 — a fact that I found freeing , though not freeing enough for me to post more than once a month or so . This week , the numbers started to go up again , and even though they ’re still pretty low ( I used to be big on other societal mesh , I verify ) , I directly start to worry that someone might really notice if I enunciate something stupefied .
Despitemy own Bluesky presencebeing trifling , I do palpate protective about it . I suppose it ’s a intimate report : former fans are always complaining when something new and cool gets discovered by the mainstream . And no , I ’m not about to start post “ Keep Bluesky weird ! ” or adjudge , “ Bluesky is over ! ” But I occupy that what ’s been fun and weird and even liveliness - affirming about the Bluesky community of interests could dissipate or vanish with the inflow of unexampled users .
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Put another way : Bluesky has always felt like the small , left - wye alternative to X. So what make Bluesky Bluesky when it ’s no longerthe “ short king ” of social medium ? visit so many intimate names from Old Twitter , I wondered if we ’re just break down to re - create Twitter circa 2014 . Which would n’t be theworstthing , but in 2024 , ca n’t we do better ?
At least Bluesky ’s executives have signaled that they want to do things differently . Some of the distinctions , likethe focus on decentralization , may be for the most part inconspicuous to unconstipated users , but many of their precedence seem bake into the product and the business . There are theaggressive blocking feature , thereverse chronological ( not algorithmic ) provender , thepledge to not train AI on user ’ posts , anda future business sector modelfocused on give subscriptions rather than advertising .
Graber is aware of a possible civilization clash , describing it as an “ aeonian September ” trouble , where old - timers become infelicitous when Wave of newbies show up and inevitably change thing . She said Bluesky is look to deal this by adding more features to allow user to customize their experience , and by better its automated content moderation dick .
Maybe the coming months and yr will demo that those decisions and lineament can in reality protect and nourish sound online communities . And possibly we ’ve all learned something from seeing how other societal networks wither with perniciousness or antisepsis . I trust so . And if not ? Well , one thingI‘ve watch from Twitter is that you should always be ready to move on to the next app .
