Bluesky, a social media platform that has gained millions of users in the past few months, has emerged as an alternative to Elon Musk’s “X” (formerly known as Twitter) as people have become frustrated with its decline in quality and lack of protections against hate speech and violent threats.
Junior Peter Hannah is one of those who has been disappointed with some of Musk’s changes. “I think Elon’s original aim for Twitter was to make it more free and open, but instead it has just nosedived into a platform lacking any meaningful conversations. Now it’s just about boosting interactions and Musk’s ego.”
Bluesky originally started as a research initiative at Twitter as a way to test a more open and decentralized kind of social media. It became a separate corporation from Twitter in October of 2021 and opened as an invite-only service in February 2023. When the site finally opened for public use in early 2024, it immediately gained nearly 2 million users and has been steadily growing ever since.
The many setbacks that X has suffered over the past year have contributed heavily to the growth of Bluesky, whether it be self-inflicted problems such as Elon’s decision to remove the “block” feature, or Brazil’s decision to ban X for all of its citizens. The European Federation of Journalists recently told its members to leave X due to safety concerns which has led them and many other journalists to post solely on Bluesky.
The election largely caused a decline in viewership for social media sites as well as cable news networks in its immediate aftermath. However, Bluesky saw a major increase of nearly 1 million users and became the most downloaded social media platform on the App Store for most of November.
English teacher Mr. O’Grady is one of the many people to join Bluesky in the wake of the election. “At first it didn’t seem like the people I followed on Twitter were moving over, but then about four weeks ago there was this huge migration over to Bluesky. So I was like ‘alright this is happening’ and I decided to make an account.”
When asked about what he hopes Bluesky will become, O’Grady said, “I really hope Bluesky becomes like Twitter in 2016. A good place to get information in real time and follow people who I have shared interests with.”
