Bluesky Gains Millions of New Users in Brazil After Judge Bans Musk’s X
Brazil’s recent decision to ban Elon Musk’s social media platform X has elevated the profile of its smaller competitor, Bluesky, as users seek alternatives to express their views.
Bluesky announced it had gained two million new users within a week, though the app faced issues on Wednesday with reports of outages from several users.
“There will almost certainly be some outages and performance issues,” Bluesky developer Paul Frazee noted. “We’ve never seen traffic like this. Hang with us!”
The company also reported a surge in activity from Brazilian users, setting new all-time highs.
This increase in traffic follows a Brazilian Supreme Court justice’s order on Friday for a nationwide suspension of X, with a Supreme Court panel upholding the ruling on Monday.
Before the ban, X had indicated it would not adhere to Brazilian court orders related to content moderation and a request for a new legal representative in the country.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes has also imposed daily fines on individuals or businesses in Brazil that use virtual private networks (VPNs) or other means to access X while it’s banned, according to local media.
X is estimated to have over 22 million users in Brazil.
As of Wednesday, Bluesky topped the free app charts on Brazil’s iOS App Store, followed by Threads, an alternative to X developed by Meta Platforms, which also owns Facebook and Instagram.
“We’re so back,” the official Threads account tweeted on Wednesday, though no further details were provided.
Bluesky was first announced in 2019 as a project to create an open, decentralized social protocol, backed by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter (now X). Bluesky became an independent company in 2021, and Dorsey severed ties with the platform earlier this year.
Bluesky, Threads, and the open-source, decentralized network Mastodon are competing to become the leading microblogging platform.
In the wake of controversies surrounding Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022 and subsequent changes to the platform, these alternatives have seen a rise in users.
Bluesky’s user base in the U.K. surged last month amid Musk’s controversial remarks about nationwide riots there.
Despite some advertisers and users leaving X, none of the alternatives have yet posed a significant threat. Threads is the closest contender, boasting over 200 million monthly active users, according to an August post by Instagram head Adam Mosseri.
In May, Musk reported that X had reached 600 million monthly active users and approximately 300 million daily active users.