What is Bluesky? New social media alternative to Twitter, X arises

In the aftermath of the election, X – the former Twitter – saw its largest number of users leave the platform since Elon Musk bought the company two years ago.

But users haven’t just abandoned social media.

Also the day after the election, Bluesky welcomed more than a million new users, surpassing 16 million users and clinching the top spot in downloads in the Apple App Store.

But what is this new platform and why are people moving to it?

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky is a social media platform originally developed within X, formerly Twitter, which became a standalone company in 2022.

Although it started as a project within X, it is not owned by Musk. Bluesky’s primary owner today is its CEO, Jay Graber, who has shifted its focus to a community-centered platform with an emphasis on safety and open discourse.

It’s meant to be a less toxic community than X and a way to escape bots, hate speech, and misinformation. BlueSky runs on a decentralized platform, which, according to the School of Professional Advancement at Tulane University, means that it runs on independent servers, not servers owned by the platform, and that the Users can organize their feed as they wish.

According to news sources, some users cited growing problems on .

Trump has since announced a position for Musk within his White House administration, the new Department of Government Effectiveness, or DOGE.

The social media platform Bluesky uses a blue butterfly symbol and the posts are called “skeeting”, reminiscent of the little blue bird symbol and the “tweet” used by the old Twitter platform, before Musk’s takeover.