Social media startup Bluesky attracts 2 million new users in Brazil after judge bans Musk’s X

Brazil’s recent ban on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, has driven users toward smaller alternatives like Bluesky, which has seen a surge in popularity as people search for new ways to express themselves online.

Bluesky announced on Monday that it gained two million new users in just one week, largely due to Brazilians flocking to the platform after the court-ordered ban on X. However, by Wednesday, the app was experiencing issues, with several users reporting outages. Bluesky developer Paul Frazee acknowledged the challenges in a post, saying:

“There will almost certainly be some outages and performance issues,” adding, “We’ve never seen traffic like this. Hang with us!”

The spike in activity on Bluesky followed a ruling by a Brazilian Supreme Court justice that ordered a nationwide suspension of X last Friday. The suspension was upheld by a Supreme Court panel on Monday.

Before the ban, X had refused to comply with Brazilian court orders related to its content moderation policies and the appointment of a new legal representative in the country.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who issued the suspension, also mandated daily fines for anyone in Brazil who attempts to access X using virtual private networks (VPNs) or other methods to bypass the ban.

X has an estimated 22 million users in Brazil.

As of Wednesday, Bluesky had climbed to the top spot on Brazil’s iOS App Store, followed closely by Threads, another X alternative from Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram.

“We’re so back,” the official Threads account posted on Wednesday, hinting at its renewed momentum in the wake of the ban on X.

Bluesky is one of several apps aiming to fill the gap left by Twitter after Elon Musk took over the platform in late 2022.

As of July, Bluesky’s monthly active users numbered around 688,568, a small fraction compared to X’s 76.9 million, based on data from Similarweb, a digital market intelligence firm.

Bluesky was founded in 2019 as an internal project under Jack Dorsey. The platform focuses on developing a decentralized social network protocol. However, Dorsey stepped down from Bluesky’s board in May amid ongoing controversies at Block. Shortly after his resignation, Dorsey publicly backed Elon Musk’s X, referring to it as “freedom technology.”

Dorsey’s departure from Bluesky, a startup he championed post-Twitter sale, was confirmed with a simple “No” in response to a question about his continued involvement with the board.

Bluesky now finds itself in a crowded microblogging space, competing with other platforms like Mastodon and the soon-to-be-launched Threads. With the market becoming increasingly saturated, Bluesky faces the challenge of carving out its unique position and attracting users in this competitive landscape.