A network “free from far-right activism, misinformation, hate speech”is how the application is described. Bluesky by social media researcher Alex Bruns. He explained to the English newspaper The Guardian that X’s competitor was “a haven for people who want to have the same kind of social media experience as Twitter.”. Indeed, the platform has gained over a million users since the election of Donald Trumpaccording to the British daily.

Bluesky now has almost 15 million users, up from 9 million in September, according to the company, quoted by the British newspaper. “We’re delighted to welcome all these new users, who range from swifties (Taylor Swift’s community) to wrestlers to urban planners”.said Emily Lin, a spokeswoman for the platform. Guardian.

Bluesky was originally a project within Twitter before going independent with the acquisition ofElon Musk. However, the social network is still a long way from its main competitors, including Threads. Meta-owned Threads reported 275 million monthly active users in November, up from 200 million in August.

“Trump’s propaganda organ”

“After January, when X could be held by a de facto member of the Trump administration its functions as Trump’s propaganda organ and far-right radicalization machine could be accelerated.”explained Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian and professor at New York University, to Guardian.

Bluesky had already benefited from Twitter’s name change to X, which lost millions of users. In the same vein, the platform claimed to have gained 3 million users in the week that followed. the suspension of X in Brazil, last September. 1.2 million people then joined the butterfly app in the two days following X’s announcement saying allow users to see messages from blocked people.

Recently, several accounts have announced that they are leaving Elon Musk’s platform for various reasons. Such is the case of The Guardian which denounces an application “toxic”. German soccer club St Pauli has also withdrawn from the platform, becoming a “hate amplifier”..