Bluesky explained: What you need to know about the X challenger

Bluesky is the buzzy decentralized social network that would be a cleaner, more transparent version of X. It looks and feels the same—short posts, replies, likes and a fast-moving feed—but it’s built on an entirely different design idea for how social platforms should work. The company says it has more than 30 million sign-ups, in part the result of prominent departures from X and policy decisions that encouraged people to try elsewhere. It’s significant momentum, even if it lags well behind Meta’s Threads, which now has an estimated 275 million monthly active users.

What is Bluesky, exactly, and how does it differ?

Bluesky is a social app built around decentralization and user control. It was originally created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, but currently functions as an independent public benefit corporation headed up by CEO Jay Graber. Dorsey is off the board, and the company notes that it is entirely independent from X.

Bluesky itself is based on the AT Protocol, and it does a lot of things under the hood. That architecture seeks to avoid the sort of lock-in we see in social media today by giving everyone the ability to take their identity, followers and content from one service on the network to another that runs a compatible protocol.

How Bluesky works: sign-up, feeds, and features

Signing up looks simple: you pick a handle (your default is @username.bsky.social) and a display name. Advanced users can map a domain to their handle, so your site becomes not just your home on the internet, but your identity. Posts are capped at 256 characters and support photos, though a vertical video feed is rolling out, and profiles have dedicated video tabs.

The feed experience enables “algorithmic choice” with custom feeds. You can subscribe to different feeds — one for breaking news, another for idiosyncratic hobbies — pin them at the top of the app and toggle among them with a tap. A custom Discover feed instead highlights accounts and posts outside of who you follow, and it’s replaced the previously available “what’s hot” lists with a more personalized surface.

There are direct messages for one-on-one chats and they come with emoji reactions. Group DMs aren’t available yet. The team has also teased other features such as trending topics and community-generated context tools that sound like crowdsourced notes.

Why people are leaving X for Bluesky’s alternative

Bluesky’s spikes typically follow coverage of X’s most controversial changes — such as tweaks to its block function or the provisions that grant licenses for training AI on public posts. Bluesky says it will not be feeding user content to generative AI. The app has also briefly ranked as the most downloaded in the U.S. App Store at times of turmoil elsewhere, suggesting there is some pent-up demand for a different model.

Who’s on Bluesky: notable users and communities

The community is a blend of journalists, tech heads, performers and local notables. Prominent users include Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Cuban, Quinta Brunson, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Guillermo del Toro and Barbra Streisand as well as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil. There are also accounts for past American leadership, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Bluesky verifies “meaningful” users with an old-fashioned blue check mark that can’t be bought.

Moderation, safety, and culture on the Bluesky network

Bluesky’s early expansion showed the cracks of a lack of moderation. The company has been criticized for harassment and inadequate guardrails, as part of a broader debate around slurs in account handles. In reaction, Bluesky strengthened its impersonation policy, implemented email verification measures, scaled automated tools to detect such things and published a moderation report showing an increase of 17x user reports as the network grew. The moderation team has expanded to about 100 people, and further recruitment is planned.

Its architecture is designed to give users more latitude. Ozone is an open tool that enables communities to run their own moderation services. Users can subscribe to moderation lists, restrict who can reply to messages, or see “possibly misleading” warnings when a linked web address does not match the linked text. Activists and outside observers, including GLAAD’s Accountability Project, have shaped debates around content enforcement, and Bluesky has more clearly delineated what harassment and bigotry look like in its new Community Guidelines.

Transparency and the AT Protocol behind Bluesky

Federation is the endgame. In a federated Bluesky world, anyone is able to run a server and create an application on AT Protocol. If you don’t like how one community is moderated, there’s always the option to wander — taking your followers and identity. That portability is supposed to be a hedge against the “walled garden” effect and keep you from ending up in a situation wherein one company’s algorithms can color your whole social world.

There’s already a lively developer ecosystem. Bluesky is providing AT Protocol Grants, and builders are being supported by a $1 million fund led by investor Peter Wang called Skyseed. Third-party apps on Bluesky include Flashes for photos, Spark for short-form video, and Skylight Social, supported by Mark Cuban. Feed-builder tools such as SkyFeed allow anyone to write their own algorithms without any coding required.

Business model and monetization plans for Bluesky

Instead of relying on targeted ads, Bluesky is experimenting with making money from services and subscriptions. It sells custom domains for handles and has raised outside funding, including $15 million in venture capital; a forthcoming subscription, kind of anticlimactically named Bluesky+, was teased with perks like higher-res video uploads and profile customization — albeit not pay-to-boost mechanics that rely on payment to gatekeep who can do them.

How to get started on Bluesky and set up your profile

Download the app on iOS or Android, or access it through its web client, to create a handle and follow accounts for your Home feed. Then you subscribe to a couple of custom feeds to customize what you see — news, local communities or niche interests. If safety is paramount, try moderation lists, customize reply controls and consider mapping your domain to your handle for identity.

Bluesky is still playing catch up in terms of features and scale, but its pitch is clear: You own your identity, you pick whose feeds to follow and whom to trust as a moderator, and you can always get up from the table without losing your social graph.

For an increasing number of users, that trade-off is worth the switch.