When the cheating video gamer Elon Musk took over Twitter two years ago, several fairly substantial changes were introduced, both better and worse. Among the more popular features is the ability to add context to others’ posts.
However, many feel that the moderation is much worse, with open hatred and threats, excessive advertising and a more prominent place for bots. In addition, Musk himself is a controversial figure who likes to share conspiracy theories and content that is perceived as both xenophobic and anti-Semitic.
This has left many looking for an alternative, and after a year of searching back and forth with services like Hive Social and Mastodon, among others, it seems that Bluesky and Threads are emerging as popular contenders. Bluesky in particular (created by Jack Dorsey, the same person who created Twitter back in the day) is growing very fast and now has a huge community.
After reaching 20 million users in November 2024, the popularity of the service seems to have accelerated ever faster, possibly boosted by Elon Musk’s actions in world politics. Now we learn that the service will soon reach the milestone of 30 million users.
Several companies currently have agreements with Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads) and X, and are therefore not yet on Bluesky. It was recently revealed that NFL asked one of the league’s teams to leave the service because they don’t have a partnership with them yet, but if Bluesky continues to grow like this, it won’t be long before more and more giants establish themselves there and make it a worthy challenger to the much richer giants.