Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 in order to provide for more alternative voices. The Twitter files likely played a role in his decision.

But there is another story here. Jack Dorsey, formerly CEO of Twitter (2015–2021), founded Bluesky at roughly the same time to be a kinder, gentler Twitter (or X, as the latter is increasingly known). Bluesky was billed as “Real people. Real conversations. Social media you control.”

Hopes were high. At journalism site Nieman Lab, Ethan Toven-Lindsey announced in 2024: “Bluesky is just the beginning”:

The decision by the European Federation of Journalists, the largest such organization in Europe, to stop posting on Twitter as of January 20, 2025, signals a broader media shift towards social media and news sharing alternatives.

“The EFJ considers that it can no longer ethically participate in a social network that its owner has transformed into a machine of disinformation and propaganda,” the group wrote when announcing the decision. The site that many journalists are gravitating towards, currently, is Bluesky. But Bluesky is just the beginning. Journalists are experimenting with WhatsApp, Discord, and several other engagement tools.

“Predictions for Journalism, 2025,” December 2024

It wasn’t clear what Bluesky would be doing differently that would matter. Just for example, after American debate icon Charlie Kirk was shot in September last year, Bluesky apparently had to post notices warning users not to celebrate his death:

While some of the reactions to Kirk’s assassination on Bluesky condemned the murder — many took the opportunity to rip the slain activist over his politics with a torrent of personal attacks.

Author Wajahat Ali called the shooting “criminal, wrong, and should be condemned,” but added that Kirk was “a horrible, hateful man” who targeted marginalized groups, saying, “I refuse to sanitize him.”

Comedian John Fugelsang wrote: “Do these idiots even realize that shooting Charlie Kirk makes you a worse person than Charlie Kirk?”

Others were openly hostile. One user posted, “The person who motivated the shooting of Charlie Kirk was Charlie Kirk.”

Ariel Zilber, “Bluesky warns users not to celebrate Charlie Kirk assassination after dozens of horrific messages posted,” New York Post, September 11, 2025.

It was not clear at the time why Bluesky users were icons of virtue to be imitated.

In any event, Bluesky has not succeeded in supplanting X:

Bluesky really did grow for a while and lots of people on the left started trying to move not just their own accounts but many of their followers over to the new platform. These days the site has 45 million registered users.

And yet, 18 months later it’s fair to say that Bluesky is nowhere near being a competitor to X. Exact numbers are hard to source but X currently has about 250 million daily users whereas Bluesky is hovering somewhere between 1.5 million daily users and fewer than half that.

John Sexton, “Bluesky Gave Up on Competing with X,” Hot Air, July 16, 2026

Cybernews admits, “Bluesky had momentum at the height of the X exodus, but it’s still playing catch-up with Elon Musk’s platform and Meta’s Threads in terms of user numbers.”

The desire to cultivate a specific demographic can, of course, limit growth:

Some big names have joined recently, including Democratic heavyweights Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Vice President JD Vance was suspended 12 minutes after he announced he had joined the platform. Although the ban was later reversed, it reinforced Bluesky’s left-leaning image, where debates are often one-sided – a dynamic that critics say makes the platform feel dull and “boring” to use.

Justinas Vainilavičius, “Can Bluesky still catch up with X and Threads? And does it really want to?”, July 17, 2025

Maybe the takehome point here is this: if you don’t want conflict or controversy, don’t pretend you want to be where the news is. And don’t be surprised if your platform mostly appeals to conventional people who all agree with each other.

Note: Dorsey is no longer involved in Bluesky’s operations. The current CEO is the recently appointed Toni Schneider.