The hot social media platform after Brazil’s X ban: Bluesky

Decentralized social media platform Bluesky is seeing a surge in new users.

Bluesky, the social media platform and aspiring Twitter alternative, has taken Brazil by storm within days of the country banning Elon Musk’s X.

The US-based platform said on Friday that half a million new users had joined the platform — just one day after Brazil forced X to shut down in the country.

By Monday, that number had increased to 2 million new users, Bluesky wrote in a post. Bluesky is crediting Brazil for its sudden surge in users.

“Brazil, you’re setting new all-time highs for activity on Bluesky!” the company wrote in a post on its platform.

The decentralized platform appears to be soaking up users with X and Musk locked in a feud with Brazil’s government.

Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered the country to block access to X last week because the Musk-owned platform refuses to pay over $3 million in fines and enforce content moderation.

And Musk — a self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist” — has been slamming de Moraes on X, calling him a “so-called ‘justice,'” a “scumbag,” and an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge.”

More seriously, Musk has accused de Moraes, without evidence, of “repeatedly and directly violat[ing] the laws of Brazil that he swore to uphold!” and of engaging “in serious, repeated & deliberate interference” in the 2022 election that defeated far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Another of Musk’s companies, satellite broadband firm Starlink, has been caught up in the feud.

De Moraes ordered the freeze of Starlink’s finances to use as possible payment for the fines X owes the Brazilian government, Reuters reported.

On Monday, Starlink told Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel that it would not obey the country’s order to block access to X, Reuters reported. But by Tuesday, Starlink had changed its tune, announcing in a post on X that it would comply with the order.

“Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing of our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” Starlink wrote. “We continue to pursue all legal avenues, as are others who agree that @alexandre’s recent orders violate the Brazilian constitution.”

Bluesky was initially created within Twitter with the help of founder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey but has since launched as an independent company.

Like X, the platform allows users to post, like, share, direct message, create lists and user profiles. But unlike X, it is a decentralized network that lets users sign up for their own third-party content moderation, set up their own servers to run the app, and customize how their feeds appear to them.

On Tuesday, Bluesky provided more numbers showing just how much it had grown in the previous 96 hours, compared to a 96-hour period just one week prior.

In the most recent 96-hour period, Bluesky said the platform had received 104.6 million likes compared to 13 million the same period a week before, 100.8 million follows compared to 1.4 million the week before, 11 million reposts compared to 1.3 million the week before, and 2.11 million new users compared to just 26,000 the week before.

“This really drives home how insane the increase in activity around here has been,” Bluesky wrote in the post.