In the world of technology, in recent weeks, there has been talk of nothing other than Bluesky. A little summary: This is a new text-based social network, which has exploded in popularity since the US elections. A large part of the success is due to those who decided to leave X, which Elon Musk has increasingly transformed into a space at the service of President-elect Donald Trump.

The growth is important: since July, Bluesky has almost quadrupled the number of users, going from 6 to over 22 million in the space of a few months. And there are also many active users, those who use the platform on a daily basis. We are talking about 3.5 million accounts, compared to just over 5 for Threads, the alternative to X built by Meta, which however has over 270 million subscribers.

Threads takes action

An alarm bell that pushed Mark Zuckerberg’s company to take action. First, Adam Mosseri, number one at Threads, announced the update of the algorithm, with the aim of showing more posts from accounts that the user follows.

Then, it inaugurated the possibility of creating personalized feeds, a bit like on Bluesky, increasing users’ possibilities of choice. In recent days, Zuckerberg himself intervened, specifying that it will be possible to set personalized default feeds.

This is an important theme, which takes up one of the most popular features of the platform, namely the possibility of creating personalized content flows. Bluesky has a home page based on a reverse chronological order of posts published by followed users. It also has a Discover space, which suggests content based on the user’s interest. However, you also have the possibility to choose different ways of accessing posts. In a dedicated section, you can select the most diverse feeds: from those that only show images to those dedicated to specific themes.

It is this feature, which offers greater customization possibilities to users, that Meta wants to replicate.

Bluesky: The Perils of Growing Up

The next few weeks will be particularly interesting for the future of Bluesky. Which will have to defend itself, on the one hand, from competitors like Threads; on the other, by the inevitable problems that the growth of users brings with it.

In an article published in his Platformer newsletter, Casey Newton explores these very difficulties. Starting with an interesting story. That of the appearance of a post on Bluesky showing a sexualized image of a dragon, with some visual similarities to a human child. This has raised questions about the possible violation of the platform’s community guidelines, particularly those prohibiting sexually explicit content or content involving child exploitation (CSAM).

The image was flagged for review by Bluesky’s security team, who were faced with a complex case: although the image was of an anthropomorphic dragon, the artist claimed that the depicted character was 9,000 years old. I mean, technically not a child.

Ultimately, the post was removed, but the situation highlighted how ambiguous and controversial moderation decisions can become, especially on a growing platform. In fact, with the increase in users, Bluesky has seen “borderline” cases grow exponentially, which defy both internal guidelines and common sense.

The company, which today has only 20 employees, had to quadruple the number of moderators under contract and integrate tools such as Safer, a technology developed by the nonprofit Thorn, to better manage serious cases.

Growth also means greater attention from institutions. Like the European Union, whose rules, according to an article published in the Financial Times, Bluesky would violate for not having made public key details about the group.

“All platforms in the EU must have a dedicated page on their website indicating the number of users in the Union and their registered office,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told the British newspaper. At the moment, Bluesky does not comply with this provision.” The company, in any case, has made it known, as confirmed by a Bloomberg article, that it is “working to comply with European laws.