What is Bluesky and why did 1 million people join it in a week?

A million new users flooded onto the social media platform Bluesky in the week after Election Day. It’s like X, but the mood is less blustery and there are fewer trolls. Here’s a guide on how it works.

First Look

Looking for a new social media platform because X, Threads, and Mastodon just aren’t cutting it? You could try Bluesky.

People seeking to avoid chaos, noise, and political bluster in the aftermath of the U.S. elections are noticing a different mood on the Bluesky social platform, where the vibe is seemingly welcoming and there are noticeably fewer trolls.

The site announced it had rapidly added more than a million new users in the week after Election Day, and has emerged as one of the fastest growing rivals to Elon Musk’s X and similar platforms.

If you’re tempted to check out the new space, here’s a guide on how Bluesky works:

Getting started

Maybe you’re not ready to commit to adding yet another social media account. No problem – you can still look around on Bluesky without signing up because all posts and profiles are public.

You might get a sense of déjà vu because the platform’s look and feel are very similar to X. That should be no surprise because Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was an early Bluesky champion. (Dorsey’s no longer involved with Bluesky, which is owned and run by its executive team as a public benefit corporation.)

If you take the plunge and get an account, you’ll need a username. You’ll notice Bluesky handles are a little bit different because they end by default in the site’s domain, .bsky.social.

You can personalize your handle to make it more memorable, by using your own website’s domain or buying a custom one through Bluesky. But it might not be something most newbie users need or want to do right away.

How do I find interesting people?

Bluesky boasts that it gives users “algorithmic choice” to tailor the content they’re shown instead of leaving it up to the whims of a centralized system.

“Our online experience doesn’t have to depend on billionaires unilaterally making decisions over what we see,” it says.

What it means is that you can follow custom feeds set up by other users, or design your own. If you tap #Feeds in the menu on the left, you’ll see some default offerings like Cat Pics and Gardening. My Bangers is a list of your most popular posts by likes and Catch Up shows the site’s most popular posts from the past 24 hours. You can find more by doing a search and tapping the Feeds button.

There’s also the usual “Discover” feed of suggested posts and a chronological feed of accounts that you follow.

To help new users settle in, Bluesky has starter packs of recommended feeds and accounts to follow, which anyone can create and share. They don’t show up in Bluesky’s search results but can be found in directories online.

Or someone might share one with you. After I signed up, a colleague pointed me to one for major news outlets. There are tens of thousands of starter packs, ranging from broadly appealing topics like Taylor Swift to niche interests like cargo bikes or U.K. comedians. You can follow the whole pack or scroll down the list to choose individual accounts.

What about people you followed on X? There’s a browser extension tool called Sky Follower Bridge that will help you find X users who’ve migrated to Bluesky. But check before clicking the follow button to make sure it’s not a different user using the same display name or handle.

How to post

Ready to join the conversation? You can write posts or reply to others but keep it short because there’s a limit of 300 characters – 20 more than on X. You can also upload photos and videos, though videos can’t be longer than 60 seconds. GIFs and emojis are, of course, available too.

You can still @ people by typing in their username, like posts by tapping a heart icon or use hashtags to highlight a theme. Bluesky has added a menu to hashtags, so when you click on one you’ll get different options for seeing, or muting, posts on that topic.

What about trolls?

Bluesky’s decentralization ethos extends to the content control options it offers.

For starters, users can choose in their settings menu whether to see replies, reposts, or quote posts in their feed. Specific words or tags can be muted temporarily, or forever, while accounts can be muted or blocked individually, or in bulk by adding them a moderation list. You can even fine tune the level of adult content that shows up in your feed.

Bluesky has a team of content moderators to police the site for material that’s illegal or breaks the rules. But it’s also taking a different approach by open sourcing its content moderation system in an attempt to resolve problems with traditional moderation services which it says “lack transparency and user control.”

So, individuals or groups can set up their own content filters, or labelers, that go beyond what Bluesky offers. These labelers can be used to categorize content or users, which can then be blocked or hidden. But they could also be used for informational or creative purposes, like curating or verifying content.

There are labelers to identify images generated by artificial intelligence or to fact check news posts. You can find lists of labelers online. After I subscribed to a U.S. politics labeler, some posts in my feeds were flagged “!Donald Trump” or “!Democrat politician” and hidden unless I click Show.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.

Editor’s note: The Christian Science Monitor can be followed on Bluesky @csmonitor.bsky.social.