Bluesky, the X rival boosted by EU's tech enforcer - 3 questions answered
Since Elon Musk hollowed out Twitter's staffing, pushed services behind a paywall and renamed it X, many users have been thrashing around for an alternative social media platform.
So far none has emerged as a clear winner, but EU commissioner Thierry Breton, alarmed at the disinformation on X, has just made a very public choice to switch to Bluesky -- one of the lesser-known X rivals.
What is Bluesky?.
The platform was created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey as a side project in 2019.
Dorsey put five engineers aside to build a decentralised alternative to Twitter.
He said at the time that centralised attempts to police abuse and misinformation on a platform like Twitter were unlikely to work, and wanted to give users more control of personal data and content moderation.
But Bluesky did not see the light of day until earlier this year.
The current version looks and feels incredibly similar to the Musk-owned site.
But the platform is keeping itself exclusive -- you need an invite from another user or you have to sign up to a "waitlist" that can take weeks to get an account.
Who is using it?.
The more that Musk has set about transforming X into a realm of paywalls and petty gripes, the more popular the alternatives have become.
Bluesky is still in its experimental phase but said last month that it had already passed the landmark of one million users.
Sign-ups have spiked each time Musk has made a controversial change to his platform, according to the company's data.
High-profile early adopters include US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fashion model Chrissy Teigen.
And journalists and media organisations, frequent targets of Musk's ire on X, are moving over in numbers.
US outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times
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