Bluesky is on the rise after Brazil banned X

“Brazil set new all-time highs for activity on Bluesky!” the company wrote in a post on its platform.

The decentralized platform appears to be absorbing 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 more than $3 million in fines and enforce content moderation.

And Musk – a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” – slammed de Moraes on X, calling him “so-called ‘justice'”, a “measure” and an “evil dictator posing as a judge”.

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

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

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

On Monday, Starlink told Brazil’s telecoms regulator Anatel that it would not comply with 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 Starlink’s illegal treatment in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order blocking access to X in Brazil,” Starlink wrote. “We continue to pursue all legal avenues, as do others who agree that @alexandre’s recent orders violate the Brazilian constitution.”

Bluesky was originally created within Twitter with the help of then-founder and 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’s a decentralized network that allows users to sign up for third-party content moderation, set up their own servers to run the app, and customize how their feeds appear.

On Tuesday, Bluesky provided more numbers showing how much it has risen over the past 96 hours compared to a 96-hour period just a week earlier.

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

“This really shows how crazy the increase in activity around here has been,” Bluesky wrote in the post.