Bluesky gains 40M users, will roll out “dislike” button

Bluesky, the social media platform favored by academics, journalists, and American progressives, has announced a significant milestone: 40 million user accounts. The company shared this news on Friday via a screenshot posted to its official account, using emojis to represent the numbers ‘4’ and ‘0.’

Bluesky is a popular service operating on the AT protocol, a decentralized platform akin to Mastodon. Functioning similarly to X.com (formerly Twitter), Bluesky enables users to share short, text-based messages, animated images, and brief videos.

Bluesky executives have not disclosed the number of active users among their 40 million accounts. The platform typically sees a surge in new sign-ups during politically charged events, like the November election, or when X.com implements policy changes that upset its users. However, it remains uncertain how many of these new users remain engaged long-term.

Recently, profiles linked to federal agencies and members of the Trump administration have appeared on Bluesky, and executives have quickly granted these accounts blue “verified” badges.

Bluesky markets itself as an open-source alternative to X.com and other platforms, allowing anyone to view nearly everything, including how accounts interact with each other.

According to an account activity tracking tool, the official profiles of Vice President J.D. Vance, the White House, the U.S. Department of Defense (which the Trump administration calls the Department of War), and the U.S. State Department are among the most frequently blocked by other Bluesky users.

The service does not have “private” posts, meaning anything published by a user is instantly is perpetually viewable by everyone on the platform.

Since its debut, Bluesky and its users have been accused of catering to specific political and social views, despite executives promoting it as a platform for free speech and expression. Executives have also been blamed for failing to promptly remove user accounts of people who violate its rules, according to Engadget, and the company has done less to encourage respectable discourse.

Currently, Bluesky is working to roll out a “dislike” button that will allow users to attach social sentiment to the posts they see in their feed. Engadget said that the feature could work in one of two ways. It might allow people to gain more control over the content that appears in their feed, but it might also lock users into a “filter bubble,” where their validation bias is heightened.