Bluesky tops app charts and sees ‘all-time-highs’ after Brazil bans X

A Brazilian court’s decision to ban X (formerly Twitter) seems to be benefiting its rivals, especially Bluesky.

The microblogging platform announced late Friday that it was seeing “all-time-highs for activity” with 500,000 new users joining in the previous two days. It’s also number one on the free iPhone app chart in Brazil today, ranking just ahead of Meta’s Threads at number two.

Noting the rankings, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber wrote, “good job Brazil, you made the right choice.”

That growth is particularly impressive for a platform that only fully opened to the public in February and winkingly acknowledged its small size (especially compared to rivals X and Threads) by describing itself as “the short king of social apps.” The company says it had more than 6 million users as of May 2024.

Bluesky was first announced in 2019 as a Twitter-backed initiative to build an open, decentralized social protocol. It has since become an independent public benefit corporation, with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey leaving the board earlier this year.

Elon Musk’s X, meanwhile, has been engaged in an escalating legal fight with Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes over the company’s refusal to block certain accounts as part of a broader crackdown on what Moraes said is election disinformation.

X said earlier this month that it would shut down operations in Brazil, with Moraes then warning the company that it would be banned if it did not name a legal representative in the country. He followed through on Friday, and also threatened fines against users who try to circumvent the ban by using a VPN.

As the ban approached, Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seemingly bid farewell to his X followers by linking to his other social media accounts — starting with Bluesky.