Bluesky Adds 2 Million New Users After Brazil's X Ban (techcrunch.com) 94
In the days following Brazil's shutdown of X, the decentralized social networking startup Bluesky added over 2 million new users, up from just half a million as of Friday. "This rapid growth led some users to encounter the occasional error that would state there were 'Not Enough Resources' to handle requests, as Bluesky engineers scrambled to keep the servers stable under the influx of new sign-ups," reports TechCrunch's Sarah Perez. From the report: As new users downloaded the app, Bluesky jumped to becoming the app to No. 1 in Brazil over the weekend, ahead of Meta's X competitor, Instagram Threads. According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, Bluesky's total downloads soared by 10,584% this weekend compared to last, and its downloads in Brazil were up by a whopping 1,018,952%. The growth seems to be having a halo effect, as downloads outside Brazil also rose by 584%, the firm noted. In part, this is due to Bluesky receiving downloads in 22 countries where it had barely seen any traction before.
In terms of absolute downloads, countries that saw the most installs outside Brazil included the U.S., Portugal, the U.K., Canada and Spain. Those with the most download growth, however, were Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Romania. Most of the latter group jumped from single-digit growth to growth in the thousands. Bluesky's newcomers have actively engaged on the platform, too, driving up other key metrics.
As one Bluesky engineer remarked, the number of likes on the social network grew to 104.6 million over the past four-day period, up from just 13 million when compared with a similar period just a week ago. Follows also grew from 1.4 million to 100.8 million while reposts grew from 1.3 million to 11 million. As of Monday, Bluesky said it had added 2.11 million users during the past four days, up from 26,000 users it had added in the week-ago period. In addition, the company noted it had seen "significantly more than a 100% [daily active users] increase." On Tuesday, Bluesky told TechCrunch the number is now 2.4 million and continues to grow "by the minute."
In terms of absolute downloads, countries that saw the most installs outside Brazil included the U.S., Portugal, the U.K., Canada and Spain. Those with the most download growth, however, were Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Romania. Most of the latter group jumped from single-digit growth to growth in the thousands. Bluesky's newcomers have actively engaged on the platform, too, driving up other key metrics.
As one Bluesky engineer remarked, the number of likes on the social network grew to 104.6 million over the past four-day period, up from just 13 million when compared with a similar period just a week ago. Follows also grew from 1.4 million to 100.8 million while reposts grew from 1.3 million to 11 million. As of Monday, Bluesky said it had added 2.11 million users during the past four days, up from 26,000 users it had added in the week-ago period. In addition, the company noted it had seen "significantly more than a 100% [daily active users] increase." On Tuesday, Bluesky told TechCrunch the number is now 2.4 million and continues to grow "by the minute."
As an American (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd really like to gloat that we have more free speech and would never do the same thing here, but we're trying to do the same thing to TikTok. The idea of a global internet was a nice one while it lasted.
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If you're going to compare the justifications given for the bans then yes, there are differences. The problem is though, once a government agrees in principle that they can give a social network the banhammer, the reasons for doing so are just a formality at that point. Either you accept that a global internet means your citizens can access sites governed by different laws, or you're heading down a similar path as China with their "great firewall".
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There are fundamental differences.
France hounding Telegram.
America might force the divestiture of TikTok.
Brazil has shut down X.
But Brazil has also criminalized reading X. If a Brazilian citizen is caught accessing X, they can be arrested or fined $9k per day, about half the median household income.
That's a whole different level of authoritarian censorship. That's as bad as China.
It is illegal for Brazilians to access X [yahoo.com].
Re:As an American (Score:5, Interesting)
hey, it is deserved, Elon joked with the the law, the law can't go directly after him, but sure can mark twitter illegal.
He actually tried to run away and trick the law by refusing and closing everything. If he was legally forced to remove posts and didn't remove them, then of course the response is to totally block it and force people to not use it as any info there can be true or a total lie.
Just because some in the USA think that saying lies is fine in covered in free speech, in most other countries, you also have free speech, but as long as what you say is true... if it is a lie, people can go after you legally. Twitter either removed the post or proved it was not a lie... it did neither, by Elon orders. He now thinks he is above the law and that can be a ditactor
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And what makes you think that's true in the USA? Depending on if the lies are spoken or in print, they're called "slander" or "libel," only instead of them being violations of criminal law, they're dealt with via lawsuits, not criminal prosecutions.
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All this laws are related to the fake news in social media and how those can destabilize a country. If people listen to totally opposite opinions and have no idea that one is fake and the other true, that creates problems. Tradicional media is slower, so gives more time to retract or give the right to oppose any news... social media is too fast and widespread, even if a new is retracted or someone opposes and wants to counter-argument it, the first post is already spread all over the place and impossible fo
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Probably, but as outsider, ANY post, true or false, good or bad, is followed always by claims of free speech. In most other countries, is perfectly normal to have a offensive, fake or lie post removed without anyone complaining about a attack to free speech. In many places in the world it is "My freedom ends were the other people rights starts", but in the USA looks like it is more "My freedom, above everything else"
off topic:
> Why are so many Christians God fearing instead of God loving?
Jews God is love
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hey, it is the law in that country. They have that law, media groups have to filter them, failure to comply they can go after the CEO or representative in the country (that they are required to have or else they can't work in the country), without a representative, the law says that the media should be blocked from working in the country.
in the USA, NSA requests are also secrets, you can't refuse just because you don't agree with it... you can try to contest that in court, but unless you get a court order t
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He now thinks he is above the law and that can be a ditactor
Elon didn't break any laws though... it was a request from the government that didn't jive with the Brazilian constitution as far as I've heard.
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true, the request was sent to the brazilian twitter office, Elon gave order to not obey to the court order, the court said that if they didn't obey, they would arrest the Brazilian twiter office leader, Elon closed the Brazilian office... as a media site isn't allowed to work in Brazil without a local office, the court order the twitter block. Brazil is following their laws, Elon is ignoring them and now his platform is blocked.
Also notice that a similar case in Turkey (actually worse, as turkey was to sil
Eggman is out of control (Score:3)
> But Brazil has also criminalized reading X. If a Brazilian citizen is caught accessing X, they can be arrested or fined $9k per day, about half the median household income.
It's twice the minimum wage, per day, at R$50,000, which is a little under $9k USD. That said, they've at least backed off the fines for individuals.
The part that's really crazy is the original order was a secret order giving X just two hours to remove a list of accounts that includes a sitting Brazilian senator. So they were going
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The part that's really crazy is the original order was a secret order giving X just two hours to remove a list of accounts that includes a sitting Brazilian senator. So they were going to censor and make X take the blame for the STF's censorship.
I'm still waiting to see any evidence of such a secret order.
The actual orders have long been posted (Score:2)
> I'm still waiting to see any evidence of such a secret order.
They're up on the AlexandreFiles [poast.org] along with English translations if you want to read them. I linked to an archive so that people censored can read them, but the originals are at https://x.com/AlexandreFiles [x.com] though I note that X seems to require login to see anything.
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It's the act that matters.
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Look, I get the "free speech" argument. I really do. But in practice, these social networks are profit driven, which means engagement driven. And this is a scourge on humanity. People get served porn, violence, agitative disinformation, propaganda, all the worst kinds of information that jumps high on the algorithms because it gets people riled up.
There are better ways to do free speech.
Re:As an American (Score:4, Informative)
I'd really like to gloat that we have more free speech and would never do the same thing here, but we're trying to do the same thing to TikTok. The idea of a global internet was a nice one while it lasted.
Bad example. TT is subject to banning because we don't want the Chinese government having access to American user's information. All TT has to do is spin off the American portion and everything will act as normal. This has nothing to do with what is being posted on TT.
In the case of Brazil, the court gave Twitter a lawful directive and Twitter declined to do anything. Unlike when Musk rolled over for Turkey [imgur.com] and blocked numerous opposition candiate accounts right before the election. You will notice that pedo guy explicitly said he had two choices: do nothing and have all of Twitter blocked, or block (i.e. censor) certain posts. He even said he can't go beyond the bounds of the U.S. to "protect" free speech and must complay with the laws of a country [arstechnica.com].
Brazil is the exact same thing. The judge wanted 7 accounts [imgur.com] blocked because what they were posting was against Brazilian law. Instead of complying with the lawful order or obeying the laws of a country, Twitter chose to do nothing and was banned entirely in Brazil.
Musk isn't known for coherency and easily flip flops on every subject depending on who's asking.
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TT is subject to banning because we don't want the Chinese government having access to American user's information. All TT has to do is spin off the American portion and everything will act as normal. This has nothing to do with what is being posted on TT.
Noting that in many business situations, compartmentalization using subsidiaries can be a good thing for a company in various legal and financial situations.
Re:As an American (Score:4, Insightful)
TT is subject to banning because we don't want the Chinese government having access to American user's information.
That's the excuse our leadership has given, and maybe you even believe they're being sincere. The similarly is that in both cases you have to truly believe that the government knows better than its citizens about what they should be allowed to access through the internet.
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The government doesn't know any better than the citizens do: both have mandatory easy-to-use computing forced into their lives, often against their strongest protestations. Awareness of just how it is that that the market and institutional cooperation have corralled everyone into a technocratic guilded cage of proprietary and server-side software, and what a free citi
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That's the best joke Slashdot can offer for this humor-rich target?
But on the Musk topic, he's just a lucky lottery winner who invested cleverly. The losers are always far more abundant and their losses are always larger than the winner's winnings. That's how lotteries work. As the joke goes, "Someone has to win", but the mistake is associating any form of "moral goodness" to the winners.
Now if there was a just gawd interfering with the lotteries to make sure the good people win things would be different, b
Re:As an American (Score:5, Interesting)
Musk is known for consistency. Turkieye requested Twitter block certain opposition parties - left wing parties. Hence why Musk obliged
Musk didn't want to do it in Brazil because those were right wing accounts and Musk doesn't want left wing woke to influence Twitter.
Musk is being very clear - he's not going to do anything that might hurt anyone on the right because "free speech". But he's clearly wanting to block same to anyone on the left.
Hence all the lawsuits he's initiated against organizations like Media Matters and such. He's trying to discount how much crap there is on Twitter because he's realizing it's bad for business, and thus needs to bury it because he refuses to give in to advertisers.
Re:As an American -wah? (Score:2)
If Zuck can do it why can't Musk?
Hell even the MSM is censoring the news both on the left and the right. Pick a network -any- network.
There is no more Free Speech.
Re: As an American -wah? (Score:2)
In feel like you have confused the right to say something with the right to have that something amplified by a 3rd party. Iâ(TM)m personally fine with Facebook, x , or slashdot removing any content they like. That in no way stops my ability to say what i like.
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In feel like you have confused the right to say something with the right to have that something amplified by a 3rd party.
^^^^THIS
Mod parent up.
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Musk is known for consistency. Turkieye requested Twitter block certain opposition parties - left wing parties. Hence why Musk obliged
Musk didn't want to do it in Brazil because those were right wing accounts and Musk doesn't want left wing woke to influence Twitter.
Musk is being very clear - he's not going to do anything that might hurt anyone on the right because "free speech". But he's clearly wanting to block same to anyone on the left.
Hence all the lawsuits he's initiated against organizations like Media Matters and such. He's trying to discount how much crap there is on Twitter because he's realizing it's bad for business, and thus needs to bury it because he refuses to give in to advertisers.
I'm sure he would be more agreeable if Brazil was a government by and for high status males [x.com].
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It has everything to do with what was posted on TT.
It has been voiced in the open that TT was causing public opinion to sway against Bibi's extremist right wing government for the genocide it is carrying out in Gaza, and how banning TT would shutdown t
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They also claimed that TikTok is harmful to Americans because it spreads "propaganda", e.g. anti-landlord, anti-capitalist, pro-union stuff. So it very much is about the content.
TikTok did offer to spin it off into an American company. That didn't appease the politicians.
Re:As an American (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with free speech absolutism in the age of a global internet is that it instantaneously amplifies both disinformation by bad actors and misinformation by ignorant people, speech that in an earlier age would have been slowed down, dampened and filtered by educated fact-checking ethical journalists. The idea of a global internet of high-quality information was indeed nice in an earlier age where it was restricted to academia, the military, and tech companies, but in hindsight hopelessly naive in the face of the collective stupidity of the majority of the human race.
I do hope that Bluesky might be a crack in the network effect that may finally break down the hegemony of X and Meta.
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True, but Community Notes has been working pretty well in the fight against mis/disinformation, imo. The ability for a volunteer group to quickly assemble an explanation and set of source links that directly rebut the offending tweet's content has been pretty powerful. Then it's up to the reader "to decide". That would have been unthinkable under Twitter's old regime of dealing with the problem exclusively through employees' banhammers+censorship.
Doesn't mean that community notes couldn't devolve into po
Re: As an American (Score:2, Insightful)
Truth is not created by consensus, which makes Community Notes completely useless.
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Community Notes isn't supposed to be the arbiter of truth, it's supposed to add context and additional sources to claims. The reader can then use those resources to make an informed judgement.
Re: As an American (Score:2)
Yeah that's incredibly disingenuous. You know well that it's used to create a truth by having the same group of people who are *allowed* to add a note or *vote* on them lift the ones that agree with them, and downvote the ones that don't, regardless of whether the actual note is well sourced, or whether the sources are garbage or not.
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That's neither more nor less transparent than the algorithm bringing the contested tweets to your attention in the first place. You don't get to curate any of this. It's all pumped towards you, and it's up to each of us to decide whether we're going to continue sucking on any particular firehose (shithose) for the odd bit we find nutritious along the way. Personally, I gave up on X a while back and have been happier for it.
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The idea that a government will ban speech and not use it for its own agenda is even more naive. Miss information has been around probably since people could communicate, mainly propagated by governments and large organizations. There will always be groups of people that have been fooled the difference now is they are more visible. The reason its made out to be such a problem now, is the people in power have lost the ability to control the lies and they want that power back, the way they are doing it is mak
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```
misinformation by ignorant people, speech that in an earlier age would have been slowed down, dampened and filtered by educated fact-checking ethical journalists
```
Were you around when Judith Miller and Jonah Goldberg ran the CIA op at the NYT to sell the lie that Iraq had WMD's launching a multi-decades war that killed millions and cost trillions? (Goldberg has been rewarded as Editor in Chief of The Atlantic - NATO's magazine).
Or when Mockingbird Media covered up thr millions of deaths in Vietnam befor
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Oh please.... Dan Rather didn't forge shit. He fell for a hoax. He was not the first journalist to do so, he wasn't the last, and more will be fooled in the future. It was a professional, not personal or moral, failure; and a minor one at that. You may not remember the era, but I do. Hoaxing and pranking journalists... particularly if you could get yourself on the air while doing so... was a very popular past time of the fandoms of a number of '90s-era radio talk shows. And there was no restraint, not
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The idea of a global internet was a nice one while it lasted.
It wasn't an idea, it was a delusion.
Re: As an American (Score:2)
The countdown to enshittification has begun (Score:1)
Explosive growth + greedy people = explosive diarrhea
And yes, I know Bluesky a public benefit corporation. But it's still a for-profit. This one might resist the enshittification a tad longer, but it'll get there eventually. They all do. The lure of profit is too great.
Re:The countdown to enshittification has begun (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: You know where you're posting, right? (Score:2)
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Nothing of value to the user
Lol, so you think people are being forced to use them?
Re: The countdown to enshittification has begun (Score:2)
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I guess you're fortunate not to have adicts in your family. So no, it is absolutely not the same thing....not even close.
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Now I know you're full of shit.
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In many cases. Like having a LinkedIn profile is popular with sleazy management types, having various social media accounts is a mandatory business practice for anyone trying to promote their business.
You think mostly-left Hollywood wants to be on Twitter under fascist-wannabe Musk? But pretty much any actor you've heard of, and anyone who wants to be an actor you've heard of, has a Twitter feed they keep posting with. It's the current best social media visibility space.
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OK, so follow your logic and ask yourself why these people feel the need to be on social media. You're so close.
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And you're missing the point.
For some it's a business requirement. The fact that requirement arises from obsessed people who should just disconnect is irrelevant.
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Annnd you lost it. You had it right there and you still lost it.
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Twitter used to be decent. In particular it did allow people to get much closer to politicians and understand them a lot better. Sure, many had teams running their accounts, but many more posted themselves and could be interacted with.
The main issue was the lack of safety tools to make it a pleasant experience, and the fact that it was too easy for Russia to create bots and spread misinformation. Blue Sky seems to have fixed the former, and is probably too small for the latter to be an issue yet.
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I used to enjoy Twitter for other reasons, too:
- Quite a lot of funny tweets
- Every obscure interest was out there and discussed, from Szechuan cookery to bouldering and well beyond
- You got fast insight into breaking stories (Grenfell tower sticks in my mind, no doubt prompted by today's publication of the report)
- You could get really deep insight into subjects from experts (Trent Telenko and tyres, for example)
But the cesspitness got too much in the end
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... says the guy posting content on the Internet
Shakeup (Score:2)
I get the feeling most users of big tech/big social media have a great disdain for the particular companies and services they are using. Network effect keeps them locked-in, but when your whole whole "network" gets pushed off at once, suddenly switching becomes possible. Change becomes possible.
The question is how to keep it eventually from coalescing back into the same crap somewhere else.
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You hit the nail on the head.
Big tech / corporations etc will get popular with, "The other guys did WHAT? That's horrible, in the name of profit? We wouldn't do that." Then every switches over to them and then go, "Excellent, now it's our turn to do the same to make a lot of money..muahahahaha."
That pretty much sums it up. Most people don't have a problem with what's being done, they're just upset they're not the ones doing it.
Totalitarian regimes block the internet (Score:2, Insightful)
Because they don't want dangerous ideas from the outside getting in and they don't want an opposition movement to be able to organize inside the walls.
It is generally a sign of weakness. A healthy society can dismiss bad ideas by
1) having a well-educated population capable of making good judgments without censors making choices for them
2) a functioning set of private and public institutions which provide legitimate and fair pathways to some level of material success, thereby robbing the would-be revolutiona
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that is why trump have so much support, all he says is totally true... ohh wait, most of it is false?! but them why people keep following him and vote in him?!
>they also have the class structure they inherited from the Portuguese Empire, a permanent underclass, and a coup every thirty or forty
what a racist comment, you clearly don't understand Portugal, Brazil, history, sociology and also fail in math.
Let me ask you something, are USA Native people and USA black people all rich? is there people in the U
Das ist Good! (Score:2)
It's a right-wing blitzkrieg! Bluesky is being flooded with Brazilian Nazis!
Remember the Maine!? (Score:2)
The idea that newspapers were once providers of clear unbiased information is complete BS. The Hearst papers fomented a war with Spain by falsely claiming Spain had blown up our the Maine, a US ship, in Cuba. There were scandal sheets in colonial times where the publishers just made stuff up. During most of the 20th century many/most cities had different papers with different target audiences and an overt editorial bias that those audiences wanted. Hearst was just one example.
The government has been tryin
if they are losing users..... (Score:1)
Maybe they can get that outfit that was responsible for "tidying up" MySpace to help them out? I believe they are in Canada. Can someone confirm that...?
This will be an easy win for Musk (Score:2)
You can bet that the number of new VPN users by those who want to stay on X is dwarfing the number of new Bluesky users. In an contest between one old lint head tyrant and the Internet as a whole, Moraes is going down hard.
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that is what Elon hopes... but then, X app is now probably now blocked in apple and android in Brazil and most people aren't tech enough to install and use a vpn... on the other hand, people they know are starting to use bluesky, so why not use it.
Finally, many Brazilian also didn't like the Elon reaction, instead of fight or obey, he simply joked with the country justice, hurting the national pride. Only time will tell how many people are in each side
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The problem with using Bluesky as an alternative to X is that if the accounts that the ruling class want banned move to Bluesky, it too will be banned. Unlike de Moraes, the users of X understand this and have far more technical expertise than he does. They will use the new firewall-resistant VPNs that are now being heavily advertised worldwide, as direct computer downloads and app sideloads that avoid any ban imposed on company app stores (now required to be available on Apple too by EU regulators!) Furthe
Re: This will be an easy win for Musk (Score:1)
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I doubt there are a lot of Brazilians X users like you describe. The public they can reach will certainly be smaller than before.
If that were the case, then why the giant Amazonian bumblebee up de Maraes' butt over their posts?
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Bluesky could follow the brazilian court order instead of ignoring them, that way it will not be banned
> app sideloads that avoid any ban imposed on company app stores (now required to be available on Apple too by EU regulators!)
Apple already said it will only allow that in EU, so each country will have to create similar laws if they want that feature, you can't trust apple to break their own walled garden
>Furthermore, Musk has now made Starlink, which cannot be firewalled off, available to Brazilians
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first, the equipment is still expensive, specially for poorer countries, so even if the service could be free, most people would not have money for buying the equipment to do any difference.
Yes, latest news, after my original post, is that Skylink has given in on carrying X because of Brazil's threat to seize its large-scale urban download stations in country, designed for business users. That means that to access X through Skylink, individual users will run VPNs as on other providers. The newer implementations of this protocol are not detectable by authorities. Because low-bandwidth individual accounts can access Skylink using small, easily-concealed rooftop antennas, it will not be feasible
Mastodon (Score:1)
Whether, at some point in the future, BlueSky or some other anti-social media platform replaces Xitter only time will tell.
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Huh, looks like Mastodon still exists! I am glad that I could fact check that for you.
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That's because, as much as Mastodon was advertised as an equivalent service, but it isn't. It's a complex federation of servers with hard limits on sign-ups and a maximum user count. This means that you and your friends can sign up at the same time and not be able to get on the same server. Then, all of you face different rules, restrictions, and trying to form a group communication between all of you is a veritable nightmare. It's no wonder they switched back! Now, Bluesky may be smaller and not have
Missing Context (Score:3, Informative)
Just to bring everyone up-to-speed on what is happening
* X received secret orders [x.com] from Brazilian Supreme Judge Alexandre de Moraes which gave them 2 hours to block various accounts including the Brazilian Senator Marcos Ribeiro do Val. No explanation or justification was given.
* X contested the order
* Judge Moraes threatened to take action against their legal representative
* The legal representative quit and X refused to appoint another
* Moraes ordered X to be shutdown, for any person who accesses it within Brazil to face a R50k / day fine (for context, more than the average Brazilian makes per year), and for the assets of the separate company Starlink to be seized (ostensibly because Musk is 40% shareholder)
Initially, Moraes also ordered Apple and Google to remove all VPN apps from their app stores.
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So Bluesky is the next to be banned (Score:2)
Unless they chooses to comply, I guess.
Standards (Score:2)