Anamika Dey, editor
Brief news
- The prohibition of Elon Musk’s social media platform X in Brazil has led to an increase in popularity for its competitor, Bluesky, as users seek alternative platforms.
- Bluesky reported attracting two million new users in a week, but experienced some issues and outages due to the surge in traffic.
- X’s ban in Brazil has resulted in increased traffic for the platform, and the judge has imposed penalties on individuals using VPNs to access it.
Detailed news
The recent prohibition of Elon Musk’s social media platform X in Brazil has raised the visibility of its smaller competitor, Bluesky, as individuals seek alternative platforms to express their opinions.
In a post, Bluesky revealed that it had attracted two million new users in a week. However, the app appeared to be encountering some issues on Wednesday, with multiple users reporting an outage.
Bluesky developer Paul Frazee stated in a post that “there will almost certainly be some outages and performance issues.” He also stated, “We have never seen traffic like this.” Please join us!
The company also announced on Saturday that users from Brazil were achieving new activity records.
After a Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered a nationwide suspension of the X platform on Friday, the platform’s traffic is reported to have increased. On Monday, the ruling was upheld by a Supreme Court panel.
X had previously declared that it would not follow judicial orders in Brazil regarding its content moderation policies and a request to appoint a new legal representative in the country, which predated the ban.
According to local media, the judge, Alexandre de Moraes, has also imposed daily penalties on individuals or businesses in Brazil that employ virtual private networks (VPNs) or other methods to access X during its prohibition.
X is believed to have a user base of more than 22 million in Brazil.
As of Wednesday, Bluesky was the most popular free app in Brazil’s iOS App Store, with Threads, an X-alternative developed by Meta Platforms, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, following in that order.
On Wednesday, the official Threads account announced, “We are so back,” without offering any additional information.
Competition for market share
Bluesky, which was initially announced in 2019 as an initiative to develop a decentralized, open social protocol, was endorsed by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. After Musk acquired the company, Twitter was rebranded as X. A corporation known as Bluesky was established as an independent entity in 2021. Dorsey severed his affiliation with the platform earlier this year.
X has been facing competition from Bluesky, Threads, and the open-source, decentralized network Mastodon in an effort to unseat it as the premier microblogging platform.
These organizations have observed an increase in their user base amid the controversy surrounding Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022 and his subsequent modifications to the platform.
Musk had been making controversial statements regarding nationwide rioting in the United Kingdom, and Bluesky’s sign-ups from the country had reportedly increased last month.
Nevertheless, none of the alternatives have emerged as a credible challenge to X, despite reports of advertisers and some users departing X.
According to a post on Threads by Instagram chief Adam Mosseri in August, Threads appears to be the most comparable, with over 200 million monthly active users.
Musk announced in a post in May that X had amassed 600 million monthly active users and approximately 300 million daily active users.
Source : CNBC News
