The social media app Bluesky wasn’t born out of the storm clouds surrounding Elon Musk‘s Twitter-turned-X, but its growth in popularity is a direct response to a perceived shift to the right for users who prefer to “Tweet.”
Bluesky is a microblogging platform that acts, looks, and operates like X. It began as a research program inside Twitter’s original operations in 2019 before becoming fully established on its own in 2021. A pet project of original Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey, the Bluesky of today is the Twitter of yesterday — clean, simple, stripped down, demonetized, and not owned by President Donald Trump‘s trusted adviser.
That last attribute makes Bluesky attractive to progressive social media users who believe X lurched to the right after Musk purchased it and stripped away many of its content filters. Now, Bluesky has grown in monthly users, expanding from about a million on its launch to just less than 8 million on Election Day 2024 to about 27 million as of March 2025 (according to the site statistic aggregator Backlinko.com).
In short, the more powerful Trump and Musk become, the more popular Bluesky seems to those on the Left worldwide who oppose the current administration.
Requests for comment from representatives of Bluesky and X did not draw a response, but professionals who study the social media landscape for a living view an upstart social media network’s political growth as an organic phenomenon.
Andrew Selepak, Ph.D., is the Social Media Program coordinator in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. He reminded the media world that Twitter, like Bluesky, was not originally conceived as a political platform.
“If you find the original statements by Jack Dorsey from when Twitter was first being founded, he said it was really about bringing people together in an online community and not really a platform meant for profit or politics,” Selepak said. “As one of the people behind the creation of Bluesky, it’s clear Dorsey wants it to be something closer to what I think he got into social media for in the first place.”
As if presenting a physics experiment explaining actions versus equal and opposite reactions, Selepak believes Musk’s changing X into more of a “wild west political model” drove progressive users to Bluesky for Dorsey’s idea of user freedom, driving the younger app beyond potential rivals such as Mastodon or Threads.
“(Bluesky) is becoming a community for the people who are abandoning X over principle or politics,” Selepak added. “But, even in its brief history, Bluesky originally attracted a lot more people who were on the progressive side — artists, writers, or activists looking for a niche platform the way conservatives looked to Donald Trump’s Truth Social. Once, the louder critics of Musk made a point of announcing they would leave X for Bluesky, which attracted a lot of people who have similar views of Musk.”
Nick Mattar, Mike Ilitch School of Business faculty member at Wayne State University, focuses on the 21st-century social media frontier. He compared the emerging divide between X and Bluesky users to the 20th-century development of cable news. With the political Right locked into Fox News and the Left tuning into CNN or MSNBC, consumers can consume news at a tribal level, no longer needing to encounter opposing views.
“We’re seeing social media becoming an echo chamber where people are seeking out views that are more similar to their own,” Mattar said. “You still have people who occasionally look at the platforms that don’t align with their own opinions, but that’s more of the exception than the rule.”
While Bluesky’s explosive growth from November 2024 to the present day can be attributed to the resistance movement against Trump’s presidency, Mattar attributed the smooth transition for many users to the almost identical interface between X and Bluesky.
However, Bluesky generally lacks the wit, snark, and clever retorts found on Twitter in its heyday. Bluesky users such as academics, journalists, Democratic Party operatives, and others are now almost largely on the political Left, meaning their posts often come off as humorless scolds.
“As Twitter grew into X and monetized into something some people considered more trashy, there was still an audience out there that was looking for that original, more wholesome version of Twitter that was great for news and for people sharing their thoughts. Bluesky was an easy transition for users because it looked and felt like the original concept of Twitter.”
Germany Kent is an award-winning journalist and social media expert. She commended the minds behind Bluesky for becoming a social media force in a short amount of time and even predicted Bluesky would overtake X if Musk’s controversial politics continued to generate resistance.
“Musk recently had to face the music that the future of X under his name was headed for disaster, hence the reason why he just sold X to another of his companies, xAI,” Kent said. “People are growing increasingly distrusting of Musk. We are seeing the same sort of disconnect with X as we see with consumers over Musk’s Tesla vehicles.”
Kent pointed out that Musk damaged the X brand before deepening his connection to Trump by cheapening the meaning of the once-coveted Twitter blue checkmark (a sign of a confirmed, more legitimate, and monetized user).
“When Musk made the blue checkmark available for purchase, it significantly damaged how influencers felt about X almost immediately,” she said. “The only qualification to receive a blue checkmark now is that your account is subscribed to X Premium. It’s just a case of, ‘We’ll take your money,’ and it speaks loudly that it is all about revenue. For now, Bluesky remains free for all users. I believe it was very smart of them to move away from the exclusive invite-only model and open the social media platform up to the public so anyone can join. Bluesky is fun. It’s no pressure.”
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Though many still see Bluesky as a progressive alternative to X as Musk has continued his Department of Government Efficiency activities at Trump’s side, Mattar believes Bluesky is more of an agnostic platform for users looking to avoid the massive machine that is X. He wondered what those agnostics might come to believe when Bluesky begins to monetize its channels.
“I’ll be interested to see how new entrepreneurs might look to Bluesky as a platform to establish their brands,” he said. “At some point, to use Bluesky to monetize and push their work, users might begin to see it as less authentic. We’ll see where (Bluesky) users go then.”
John Scott Lewinski, MFA, is a writer based in Milwaukee.
