The creator of Twitter, Bluesky, is abandoned and left to smell like a tree

Is Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter, still involved in the Bluesky decentralized core network project? The answer is ” No “, as very mysteriously commented the contractor on May 4, 2024.

Bluesky is a platform launched in spring 2023, with the aim of offering a refuge to Twitter users annoyed by Elon Musk's X. Paid accounts to manipulate the algorithm, moderation almost disappeared, violent and sexual content highlighted, remuneration for disinformation… The billionaire, in just a few months, has amplified the ills of Twitter. Bluesky had its moment of glory at the end of 2023, thanks to a small, very active and supportive community, but the project seems to be in trouble.

Can Bluesky break out of his bubble?

As of May 2024, Bluesky is not dead. A few thousand users still use it actively, thanks to the communities they have created. A phenomenon that is all the more significant in the French-speaking sphere, for whom Threads, the alternative to Twitter created by Meta, arrived late. Americans and English are much more numerous on Threads than on Bluesky, while the anti-Twitter French use the decentralized social network. But beware of the bubble effect: in both cases, Twitter remains by far the most used platform (especially by those who read others' messages, but do not publish).

In November 2023, Bluesky was pleased to have passed 2 million registrations. A symbolic milestone, however tiny on an Internet scale. Nothing says that these 2 million people used Bluesky daily, when Threads and X claim several hundred million users every month. Even Mastodon, in terms of number of registrants, is significantly larger than Bluesky.

For further

Since this last communication, Bluesky has made a major change: the end of its invitation system. It has been possible to register on the platform whenever you want since February 2024, which would have added at least 1 million curious people to the application. In an interview with The Verge as of February 2024, the company claimed 1.6 million monthly users, without detailing the census methodology.

The whole promise of Bluesky lies in its decentralized nature, one of the dreams of Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter. This is also one of its major challenges, since Bluesky relies on a new technology called AT Protocol. The problem is that other decentralized platforms, like Mastodon and Threads, rely on the ActivityPub protocol. If no one joins AT Protocol, Bluesky is doomed to remain a bubble.

Jack Dorsey, I Love You Neither with Elon Musk

In a way, Bluesky was born from Twitter. The creator of the social network has been working on a decentralized platform since 2020, which ultimately gave rise to a separate company (Elon Musk, upon acquisition, opposed the idea). Jack Dorsey is convinced that a decentralized platform can solve the problems of social networks, with transparent algorithms and smarter moderations.

Why abandon Bluesky? Jack Dorsey doesn't say it, even though the social network's official account confirmed that he was looking for a new leader. Jack Dorsey still seems to advocate for decentralized networks, but not that of his former company. His link with Elon Musk is also strange, since he does not hesitate to criticize him and then to declare his admiration for him very regularly.

For Jack Dorsey, who unfollowed the entire Bluesky team (he only follows Edward Snowden, Stella Assange and Elon Musk) and deleted his Bluesky account, X seems to be the best platform for now. He currently uses it to comment on another of his passions: rap. Jack Dorsey's current priority is to defend Kendrick Lamar's superiority over Drake, rather than Bluesky's over X.