On Friday, Brazil’s top court ordered the immediate suspension of X—formerly Twitter—in the country following a months-long feud with owner Elon Musk.
Now, rival platforms are benefiting.
Bluesky Sees Surge in Sign-Ups
Bluesky, which fully opened to the public in February 2023, is seeing massive surge in users, reportedly gained one million new users in just three days.
The decentralized social app started off as a project by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2019 when he was Twitter’s CEO.
It has since become an independent public benefit corporation, with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey leaving the board earlier this year.
On August 30, the decentralized social app celebrated, saying, “Brazil, you’re setting new all-time-highs for activity on Bluesky!”
This rapid growth has pushed Bluesky to the top of Brazil’s free iPhone app chart, surpassing Meta’s Threads.
Brazil vs Elon Musk’s X
Bluesky’s rapid growth comes amid a legal battle between X and Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
The court’s crackdown on alleged election disinformation led to demands that X block certain accounts. In defiance, Elon Musk, who owns X, shut down the company’s office in Brazil earlier this month, refusing to comply with the court orders.
De Moraes then gave X 24 hours to name a legal representative in the country or risk having its service suspended. X did not comply, and de Moraes followed through with his threat, banning X on Friday.
According to Bloomberg, users who try to circumvent the ban using a VPN face daily fines of 50,000 reais ($8,900).
Brazil’s X Users Migrate to Bluesky
Brazil has long been a major market for X, Fortune reports. With tens of millions of active users, the South American country has been one of X’s largest hubs outside of the US and Japan.
Ahead of the ban, many Brazilian celebrities, internet personalities, and politicians, including began preparing for the shutdown by sharing their handles on other social networks.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said goodbye to X with a list of alternate social media handles—Bluesky at the top.
Image credit: Jaap Arriens/Sipa USA/Alamy
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