What is Bluesky? Why tens of millions of people are heading for a ‘decentralised’ social media platform
- Written by Jean Burgess, Professor and Associate Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, Queensland University of Technology
Mamun Sheikh/ShutterstockAfter Elon Musk bought Twitter (now rebranded X) in 2022, disaffected users began to seek alternatives. Alongside Meta’s Threads and the open source project Mastodon, Bluesky was one of several contenders.
Threads benefited from Meta’s existing user base but has failed to capture the popular imagination....





