Blue Sky’s Demise: Echo Chamber Fails as Users Flee (Again)
We previously observed a mass migration of users, primarily those identified as “leftoids,” who ran to Blue Sky following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now known as X. At the time, they confidently declared that X was “totally over” and that Blue Sky was the future of social media. We cautioned that disagreement and engagement are key to user retention on platforms like X, and that fleeing for a “safe space” might not work in the long run.
Despite the media’s consistent efforts to promote Blue Sky as a major platform, with some articles even suggesting it would take over the entire social internet, data we’ve reviewed suggests a different reality. The app appears to be dying at a rate that could render it completely irrelevant, perhaps by Halloween if the trend continues.
While Blue Sky reported surpassing 25 million users a few months ago and now claims around 34.6 million users, a closer look at engagement tells a different story. X, the platform Blue Sky was supposedly replacing, still boasts around 586 million active users, making it more than 20 times more popular. More critically, we looked at daily unique posters on Blue Sky. Even at its peak in December, Blue Sky saw only about 1.5 million daily posts. Based on their claimed 34.5 million users, this meant only about 1 in 20 users were posting once a day at the peak.
Since the post-election period in 2025, we’ve seen a dramatic decline in unique daily posters. From a peak of 1.5 million, the numbers dropped to around 900,000 by April and plummeted to about 750,000 closer to May. This represents a loss of nearly 50% of daily unique posters, even as they claim to have nearly doubled their total or active users. This discrepancy suggests that either Blue Sky is exaggerating its active user numbers, or the app is indeed completely dying. It’s possible the users are bots or simply creating placeholder accounts.
Adding to the platform’s issues, we experienced firsthand the restrictive nature of Blue Sky. We made an account and simply said hello, only to be banned without breaking a single term of service. We know thousands of others have faced similar experiences. While Blue Sky was intended as a “safe haven” or refuge for those fleeing X and even Threads, it seems to have become another echo chamber.
Furthermore, recent reports indicate that Blue Sky has bowed to government censorship requests. At the request of Turkish authorities, Blue Sky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey, blocking 59 accounts entirely based on “protecting national security and public order” and making posts from 13 others invisible. This action raises significant questions within the community about whether Blue Sky is truly as open and decentralized as it claims, or if it’s “just like Twitter after all”. Given that many Turkish users migrated from X to Blue Sky specifically to escape government censorship, this is a major blow to the platform’s credibility. While Blue Sky’s technical structure reportedly makes bypassing these blocks easier than on X, we believe most users won’t bother.
Ultimately, we believe people don’t want an echo chamber; disagreement is a core part of engagement on social platforms. Platforms where you can speak freely are crucial. Looking at popular Blue Sky accounts, even those with hundreds of thousands of followers, show remarkably low engagement, with posts receiving only dozens of likes. This lack of interaction reinforces our conclusion: the app is dead, completely dead. We believe anyone with a brain could have seen this outcome.
