Bluesky's Active User Base Shrinks 52% Over 18 Months, But Its Protocol is Spreading (techcrunch.com)
- Reference: 0184994612
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/08/16/0326249/blueskys-active-user-base-shrinks-52-over-18-months-but-its-protocol-is-spreading
- Source link: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/11/blueskys-active-user-base-is-shrinking-as-its-focus-expands-beyond-the-app/
> According to data from digital intelligence provider Similarweb, Bluesky's mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year-over-year. In addition, mobile daily active users continued to decline, falling 25.6% year-over-year in July to around 3 million... Bluesky's app has lost more than half its monthly active users from its late-2024 high... Its quarterly average was around 22.1 million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of 2024, Similarweb's data indicates, and it declined to 10.7 million in the second quarter of 2026. That's a decline of around 52%.
>
> While Bluesky's numbers are down, those who stuck around are committed. Its smaller community remains relatively active, with a stickiness rate (the ratio of daily to monthly active users) of roughly 29% in June, about the same as Threads.
>
> For [2]Bluesky's new CEO, Toni Schneider , these numbers may not be as concerning. The company is not entirely focused on making Bluesky (the app) succeed, but on making it possible for the underlying protocol (AT Proto) to power a growing number of social apps, services, and communities. That's something that is now taking place, as projects like BlackSky and Eurosky are growing, while some AT Proto apps [3]like the video-focused Skylight have found early traction, too. In addition, the company has launched new products, like the [4]AI-powered research tool Attie , and is now working on adding support for private data to Bluesky. The latter could generate new interest in Bluesky from a different type of user — those less interested in the public square, and more interested in private networking and communities.
But on Threads in July of 2026, daily active users were up 21.3% year-over-year to 147 million, the article points out, and website visits were up 112% year-over-year to 471.6 million. And Threads now appears to have roughly 66% more monthly active users than X.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/11/blueskys-active-user-base-is-shrinking-as-its-focus-expands-beyond-the-app/
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/10/blueskys-interim-ceo-toni-schneider-drops-the-interim/
[3] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/tiktok-alternative-skylight-soars-to-380k-users-after-tiktok-u-s-deal-finalized/
[4] https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/24/blueskys-ai-assistant-attie-expands-into-an-open-social-research-tool/
The circle jerk intensifies (Score:2, Informative)
Just like Truth Social and all the other politico-social monocultures, Bluesky's hardcore user base is chasing off anyone who steps out of line.
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Amen. Healthy adults seek cognitive discomfort, not reinforcement.
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Amen. I learn a lot when I have to defend my beliefs.
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"Healthy adults seek cognitive discomfort, not reinforcement"
I guess we found one of the Thanksgiving uncles
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Better than your aunt, who pretends to agree with you over the turkey and then goes home and tells everyone you're full of shit.
The fact that she's right doesn't make it any better.
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If you feel the need to force other people to listen to your views regardless of whether they want to hear from you or not, [1]you're the asshole [reddit.com].
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/
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To be clear: anyone can join Bluesky, regardless of their views. But if your posts are mainly, say, calling black people monkeys, calling trans people groomers, things of that nature, yeah, a lot of people are going to block you on sight. That's not "censorship", that's just people finding you to be an arse and having better things to do with their time online than be forced to listen to you. Everyone has a right to show anyone else the door; nobody has an obligation to face harassment.
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On the other hand if your posts are mainly [1]screaming death threats at Jews [vimeo.com] then you'll fit right in on bluesky. Especially if you can prove you've been spraypainting swastikas on synagogues or taking other "direct actions".
[1] https://vimeo.com/1101520751
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It's a fucking forum designed for people to post things, not your kitchen table.
Have you ever gone to a corner bar? Same freewheeling mix of opposing ideas happens there. Even the drunks mostly remain civil even so. I saw this five nights a week when I was a bartender.
Wait, you never leave you mom's basement so I picked a bad example.
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Both Truth Social and Bluesky have "community guidelines" that prohibit speech about violence, unlawful activity, and other things. There are some differences, but the point is that both platforms have rules about what you can and can't say.
However, Truth Social has a centralized enforcement structure run by the company, whereas Bluesky has a decentralized moderation structure administered by the individual users and third-party agents.
In short, users on Bluesky could be "dogpiled" and made to feel unwelcom
Re:The circle jerk intensifies (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile, [1]here's the reality of Bluesky user numbers [jazco.dev] (drag the range to the full range). Funny how everyone always wants to truncate the timeperiod for the "user base" to have a start date of that last big spike.
The simple fact is that with any site, most people who visit don't end up sticking around, and there's a dropoff rate. The persistance rate at Bluesky is actually unusually high **. The reason for the spikes is that Bluesky's users joined in waves; you can track each wave to specific events. Those two big spikes in new users were the US election date and the US inauguration date, respectively. You can find various other spikes related to for example various things that happened with Twitter.
** The typical [2]retention rate [mwm.ai] for a new "consumer-social" app is 40-50% for 1 day, 20-30% for 1 week, and 10-15% for 1 month. Compare that to the Bluesky data. Again: persistence has been very high; the new-user join pattern has just been extremely "spiky".
[1] https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
[2] https://mwm.ai/glossary/retention
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So ... according to the data ... the circle jerk intensified?
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That's not how any of this works.
What's actually happening is social media use has plummeted across the board. I don't know if I've seen anyone explain why yet but everybody's numbers are way way down.
In particular young people are giving up on social media. Which surprises me giving that urban sprawl and the high cost of cars kind of isolates them. Maybe there's so many people packed in single family homes now that's less of an issue in some ways. A buddy of mine used to talk about how in Vietnam y
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All of the countries doing kid-bans on social media are probably contributing.
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You Americans take everything to politics... not everything is related to politics and should not be linked to it in anyway... yet you are doing it all the time
Not Comparing Apples to Apples (Score:1)
BlueSky and Threads are not the same user base. Their users have different interests, are usually at different stages of life, and come from different backgrounds.
Simple examination of their own data shows this.
I am not sure what the businesspeople care about but it sounds like they've all bought into Elon Musk's Sauron-like "One App To Rule Them All."
When did folks start thinking it was an intelligent commentary to say that BlueSky doesn't have enough political naifs to qualify as a "place for politics onl
They are all garbage is the problem (Score:2)
X is now cesspool of alt-right toxic hate, intermixed with silicon valley AI tech bros, and politicians and clueless legacy media folks. Those are the only groups who still use it.
Meanwhile, Threads is just full of people who like to argue about random crap.
BlueSky is like X, but the opposite... it is alt-left toxic hate and mind-numbing social justice warriors who wont just chill out.
Most people who use social media, the 99%, don't want any of this. They just want to relax and chill and talk about fun thin
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Here's hoping that some ketamine junky of a Nazi forgets to or loses interest in renewing the Twitter domain name, someone snaps it up and relaunches OG Twitter allowing for a reset of all that is fucking horrible with the what Twitter has become.
Re: They are all garbage is the problem (Score:1)
Mastodon is fine. No algorithm. No rage bait.
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Mastodon COULD be fine, if it had better discovery systems, and anyone at all used it.
Re: They are all garbage is the problem (Score:1)
Easy for me to find lots of interesting things on Mastodon. I think, despite what people say, they love the rage bait on the bigger networks. Mastodon is just normal people discussing normal topics. Here is what is trending now, nothing to make your blood boil. Therefore âoeboring.â #SilentSunday 606 people talking #hochwasser 28 people talking #lhp3 26 people talking #Sunday 28 people talking #Caturday 599 people talking #Arsenal 12 people talking #Sonntag 12 people talking #LibreOffice 9 pe
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> Easy for me to find lots of interesting things on Mastodon. I think, despite what people say, they love the rage bait on the bigger networks. Mastodon is just normal people discussing normal topics.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who ever posts in the tag for a particular toy line. Either I guessed the wrong tag, or I'm the only person on fedi interested in that topic. Which is more likely?
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Depending on the instance any post you make gets lots of views on mastodon. Follows and likes are overrated while most have no use for followers other than to stroke their ego.
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Blue sky is full of hobbyists. They mostly keep to themselves. If you are seeing a bunch of left-wing politics over on Blue sky it's because that's what you went there for and the algorithm is serving it up to you.
Now that said once you get tired of that crap it is really hard to get it out of your feed on most platforms. Reddit in particular is basically useless once it gets a whiff of you being interested in politics. YouTube at least what you just start blocking things and you can eventually get me
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That's the icon for Twitter (now X.)
You're thinking of [1]this icon. [icon-icons.com]
[1] https://icon-icons.com/icon/xorg/104019
It's not resorting to addictive tactics (Score:2)
May be It's not resorting to all the addictive, headline grabbing tactics like zuck's enterprise, so people are not glued to it. Name and shame female students for starters...
Huh?!?! (Score:2)
And Threads now appears to have roughly 66% more monthly active users than X.
I've heard almost nothing about Threads recently. Certainly no indication they were more popular than Twitter.
Is their user count some sort of trick with how they interface with Instagram? Or is Twitter just turning into a ghost town without people realizing it?
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> Certainly no indication they were more popular than Twitter
Twitter died a long time ago. Elon Musk bought it and replaced it with X which is a far right website that "inherited" the user base Twitter had. The reason Threads is increasing is because nobody wants to be bombarded with messages about how they, or their friends, or just people who have done nothing wrong, are subhuman vermin who need to be exterminated.
X's user numbers are inflated. Bluesky is a fraud and BS's users are catching on to that.
Its a dead site... (Score:2)
I suspect I was shadowbanned on twitter, but I saw far more interaction on that before I left than on bluesky.
You get a flurry in a couple of weeks and then nothing. Nada.
Your friends don't see your posts.
Oh yeah, and then I got the spam. Seemed to be loads of that. Crypto crap.
I suspect twitter was in a state before Herr Pluggs got it, and all bluesky did was repeat them.
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I suspect I was shadowbanned on twitter, but I saw far more interaction on that before I left than on bluesky.
On [1]The Register [theregister.com] they keep your msgs in moderation for days so as no one will see them.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/
Bluesky and private data :o (Score:2)
In addition, the company has launched new products, like the AI-powered research tool Attie, and is now working on adding support for private data to Bluesky.
I suspect the spooks already have backdoor access to user msgs :o
Mobile Mobile Mobile, App App App (Score:1)
Maybe people are just using the website on the website's website? From where I'm looking at it, Bluesky's userbase seems to be pretty anti-stare-at-your-phone-forever. Not as if they don't do it, almost everybody's staring at the phone everywhere all the time, but there's a lot of talk about how bad that is for you. My favorite tech boundary to set is keeping certain activities at the desktop, and only using my phone for what I need to. Maybe other people are doing the same thing?
between AI and political spammers, social media is (Score:3)
Social media is essentially a long commercial ad now.
Oh No! (Score:4, Funny)
Anyway...
Everyone is saving their pennies so that they can buy a Truth Social subscription and get their stock tips firstest.
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Naa, stick with Nancy, her inside trader tips are FAR more reliable. ;-D
Re: Oh No! (Score:2, Informative)
Bluesky is just truth social in reverse: it's a place to rant about trump.
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So sick of you.
Re: Oh No! (Score:2)
Just like Dems who are all flagged as Communists. Stalin would be so proud of social media.
Re: Oh No! (Score:4, Insightful)
Echo chamber gonna echo.
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I am a Bluesky user. I'm honestly saving my pennies for when the economy tanks (... even more?) and I have to choose between food and shelter.
Bad financial model as a trick that never works (Score:2)
Deservedly Funny, and I think a good opening joke is always a fun FP, but I already want to get serious. I think "Why?" is the question.
Personal anecdote needed? I'm still using Bluesky, but never used it much. It would be amusing if there was a tool to track my personal Bluesky usage stats over time--but I don't think I care enough to click on such a link even if it already exists. I think the federated approach is a good idea, and Bluesky is nicer than Mastodon, but the Bluesky trend has been towards feep
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In direct response to your mostly off-topic joke, I think it just shows again what a lousy businessman the YOB is, even when he's breaking new ground in corruption. To actually make it relevant to this story, we'd have to figure out how to get the YOB to run the scam over on Bluesky, and that can't happen. Or at least it's beyond the bounds of my imagination. However here's my "criminal mindset" scheme to maximize the loot from your joke:
Sell off early access to EVERY official government announcement. The f