Bluesky too opaque about user figures for Euro watchdogs
- Reference: 1732606206
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/11/26/bluesky_eu_regulation/
- Source link:
Twitter rival Bluesky has been flouting EU rules since February, according to European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier, and EU member states have been asked to look into the matter and enforce applicable compliance.
"Bluesky is not designated as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act, as they do not meet the quantitative threshold for designation (45 million monthly active users in the EU)," said Regnier in a statement to The Register . "It does therefore not fall under the direct supervision of the Commission."
[1]
The biz, founded in 2021, hasn't publicly said how many monthly active users it has in the EU, which is part of the issue.
[2]
[3]
It should not be long, however, before the upstart social network reaches 45 million on a global basis at least. Officially, Bluesky surpassed 13 million users in late October 2024, [4]the startup said , without defining what level of activity counts as a user.
But an [5]unofficial tally , calculated by software engineer Natalie Bridgers using [6]data from a Bluesky developer, suggests the number is closer to 22.5 million presently.
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SimilarWeb, a website analytics service, last week [8]reported , "In the US, Bluesky set a new high for mobile app daily active users on Saturday Nov. 16, 32.2 million."
The recent user surge at Bluesky has been [9]attributed in part to [10]flight from Elon Musk's X social media network in the wake of the US Presidential Election.
[11]Bluesky capitalizes on X woes with funding and user growth
[12]Study suggests X turned right just in time for election season
[13]Twitter spinout Bluesky ends invite-only phase and opens its doors to all comers
[14]Elon's latest X-periment: Blocked users can still stalk your public tweets
Mastodon, a decentralized, federated social network (which Bluesky [15]isn't really ), has [16]around 9 million users and around 920,000 daily active users. In May, Musk [17]claimed , "X has 600 million monthly active users, about half of which use the platform every day." X, a VLOP under the DSA, has [18]reported 115.1 million average monthly active users in the EU.
Adam Mosseri, who oversees Threads and Instagram for Meta, earlier this month [19]claimed Threads had reached 275 million monthly active users. Neither Meta's Threads nor Musk's X provide data that could be used to independently verify stated usage statistics.
Recently, Bluesky's user growth rate has been fluctuating between 3.4 and 4 users per second per Bridgers's stats. At 4 new users per second, it will take about 65 days to add another 22.5 million users and hit 45 million users worldwide. When Bluesky's EU monthly active user count might hit the DSA threshold of 45 million is anyone's guess.
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But before that happens, Bluesky is under pressure to meet the obligations it already faces under the DSA – posting an official count of users in the EU and identifying a legal representative so authorities have someone to hold accountable.
"Bluesky, like all online platforms in the EU, needs to comply with the general obligations of the Digital Services Act since February of this year," said Regnier.
"This includes the obligation to [21]report user numbers and appoint a legal representative in the EU. As this information is not publicly available on Bluesky’s website, the Commission has requested the national Digital Services Coordinators to gather additional information and enforce the DSA, as all of them can be considered as responsible national authority towards Bluesky."
The first step in the information-gathering process will be to identify a legal representative with whom to correspond. Officials are also keen for EU members to figure out whether and where the app maker has any actual offices within the union.
Bluesky did not respond to a request for comment. ®
PS: El Reg is on Bluesky – [22]follow us here !
Get our [23]Tech Resources
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[4] https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a
[5] https://bcounter.nat.vg/
[6] https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z0WqUnKFsntpXb-3spwHFwAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/bluesky-sustained-growth/
[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/style/bluesky-users-election.html
[10] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/11/14/x-social-media-bluesky-threads/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/28/bluesky_capitalizes_on_x_woes/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/20/x_marks_the_spot_for/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/06/bluesky_social_media_opens/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/x_block_changes/
[15] https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
[16] https://mastodon-analytics.com/
[17] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1793779530282443086
[18] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-designated-vlops-and-vloses#ecl-inpage-twitter
[19] https://www.threads.net/@mosseri/post/DB6zNlQSsJN?xmt=AQGzOBo-JlbZvb0-easrlJcfCpgs93qY-Wmfjt2uJqLFCw
[20] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z0WqUnKFsntpXb-3spwHFwAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[21] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/dsa-guidance-requirement-publish-user-numbers
[22] https://bsky.app/profile/theregister.com
[23] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I wonder how Twitter is counting users
What bot problem? All 32 "followers" I have on my Twitter account that never posts anything are real people. Yeah, and they are all hot women, just like their pictures, too!
Re: I wonder how Twitter is counting users
And they sending DMs telling me how desperate they are to meet a hot man.
Sorry, that's not something I can help with.
Re: I wonder how Twitter is counting users
Yes, and they probably also count you as a user if you read an article that has an embedded Tweet in it, even if you don't interact with it in any way.
Re: I wonder how Twitter is counting users
>I suppose so long as they are spreading the misinformation he wants to see spread
Ah the classic "misinformation" with no actual evidence of real misinformation. They mean an alternate point of view from the progressive/democrats point of view?
The lies of the Russian influence in 2016.
As opposed to moderating out real information like the actual true Hunter Biden laptop? Suppression of discussion of side effects of vaccines or C19's true origin?
Pure comedy. Left brain people speaking from their Ministry Of Truth.
Re: I wonder how Twitter is counting users
Just wait until E Musk buys MSNBC , then we can truly have a good laugh.
Hopefully compliance won't be an issue with the BlueSky team, though I'm sure they're having to fight a lot of fires at the moment..
Unfortunately, the EU does itself no favours when it talks about competition and safety, but then appears to put barriers in the way of new entrants, to the favour of large corporate interests that skirt their rules. It seems easier to bully the new guy than make the old fraud behave themselves.
@Andy 73
"Unfortunately, the EU does itself no favours when it talks about competition and safety, but then appears to put barriers in the way of new entrants, to the favour of large corporate interests that skirt their rules. It seems easier to bully the new guy than make the old fraud behave themselves."
This is one of the big problems with regulation (or bad regulation). It makes life harder for the new guy but the successful existing business with plenty of high paid lawyers and experience will beat government regulation every time. More regulation benefits the big guy by blocking challengers.
Re: @Andy 73
I know CJ is a controversial figure around here, but I'd be interested to know why he's received downvotes for his statement? What exactly is false or so objectionable about his comment?
"More regulation benefits the big guy by blocking challengers." - this is very often demonstrably true. Corporations like Amazon regard regulatory compliance as a cost of doing business that often amounts to a rounding error on their balance sheets, whereas a new company selling similar products may well not be able to afford a trained compliance officer and the necessary regulatory submission. The new GPSR rules, due to come into effect in December are causing a lot of concern for small tech and hobby electronics companies trying to sell into the bloc.
Lest we forget - BlueSky is run by an incredibly small team. Just 20 employees. Comparatively, Twitter employs an estimated 1,300 people.
Do they have an official EU presence? If not it's possible they aren't ready to expose themselves to EU regulations.
They have EU users so they are exposed to EU regulation.
They store data on eu citizens. Therefore, they are bound by eu regulations whether the have a company in the eu or not.
In theory. In practice how did that workout for Clearview. Extraterritorial laws tend to only work when you have access to actually enforce them. I'd imagine the EU know this and that's why they want a legal representative in the EU.
Clearview doesn't have customers in the EU: and now can't. Bluesky's EU users may not be paying for the service, but there's not much point offering them the service unless someone does. And in the absence of someone outside the EU with deep pockets funding it to make a gesture of political defiance that's most likely to be advertisers within the EU's jurisdiction.
As I understand it, their largest markets are Brazil, USA, and UK; none of which are in the EU. So they are probably a long way off breaching the EU threshold.
Their largest EU market is likely Ireland, but even if the entire population signed up, that wouldn't be enough to put them over the limit.
I wonder how Twitter is counting users
Do they count me as a "user" if I click on a link in an article that goes to x.com, even though I do not login (have only done so once in the past decade)
I find it very difficult to believe that 1 out of every 12 people on Earth is logging into Twitter once a month, and 1 of every 24 every day, which Musk appears to be claiming. Notice how he's not talking about the huge number of bots he used to, even though reports are the bot problem has become much worse under his "leadership", since he fired most of the people who knew how to deal with it. I suppose so long as they are spreading the misinformation he wants to see spread, and pump up his user numbers, he's happy to look the other way.