Trending site Bluesky violates social media rules, says EU

The European Commission on Monday said that the social network is violating European Union rules by failing to publicly report its regional user numbers. The EU’s Digital Services Act requires all online platforms that serve the EU to publicly report user totals twice a year. Social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, and Meta both report their totals online. Platforms with more than 45 million monthly users are classified as Very Large Online Platforms and are subject to more strict regulations by the EU. Bluesky last week said it had reached 20 million users globally. The commission has not reached out to Bluesky because it is not a large platform, spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters. Officials have instructed EU countries to search for traces of the company, he said.

Bluesky told Bloomberg News on Tuesday that it was consulting with a lawyer to meet the EU’s information disclosure rules.

What is Bluesky? Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey started Bluesky in 2019 and the two platforms formally separated in 2022. That year, tech billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk acquired Twitter, eventually renaming it X. Bluesky is open-source, allowing modification and redistribution of its source code. The social media platform allows users to post text, images, and videos similar to X.

Why has the platform gained popularity recently? Thousands of X users recently left the platform after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election and when Musk on Nov. 15 rolled out new terms of service. The terms allow the company to use users’ data to train artificial intelligence models and require any future legal action against the company to be brought in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Celebrities including Mark Hamill, Barbara Streisand, Mark Cuban, and The Guardian newspaper joined the exodus.

Some users who left X said their decision was fueled by Musk’s ties to Trump. Bluesky app usage has increased more than 500% in the United States since the election, according to data from Similarweb. Meanwhile, Meta’s Threads is testing an option to let users choose their own default feed—as a way to draw in more users.

Dig deeper: Read Bethel McGrew’s opinion piece about the negative reactions to Trump’s victory.