Bluesky finds that growing up comes with growing pains – and bots

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Bluesky has seen its user base rise since the US presidential election, boosted by people seeking refuge in Elon Musk’s X, which they see as increasingly right-leaning if its owner supports President-elect Donald Trump, or otherwise. Meta’s Threads and their algorithms.

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The platform grew out of the company then known as Twitter, inspired by former CEO Jack Dorsey. Its approach to alienating people on social media was ultimately intended to replace Twitter’s core mechanics. That will not happen now that the two companies are separate. But Bluesky’s growth trajectory — with its user base more than doubling since October — could make it tough competition for other social media platforms.

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But with growing up comes growing pains. It’s not just human users who have been flocking to Bluesky but also bots, including those designed to create factionalism or direct users to empty websites.

The fast-growing user base – now over 25 million – is the biggest test yet for the young platform that has dubbed itself one of the social media platforms without the problems plaguing its competitors. According to research firm Similarweb, Bluesky added 7.6 million active app users on iOS and Android in November, a 295.4% increase from October. It also saw 56.2 million desktop and mobile visits, during the same period, up 189% from October.

Outside of the US election, Bluesky regained momentum when X was temporarily banned in Brazil.

“They realized this, they’ve crossed the line where it’s now acceptable for people to flood the forum with spam,” said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and a member of Issue One’s Council. of Responsible Social Media. “But they don’t have money, they don’t have a team established for a big stage, so they have to do everything very quickly.”

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To manage the growth of its young staff, Bluesky started as an invitation-only venue until it opened to the public in February. That period gave the site time to build moderation tools and other unique features to attract new users, such as “starter packs” that provide a list of curated feeds by topic. Meta recently announced that it is testing a similar feature.

Compared to big players like platforms Meta or iX, Bluesky has a “very different” value system, said Claire Wardle, a professor at Cornell University and a disinformation expert. This includes giving users more control over their experience.

“The first generation of social media connected the world, but it ended up concentrating power in the hands of a few companies and their leaders,” Bluesky said on his blog in March. “Our online experience doesn’t have to depend on billions of people making decisions about what we see. On an open social network like Bluesky, you can create your own experience. “

Because of this attitude, Bluesky has achieved a less than scrappy status that has attracted users who are tired of the big players.

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“People had this idea that it was going to be a different kind of social media,” Wardle said. “But the truth is, if you get a lot of people in a place and there’s a lot of eyeballs, then it’s in other people’s interests to use bots to create, you know, information that fits their point of view.”

A small amount of data has emerged to help measure the rise of fake accounts, artificial intelligence networks and other potentially harmful content on Bluesky. But in recent weeks, users have begun to report a large number of AI bots following them, posting written articles or making divisive opinions that seem to be automatic in the responses.

Lion Cassens, a Bluesky user and doctoral candidate in the Netherlands, discovered such a network by accident – a collection of German-language accounts with similar bios and AI-generated profile pictures that posted responses to three German newspapers.

“I saw strange responses under the German newspaper ‘Die Ziet,'” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “I’m very confident in the way Bluesky scales, especially compared to Twitter since the layoff and because of Musk’s strong stance on freedom of speech. But AI bots are a big challenge, as they will only improve. I hope social networks can keep up with that.”

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Cassens said the bots’ messages have been innocent so far, but he worries about how they could be revised in the future to mislead.

There are also signs that outside narratives of disinformation have reached Bluesky. The disinformation research group Alethea identified a low-traction post sharing a false claim about ABC News that had circulated on Russian Telegram channels.

Copycat accounts are another challenge. In late November, Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech, found that of the 100 most followed names on Bluesky, 44% had at least one duplicate account pretending to be them. Two weeks later, Mantzarlis said Bluesky had removed about two-thirds of the duplicate accounts it had initially found _ a sign that the site is aware of the issue and is working to fix it.

Bluesky posted earlier this month that it is doubling its rating team to keep up with its growing user base. The company also announced that it had introduced a new impersonation detection system and was working to update its Community Guidelines to provide more detail on what is allowed. Due to the way the site is designed, users also have the option to sign up for third-party “Labels” that issue content ratings by tagging accounts with alerts and context.

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The company did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

Although its challenges have not reached the level other platforms face, Bluesky is “at a crossroads,” said Edward Perez, a board member of the nonprofit OSET Institute, who previously led Twitter’s public integrity team.

“Whether BlueSky likes it or not, it’s being dragged into the real world,” Perez said, noting that it needs to prioritize threats and work to mitigate them if it hopes to continue growing.

That said, disinformation and bots won’t be Bluesky’s only challenges in the coming months and years. As a text-based social network, its entire premise is unpopular with younger generations. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that only 17% of American teenagers used X, for example, down from 23% in 2022. For teenagers and young adults, TikTok, Instagram and other platforms that focus on viewing are the places to be.

The political division is also against Bluesky which has reached the size of TikTok, Instagram or iX.

“Bluesky isn’t trying to be all things to all people,” Wardle said, adding that, for the most part, the days of Facebook or Instagram “trying to keep everyone happy” are over. Social networks are increasingly divided along political lines and when they are not – see Meta forums – the companies behind them work hard to de-emphasize political content and news.

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