Bluesky gets a bit cloudy

• X alternative Bluesky now has 25 million users, doubling since September.

• One of its main draws is as a safe space from the toxicity of X.

• However, the reaction to Jesse Singal joining shows that it's not as safe as it says.

The social media platform formerly known as Twitter has not had a great year. By all metrics, the user count is way down. It's true overall, and it's definitely true for the coveted teenage demographic.

By far, the biggest beneficiary from X's downturn is Bluesky. Its user base has literally doubled since September, and now stands at a solid 25 million.

The pitch for Bluesky is basically that it's X, but without all of the toxicity, spam, and misinformation. As Bluesky's head of trust and safety puts it, "The whole point of Bluesky is for it to be safe and welcoming to all users." Basically, if X is the digital town square, Bluesky is the digital safe space.

This promise of safety has led many left-leaning people to leave the terrors of the now right-leaning X for the safe space. But, part of what makes a safe space a safe space is that not everyone is allowed in. Last week, Jesse Singal learned that the hard way.

For those who don't know, Jesse Singal is a political writer and journalist. He's actually a liberal, so you would think he fits right into Bluesky. Wrong. Because of his past writings on transgender youth, Singal quickly became public enemy #1 on Bluesky. And I mean literally public enemy #1 - he is by far the most blocked user on the platform and a petition to ban him has 25,000 signatures.

That's all well and good, but the attacks didn't end there. According to Singal, he faced repeated death threats and an attempted doxxing, to which users began calling on someone to go and hurt or kill him. However, Bluesky has done little to nothing to stop it.

Singal's conclusion is that left-wing or right-wing, humans are humans, and thus, every social media platform is bound to have problems. I tend to agree.

If you want to join Bluesky to mine the traffic goldmine, that makes a lot of sense and I'd recommend doing so. But, if you're looking for X without all of the toxicity, then you'll unfortunately have to keep looking.