Brazilian users flock to Bluesky after Elon Musk’s X banned

Elon Musk’s X is still banned in Brazil. 

In addition, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has said that any user who attempts to access the former Twitter via VPN faces thousands of dollars per day in fines.

So, Brazilian posters need a new place to, well, post. And it appears many Brazilian X users have found a new online social media platform in the form of X competitor Bluesky.

Last week, just 5 days after Brazil banned Musk’s X in the country for failing to appoint a legal representative, Bluesky announced that it had 2.6 million new users join the platform over the previous few days alone.

Bluesky shared that 85 percent of those millions of new user signups were Brazilian.

On Friday, Bluesky announced they hit 3 million new users that morning.

That brings Bluesky’s total user base to 9 million, with 50 percent of those users joining the platform just in the past week.

Bluesky’s user base grows after Brazil’s X ban

Bluesky is an X rival that received a $13 million investment from then-Twitter before Elon Musk acquired the company. However, Bluesky is much smaller than X and its main competitor, the Meta-owned Threads. 

But, even without massive backing from a company that owns both Facebook and Instagram, Bluesky has stayed competitive and is often viewed as the third most popular micro-blogging platform behind X and Threads. Bluesky has become the main platform for certain niches of users like artists and more progressive users who were turned off by Musk’s right-wing politics.

Then an invite-only platform, Bluesky amassed 2 million users by November 2023 as some social media users fled X due to Musk’s leadership. Bluesky opened to the public and dropped the invite requirement in February of this year.

In May, Bluesky shared that it was approaching 6 million users — having appeared to hit that number in July. 

It took roughly 8 months for Bluesky to gain 4 million new users, which took them from 2 million users to 6 million. Thanks to Elon Musk and the company’s feud with Moraes, Bluesky was able to add 3 million new users in just one week.

So, what’s next for Bluesky? In its post sharing its new 9 million user base numbers, Bluesky promised that a long-request feature – video uploads – would soon be coming to the platform.

Plus, it seems like there’s no end in sight regarding Musk’s feud with Brazil, so it’s likely that Bluesky will continue to benefit from X’s ban in the country.