Many Twitter users are unhappy with how Musk is running the platform and are looking for a better option. Bluesky is offering them a promising alternative. This new social media platform has a lot to offer and here are the details you need to know.

Originally started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Bluesky is a project to create a decentralised social media protocol that can support a variety of applications and platforms. The goal of Bluesky is to enable more innovation, diversity, and user control in the online social space, while also addressing some of the challenges and risks of centralised platforms, such as content moderation, privacy, and censorship.

Bluesky is not a single product or service, but rather a set of standards and protocols that can be implemented by different developers and communities. While the platform does have major goals, presently it serves as one of the best alternatives to Twitter because of how similar the two are, down to their user interfaces on mobile and web.

Who’s behind Bluesky?

Bluesky started as an idea from Jack Dorsey, who was Twitter’s CEO in 2019. He appointed Jay as the head of Bluesky, and Twitter funded Bluesky’s services to create an open social protocol for public conversation that Twitter could eventually join.

Bluesky became an independent company in 2021. In late 2022, Twitter decided to end the service agreement with it, and Bluesky agreed.

Screenshots on the Google Play Store show a vertically scrolling social media interface that’s nearly identical to Twitter with like, repost, and comment options under each post. The icons on the bottom toolbar also heavily resemble the ones you see on Twitter, so Twitter users should find the app very familiar.

Bluesky users can set their domain as their handle. “For example, a newsroom like NPR could set their handle to be @npr.org,” Bluesky’s blog notes. “Then, any journalists that NPR wants to verify could use subdomains to set their handles to be @name.npr.org. Brand accounts could set their handle to be their domain as well.”

Moderation is also handled differently with Bluesky using automated moderation. The platform is working on a community labelling system. “For example, an organization like the ACLU could create a “hate-speech” label, and services or users in the network could subscribe to their labels to flag, filter, mute, or ban content,” notes Bluesky’s blog.

Unlike Twitter, Bluesky is built on something it calls the AT Protocol, which is an open-source framework for building social apps. It “creates a standard format for user identity, follows, and data on social apps, allowing apps to interoperate and users to move across them freely.” What this means is that a user theoretically can move their account between other apps participating in the AT Protocol – something that isn’t possible on centralised apps like Twitter.

Bluesky is also working on a variety of algorithms that users can choose from according to their needs.

How to sign up?

Bluesky Social is still under development and is therefore only bringing a selected number of users on board for now. Its official blog reads that the platform reached 50k users in late April.

For now, all you can do is head to the Bluesky website, add your email address to the waiting list, and wait for an invite. The company says that it wants the network to grow “organically,” so most invites are currently given out through existing Bluesky users. New users receive one invite code every two weeks they’re on the app.