Bluesky is having a moment. As X (formerly Twitter) shuts down in Brazil, Bluesky has stepped up, gaining more than 2 million new users in just the past four days. That’s a massive leap from the half a million users they had as of last Friday. The surge has been so intense that some users even ran into errors saying there were “Not Enough Resources” to handle all the new activity. Bluesky’s engineers have been working overtime to keep the servers stable under this sudden influx.
With so many new users rushing to download the app, Bluesky quickly became the No. 1 app in Brazil over the weekend, overtaking even Meta’s Instagram Threads. According to Appfigures, Bluesky’s downloads skyrocketed by an astonishing 10,584% this weekend compared to last, with a jaw-dropping 1,018,952% increase in Brazil alone. And it’s not just Brazil—downloads outside the country also rose by 584%, with Bluesky making a splash in 22 countries where it had barely made a dent before.
Bluesky’s new users aren’t just signing up—they’re diving in headfirst. A Bluesky engineer mentioned that likes on the platform ballooned to 104.6 million over the past four days, up from just 13 million during a similar period a week earlier. Follows jumped from 1.4 million to a staggering 100.8 million, and reposts soared from 1.3 million to 11 million.
By Monday, Bluesky confirmed it had added 2.11 million users in four days (that number is now cross over 2.4 million), compared to just 26,000 users during the same time last week. The company also noted a “significantly more than a 100% increase” in daily active users.
So, what’s driving people to Bluesky? It might be the fact that it feels a lot like X used to, before Elon Musk took over. Bluesky started as a Twitter project before spinning off into its own company, and it still has that familiar Twitter vibe. You’ll find features like likes, reposts, quote posts, lists, DMs, search tools, and user profiles. But Bluesky also has some unique perks, like the ability to set up your own instances (servers that run Bluesky and connect to others over the AT Protocol), customize your feeds, subscribe to third-party moderation services, and create “starter packs” that help new users find interesting people to follow. Plus, Bluesky is planning to roll out video support in an upcoming update.
Bluesky’s approach to content and moderation also sets it apart from Meta’s Threads. While X has always been a hub for breaking news and political debates, Threads is more about keeping things brand-friendly and influencer-focused, avoiding politics. That could be why some Brazilians are choosing Bluesky over Threads—it’s decentralized, so users have more control, and it’s less likely to be censored or controlled by a central authority.
Mastodon, another decentralized network, also saw a bump in users from Brazil, but it was nowhere near the scale of Bluesky’s growth. On Saturday, Mastodon’s founder Eugen Rochko said the platform had 4,200 signups from Brazil, compared to 152 on August 28. This might suggest that Brazilians are looking for more than just decentralization; they want a platform that feels like the old X/Twitter.
With X reportedly having more than 20 million users in Brazil, there’s still a lot of potential growth up for grabs. Whether Bluesky will continue to capitalize on this momentum remains to be seen, but for now, it’s flying high.
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