Bluesky buckled after Twitter/X announced block end

Bluesky, a Twitter competitor, buckled after Elon Musk announced that X will only support mutes instead of “block” functions. Bluesky users experienced slow post loading and occasional error messages. Graphics and images loaded slowly. Additionally, the site’s status page reported a performance issue being investigated.

The Bluesky team has not yet confirmed what’s causing the issues or whether the timing is coincidental, but Twitter’s unwelcome changes have often caused a surge in users.

Using the Bluesky API to track new user registrations, the decentralized social media platform has seen 5,616 new registrations in the past 24 hours, up from 536 the day before. People may have cashed in their invite codes more suddenly.

The Bluesky status page reported degraded PDS performance and said, “We are currently investigating this issue.”

That’s not helpful, but Bluesky’s app’s AT Protocol docs describe PDS as a “Personal Data Server” or “PDS,” which “acts as an account’s trusted agent in the network, routes client network requests, and hosts repositories.”

Techmeme CEO Gabe Rivera also said his news sites had to stop posting to Bluesky because its APIs timed out.

Over the past few minutes, Bluesky’s issues have been slowly resolving. A new note appeared after updating the status page. Bluesky says it has “fixed the main problem,” but “some images may not be loading” and a fix is in progress.

Bluesky and Threads are trending on X, suggesting another Twitter/X exodus as users react to the shocking news.

Though it’s hard to track Bluesky’s performance outside of the status page, Twitter often refers users to the rival network. Similarweb reported that 86% of social referrals to bsky.app came from twitter.com a few months ago. Over 28 days, it dropped to 78.8%. The firm reported a drop in daily traffic from mid-July.

X recently slowed referral traffic to Threads and Bluesky, its competitors.