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Bluesky user count booming after Elon Musk teams up with Trump – but what is it?
- Bluesky, a Twitter alternative with a decentralised model, has reportedly seen an influx of millions of users since September, as concerns grew over Twitter's moderation of bot and hate speech. Bluesky, founded by Jack Dorsey in 2019, successfully split from its parent firm to become an independent entity in 2022. Modelled on Bitcoin, Bluesky uses blockchain technology to keep power decentralised and thus decisions on moderation are agreed upon by the community. While it reportedly has a long way to go to catch parent company Twitter's 586m monthly users, Bluesky is said to have become a refuge for those who want a social media experience that's free from hate speech and far-right activism.
- Bluesky has allegedly added nine million users since September, bringing total user numbers to almost 15 million, with a million new users alone joining in the last week. In response, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said he hoped Bluesky would show the potential of a decentralised model.
- Facebook, Twitter and company executives testified in Washington on Thursday, pledging to better protect developing democracies from the global menace of fake news and misinformation.
- Google said it found evidence Russia used its platforms to interfere in the 2016 US election. It found that several networks of ads were used to spread misinformation -- across Google search, Gmail and YouTube -- to distort public opinion in favour of Republican candidate Donald Trump.
- Facebook and Twitter reportedly hired Chinese firms to help them suppress posts relating to the suppression of freedom in Hong Kong. Beijing-based tech company UCommune played a key part in the propaganda efforts, while Facebook deemed one application to be "unsafe" and containing malware, saying it shared common code with one used by the Chinese military.
- Twitter says it has removed more than 200,000 accounts that it believes were being used by the Chinese authorities to spread misinformation and propaganda. Twitter said the accounts had become involved in a coordinated effort to undermine the Hong Kong protests, in which demonstrators had taken to the streets to oppose a proposed extradition law.
- Twitter has dropped its transparency report, outlining how many information requests it received from governments, and how many of them were granted. The US was by far the biggest requester, accounting for 78% of governments inquiring about Twitter users.
- Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has announced that the company will be banning political advertising, saying he didn't believe that political messages should be bought or sold.
- Twitter has announced plans to pilot a new method of discussion moderation, implementing an algorithm that targets abusive content, making these tweets appear less frequently and less prominently on the site.
- Twitter has announced a "improved two-factor authentication solution" for increasing levels of user security when logging into their accounts.
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