Bluesky gains half a million new users in one day after X changes how blocking works

We warned you that this change was coming – but X has just made it official: Blocking on Elon Musk's social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, will no longer actually block users from viewing content — and now users appear to be fleeing X once again. 

Tweet may have been deleted

Essentially, a block on X will now just mean that a blocked user can't interact with your posts. They can still see them though, which was not the case before this change. The change to the block function was met with largely negative reactions, with even Musk supporters pointing out the user safety concerns that come with this shift.

And it appears the change in the block function was enough for some users to flee to a new social media platform. X alternative Bluesky announced on Thursday that it had gained half a million new users in the 24 hours since X made the formal announcement about the change.

Bluesky grows by 500,000 in 24 hours

Bluesky is one of the few X alternatives that have found success after Musk's acquisition of then-Twitter. It is the third largest micro-blogging type social media platform after competitors X and Meta's Threads. However, unlike those two companies, Bluesky is registered as a public benefit corporation, and brands itself as the decentralized social media platform (Threads also has decentralization features).

"welcome to the 100k+ people who have joined Bluesky in the last 12 hours!!!" the official Bluesky account on Bluesky announced just after 2am on Oct. 17.

Bluesky then followed up with an update close to the 24 hour mark.

"update: half a million new people in the last day," the official Bluesky account posted.

Both Bluesky and Threads tend to notice a bump in user sign-ups after Musk makes a decision that appears to alienate X users. However, despite having fewer resources than the Instagram-linked Threads, Bluesky continues to attract hundreds of thousands of new users every time X users set off for a new home

For example, when Brazil banned X from operating in the country last month due to the company's refusal to comply with its laws, Bluesky touted another surge in user growth. In just one week, the social media platform gained 3 million new users.

Shortly after that bump in user numbers, Bluesky announced that it had hit 10 million users. Now, thanks to this latest move by X, Bluesky has just blown past 11 million users. It'll be interesting to see what X does next to bring about Bluesky's next milestone.