Bluesky Wants To Be “Part Of” Westminster Conversation

Bluesky has soared in popularity in the UK in the last few weeks (Alamy)

8 min read07 December

Bluesky, an American social media platform which was originally set up by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, has had millions of users sign up in the last few months – including many UK politicians, journalists, and politics academics and experts. 

In Britain, many people say they have left X – formerly Twitter – because of changes made to the website since Elon Musk took over. There has also been concern over the role the website has played in the spread of misinformation and disinformation, especially during the Southport stabbings and subsequent riots earlier this year.

There was a surge of new Bluesky users following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election on 5 November, with Musk having played an instrumental part in Trump’s campaign and now been appointed to head up Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency.

With top social media firms such as X, Meta, and TikTok, frequently invited for discussions with government figures on issues such as tech regulation, online safety, and misinformation, Bluesky is now hoping for a seat at the table.

Speaking to PoliticsHome on a video call from California, Bluesky’s Chief Operating Officer Rose Wang said: “We want to be a part of those conversations.

“There’s a need for a public town square, a place to have global conversation and breaking news, and so we’re going to race to fill that need.”

Bluesky has emerged in the last few months as a new player in the online political space. There are now at least 240 UK MPs with Bluesky accounts at the time of writing – more than a third of all MPs. The vast majority are Labour MPs and more than half of the Lib Dem MPs have accounts, but so far only four Conservative MPs are on the platform. 

This has led to concerns about the platform becoming a left-wing echo chamber, with Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green Party, previously telling PoliticsHome it was “probably not good for democracy” if the left posts on one platform and the right posts on another.

On this question, Wang’s position is less straightforward. On the one hand, she wants Bluesky to be “a public town square”, but on the other, she wants people to use the platform to “find their community”.

“We’re building the infrastructure for a global conversation, and so that’s not just for one party or another,” she said.

But she explained she felt it was important for users to connect with like-minded people on the site: “You don’t change your mind by going to a public square with somebody else shouting their different opinion at you, that’s not how people change their minds.

“You’ll find your community and it’s people in that community with differing viewpoints over time that help people extend their beliefs. So our approach is just actually fundamentally different.”

Wang added that a “particular political situation” in the US and UK had led to some left-wing figures abandoning X and joining Bluesky – but that millions of users from countries such as Brazil, Japan, and South Korea were flocking to the platform for different reasons.

So far, there has been reluctance from UK government institutions to join Bluesky – with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying he had “no plans” yet to sign up to the site last month.

Wang said that while she appreciated every organisation has “their own timeline and risk tolerance when it comes to new social platforms”, she would encourage them to join: “There’s no pressure, but the engagement numbers are there, right?” 

Despite the platform’s fast growth, there are only 20 people employed by the core Bluesky team. With the company based in the US, they have no public affairs capacity in the UK – although they do have some limited presence in Europe with Aaron Rodericks, their Head of Trust and Safety, based in Ireland.

“It’s only going to grow and we keep hoping to expand our team across the globe,” Wang said.

“But that said, we’re not going to hire like crazy. We were very inspired by Instagram and WhatsApp, where they had a small team and were still able to service hundreds of millions of users.

“I don’t think bigger necessarily means better, but definitely, do we need a bigger public affairs team? Yes.”

The site has also faced issues with fake accounts cropping up to impersonate politicians in the UK. A false account pretending to be Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch appeared a few weeks ago and attracted thousands of followers, including political figures and high-profile journalists and commentators. PoliticsHome identified another fake account impersonating Conservative MP and leadership contest runner-up Robert Jenrick. 

Both accounts have now been suspended and Conservative MPs were then advised by a shadow minister to claim their Bluesky usernames to deter impersonators.

Bluesky does have a verification system, but it is more technical than those of competitor websites. Anyone who owns a website can set their website domain as their Bluesky username to verify their profile, but many MPs have not yet done this as it requires adding coding to the back office of their website.

Wang said that any verification system takes a “couple of days or weeks” to process applications, but revealed that users should “watch out for” the rollout of a new verification system within Bluesky itself.

The COO said she also knows people want “positive signalling” similar to the previous visible “blue tick” verification system on Twitter: “We’re looking into that.”

Wang said that as women, she and Bluesky’s CEO Jay Gruber “both know what it’s like to feel unsafe” on the internet, “so that’s why we prioritise safety.”

For some MPs and journalists, disturbing experiences of stalking, abuse, and threats have led to them leaving other sites. In Wang’s view, moderation on other social media platforms has “failed” because “it’s one small group of people that’s your whole court system”.

On Bluesky, the idea is that users can turn filters on or off to “adjudicate your own experience”. While the site’s moderation team will take down posts and accounts which explicitly breach rules on harassment, misinformation and hate speech, users can create their moderation labels which add another layer to what they do and do not see on the platform. These include selecting ‘hide’ or ‘warn’ options for content which promotes self-harm, extremist views, intolerance towards certain protected groups, rude language, or misinformation.

According to Wang, another reason why many are trying out Bluesky is the fact that unlike its competitors such as X, Meta, or TikTok, “the incentive is not to keep you on Bluesky”. While on most other platforms, posts with links to third-party sites are punished by their algorithms, Bluesky does not do this – making it potentially more attractive to publishers and businesses.

“These companies have fundamentally different incentives than Bluesky because their incentive is to keep you locked in: their business is selling your private data, so there’s no reason for them to let you leave,” Wang said.

“Bluesky is fundamentally different, it’s not closed, it’s open. We actually want to send you off of Bluesky, we see Bluesky as the lobby to the open web.”

This raises the question, though, as to how Bluesky can start to monetise its operation and fund the necessary expansion it will need to cope with such a huge influx of users.

Bluesky is hoping to launch a subscription model at the end of this year. While the site will remain free to use, paying for a subscription could provide features including higher quality and longer video uploads, higher resolution images, and profile customisation options.

In the long run, Wang revealed they are considering whether they could set up an in-platform payment system – similar to Patreon – so users can make transactions with each other. Bluesky would then take a cut from these transactions.

Wang said that Bluesky does not “force behaviour” on users and will experiment with different features to see what works best. The platform recently changed the comments feature so that more recent ‘hot replies’ with the most likes appear by default at the top of a post’s comments – which received some backlash from those who felt this mirrored the approach of Twitter.  

“The goal here is to help people discover better content faster, sooner, but also, if it doesn’t, then we can change,” Wang said.

Many users have been calling out for several features they feel Bluesky is missing, including being able to ‘bookmark’ posts and turn ‘starter packs’ of users into ‘lists’ that can be pinned to your Home feed. “It’s all on the potential roadmap, but nothing is sure,” Wang said.

As Wang approaches the new year, she is keen for Bluesky to carve out its own identity in the social media landscape.

“I can’t wait for us to show everyone what we mean by a social app outside of four walls,” she said.

“That there’s going to be a whole world that we’re going to be creating… and no longer there be a comparison between us and X or Threads because we’re just so much more than that.”

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