The social media platform Bluesky was hit by an outage on Thursday, amid a rising wave of popularity for the app, which is often described as a friendlier alternative to X,.

Bluesky has at times been the most downloaded app on both the US and UK Apple Stores in recent days, with many social media users leaving X, formerly Twitter, in the wake of the US election.

But on Thursday, some users around the world had trouble getting their feeds and notifications to load.

Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu told the BBC that one of its internet providers “had some downtime, apparently because a fibre cable was out. That means it happened outside of our company”.

Bluesky provided a status notice from Cogent Communications that said some customers using part of its network located between Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, had temporarily lost connectivity.

Not all users experienced the outage, which appeared to be largely resolved late Thursday, according to the company.

In the week since Donald Trump won the US presidential election, 2.25 million users have signed up for Bluesky, which was started by Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter’s cofounders.

The key difference between Bluesky and most other social media platforms is that it is decentralized, meaning it is operated on independent servers and not those owned by the company. Its userbase – while growing – remains relatively small.

Many new users have said their decision to join Bluesky was driven by Elon Musk, who heavily backed Trump’s election campaign and intends to remain involved in the new administration. Threads, Meta’s competitor to X, has also continued to expand.

“People are both disgusted and afraid of Elon Musk and what Twitter has become,” said Cory Johnson, Chief Market Strategist at Epistrophy Capital Research. “Users are fleeing X, and Bluesky and Threads are the beneficiaries.”

This week, the British news outlet the Guardian announced it will no longer post on X, saying the US election underlined its concerns that Musk had been able to use X to “shape political discourse”.

As Thursday’s outage unfolded, Bluesky staff tried to make light of the situation, with one developer joking: “Btw — Today will get interesting! If the site goes down, maybe grab a soda, pet the kitty. We’ll hit it with a wrench as fast as we can.”

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that a ton of early Black Friday deals have dropped. There are the usual suspects like laptops, electronics, gaming gear, and beyond. But me, I prefer to pick up unusual items during the huge holiday sales. You know exactly what I mean, the kind of stuff that doesn’t usually go on sale any other time. One of those items is a portable generator. Where I live it seems like they rarely go on sale, and when you need them most they’re never in stock. People flock to the stores to buy them just before a big storm. Well, right now, Pulsar and Walmart have an incredible deal on a 12,000-watt dual-fuel generator. Normally $900 it’s down to $749 which saves you $151. It can run for up to 12 hours on an 8-gallon fuel tank.

Why shop the Pulsar 12,000-watt dual-fuel portable generator for Black Friday?

You’d be surprised how many people wait until a big storm is coming to start their prepping. That doesn’t just apply to the hurricane-affected regions, it also applies out west and up north. Get your prepping done early people. Like, right now, early. That’s precisely why you might consider grabbing this Pulsar 12,000-watt dual-fuel portable generator during the Black Friday sale. You’ll be ready when the time comes. Who knows, you might even need one this winter?

It’s a 457cc single-cylinder 4-stroke and air-cooled generator with an electric start. It takes both gas and LPG fuel sources, so propane. Plus, it comes with the propane hose you’d need to connect a tank. Automatic voltage regulation and low oil shut-off provide some much-needed safety features. Drop-down handles and wheels make it easier to move around your property. Moreover, a 3-in-1 digital meter keeps you informed at a glance.

It delivers 12,000 peak watts with 9,500 rated watts while powered by gasoline and 10,800 peak watts/ 8,550 rated watts while powered by LPG.

Just in case it needs to be said you cannot use a generator like this inside. It needs to be placed outdoors where it can properly ventilate. Only portable power stations can be used inside because they utilize electric battery technology. Even so, gas generators are still super useful to have and they can help you keep your appliances running in the face of an outage. With something like this you wouldn’t have to throw away spoiled food in your refrigerator — as long as you have it plugged in or a replacement plugged in.

Normally $900 it’s down to $749 which saves you $151. That is a great deal.

Cloud gaming is a growing market and while it’s dominated by services like NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW, services like Boosteroid have popped up to offer an alternative, and giving Boosteroid a shot now comes with a pretty cool gift in the form of free access to PC Game Pass.

Xbox Game Pass subscribers will be familiar with both cloud gaming and the benefits that Game Pass offers across its various plan options. The cloud gaming feature is only available for the Ultimate membership. But PC Game Pass has loads of features and benefits too. Such as new games on day one. Have you ever wanted to play a game on launch day but didn’t have the money to buy it? Well, this is where a PC Game Pass subscription would come in handy. Because you would be able to access those day-one games at no additional charge beyond the monthly subscription cost.

Here’s the really cool part, though. PC Game Pass costs $11.99 a month. But it doesn’t include cloud gaming. Boosteroid, which is a cloud gaming service, would allow you to stream games in the cloud, and you would get PC Game Pass for free. There is one major caveat, however.

Boosteroid subscribers will get a 1-month trial to PC Game Pass

This is the one detail you want to keep in mind. The free access to PC Game Pass only lasts for a month. So after 30 days, you will need to set up payment for the subscription if you want to keep it going. This would be in addition to the monthly cost of Boosteroid. Now, this is still a good deal if Boosteroid is your cloud gaming service of choice. Boosteroid is also available in the US, as well as the UK and several countries in Europe.

In terms of Boosteroid’s cost, it’s €9.89 per month until December 1 for the Ultra plan. The Ultra plan gets high-end VM. Ray-tracing, Frame Generation, up to 4K resolution, and up to 120 frames per second. After the discount ends, the monthly cost is €14.89 per month. So that’s about $10 and about $15 respectively with and without the discount. Basically, it’s a pretty good deal for that first month if you sign up before December because you’ll pay less than the amount of PC Game Pass for one month of Boosteroid, plus get the free month of PC Game Pass.

Boosteroid also works much like GeForce NOW in that you need to own the games you stream. They also have to be supported on Boosteroid. So keep that in mind. The good news is that Boosteroid supports plenty of games. Including several newer titles like CS2, Cyberpunk 2077, Zenless Zone Zero, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and even Diablo IV’s Vessel of Hatred expansion.

The free PC Game Pass offer ends on December 5

If this offer sounds like a good deal to you, then you’ll need to act fast. Boosteroid says the offer is only valid until December 5. On top of that, you’ll need to redeem your free month of PC Game Pass by January 4, 2025. You can redeem the free month by going here and generating a code after signing into your Boosteroid account with an active subscription.

On Thursday, the European Union published its first draft of a Code of Practice for general purpose AI (GPAI) models. The document, which won’t be finalized until May, lays out guidelines for managing risks — and giving companies a blueprint to comply and avoid hefty penalties. The EU’s AI Act came into force on August 1, but it left room to nail down the specifics of GPAI regulations down the road. This draft (via TechCrunch) is the first attempt to clarify what’s expected of those more advanced models, giving stakeholders time to submit feedback and refine them before they kick in.

GPAIs are those trained with a total computing power of over 10²⁵ FLOPs. Companies expected to fall under the EU’s guidelines include OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic and Mistral. But that list could grow.

The document addresses several core areas for GPAI makers: transparency, copyright compliance, risk assessment and technical / governance risk mitigation. This 36-page draft covers a lot of ground (and will likely balloon much more before it’s finalized), but several highlights stand out.

The code emphasizes transparency in AI development and requires AI companies to provide information about the web crawlers they used to train their models — a key concern for copyright holders and creators. The risk assessment section aims to prevent cyber offenses, widespread discrimination and loss of control over AI (the “it’s gone rogue” sentient moment in a million bad sci-fi movies).

AI makers are expected to adopt a Safety and Security Framework (SSF) to break down their risk management policies and mitigate them proportionately to their systemic risks. The rules also cover technical areas like protecting model data, providing failsafe access controls and continually reassessing their effectiveness. Finally, the governance section strives for accountability within the companies themselves, requiring ongoing risk assessment and bringing in outside experts where needed.

Like the EU’s other tech-related regulations, companies that run afoul of the AI Act can expect steep penalties. They can be fined up to €35 million (currently $36.8 million) or up to seven percent of their global annual profits, whichever is higher.

Stakeholders are invited to submit feedback through the dedicated Futurium platform by November 28 to help refine the next draft. The rules are expected to be finalized by May 1, 2025.

Bluesky is continuing to blow up. The Twitter-like service and alternative to Elon Musk’s X, has now surpassed 16 million users after seeing rapid growth in the days following the U.S. presidential election. While many are leaving X over the service’s increasing right-wing leanings and Musk’s campaigning for Trump, others are unhappy with other changes Musk has made — like how blocks work or how their content on X will be used to train AI.

Despite those issues, X is still the leader in the space in terms of monthly active users, while Threads is quickly catching up. Meta announced on Thursday that Threads grew by over 15 million users in November alone, for instance. Earlier this month, Threads said it had 275 million monthly active users.

But if Threads is the big tech threat to X, Bluesky is the indie effort. It’s already bigger than Mastodon, another decentralized X competitor that now has 7.6 million users, less than a million of whom log in monthly. (The wider fediverse built on the ActivityPub protocol, however, has over 10.8 million users.)

If Bluesky’s growth continues, it may begin to affect X. According to analytics provider Similarweb, X has now seen the largest number of account deactivations since Musk acquired the company, previously known as Twitter.

The firm based its findings on the number of visits to the confirmation webpage that appears after users indicate they want to deactivate their X accounts.

On Wednesday, X saw more than 115,000 U.S. web visitors deactivating their accounts, Similarweb found — more than any other day during Musk’s tenure. Previously, the peak had been around 65,000 on December 15, 2023, after Musk had restored the account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. (The tracking firm is not able to track the number of X users who deactivate their accounts via the X mobile app, indicating the true number is much higher.)

A Twitter clone? Not exactly!

While on the surface, Bluesky looks and feels a lot like X, its underpinnings are quite different.

The app offers a familiar feature set, including the ability to create and share short text posts that can include accompanying media like photos, videos, GIFs, and links. As on X, these posts can be liked, reposted, replied to, or shared via direct messages. There are also standard blocking and reporting tools, plus tools for muting threads, words, and hashtags. Users can send private messages to others, too, and create lists.

But Bluesky’s promise is that of a social network that puts its users in control. Designed to be decentralized, the company has begun offering federation, meaning anyone can host their own data. The idea is similar to the decentralized X alternative Mastodon but involves a different protocol (the AT protocol instead of ActivityPub). Unlike Mastodon, server choice on Bluesky won’t affect the content you see, the company explains.

How to sign up for Bluesky

To sign up for Bluesky, you can create a new account via the web at bsky.app or download the mobile app for iOS or Android. After creating your username and password and providing some basic information like your email and birthday, you can begin to interact with other Bluesky users and follow feeds of interest to find your community.

By default, Bluesky users will create usernames that end in Bluesky’s domain, bsky.social. But the AT Protocol powering the service lets you use your own domain name as your handle, if you choose.

The company is also offering a site that helps you find a custom domain to use for your handle, which helps generate revenue for its otherwise free social networking platform.

Bluesky’s third-party apps

If you want to venture beyond the official Bluesky app, third-party apps are available like Skeets, Graysky, and those that also cross-post to other networks, like Croissant, Openvibe, and SoraSNS.

If you prefer a more TweetDeck (X Pro) or column-based type of interface, the web app Skyfeed is an option.

How to find your favorite Bluesky feeds

Users on Bluesky also have more control over their individual feeds and algorithms than on X and other X competitors, like Meta’s Threads. While Bluesky operates its own app and provides its own feeds, users can customize their experience further based on the feeds and accounts they follow.

Anyone can build their own feed, and there are over 40,000 to now choose from. That means if you don’t like the feeds Bluesky offers, you can search for others and follow them, or even build your own.

You can find new feeds to follow by clicking on the “Feeds” link in the left-side navigation bar on the web or by tapping the hashtag (#) button on the top-right of the Bluesky mobile app’s home screen. Here, you’ll find the feeds you already follow, like Bluesky’s Discover feed, and can search for or scroll through other popular feeds you might like to add.

Some popular feeds include those that let you track your Mutuals or the posts Popular With Friends; those focused on a topic, like Science, News, Art, or even something silly like Cat Pics; and those that help you find a particular community. In the latter group, there’s Blacksky, which is working to bring the Black Twitter community to Bluesky, plus groups for certain geographies, like Brazil and Japan, and many more.

Customize your Bluesky following feed

Another fun feature to explore in Bluesky’s Settings is the set of options you can configure around the content you see in your Following Feed.

Here, you can decide if you want to see Replies, Reposts, Quote Posts, and other content in your feed by toggling these options on or off.

Using “‘”Starter Packs”

Another area where Bluesky shines is how it approaches the so-called “cold start” problem — that is, it addresses the issue where new users on a service don’t know who to follow. Instead of leaving it up to the users, Meta’s Threads jumpstarted its X competitor by tying its user accounts to Instagram, allowing it to quickly build Threads’ user base off of an Instagram user’s existing social graph.

Bluesky lacks that built-in advantage so it instead came up with a tool for creating “Starter Packs.”

These packs allow anyone to create a list of interesting accounts they recommend, similar to X’s Suggested User List. Other people can follow accounts individually from the Starter Pack or can follow everyone on the Starter Pack with a click.

For example, there’s a TechCrunch Starter Pack here.

A third-party site, Bluesky Directory, has also begun to organize the Starter Packs that others have created and track their adoption. Today, there are packs focused on politics, journalists, developers, technologists, academia, sports, AI, health, and various other fan groups and communities. As Bluesky grows, more will become available.

Finding your X friends on Bluesky

While there’s no official feature or service that allows you to easily import your followers or following from X, there are some third-party services that can help.

At present, the best option seems to be Sky Follower Bridge, a Chrome web extension that helps you identify, find, and follow the same users on Bluesky that you previously followed on X, or those who followed you.

After installing the extension, you’ll head to your X Following or Followers page, then click the toolbar icon to launch the Sky Follower Bridge. You’ll need to then authenticate with Bluesky by entering your username and password.

However, instead of using your main password, you can and should create an individual “app password” to log in. This can be done from Bluesky’s Settings (under Advanced).

Once authenticated, you’ll press the “Find Bluesky Users” button. The service will scan the page and detect those X users who are on Bluesky, something it determines by comparing factors like the display name, handle, and more, or by looking for their Bluesky handle in their X profile’s description.

When the utility first launched, you had to follow users one by one, but a more recent version of Sky Follower Bridge offers a handy “Follow All” button that saves a ton of time. The developer warns you that you may end up with false positives, though, because this sort of detection is not perfect.

Sky Follower Bridge is free to use and donation-supported.

It can also be used on your List members pages and block lists on X, we should note.

What to know about Bluesky moderation

In addition, Bluesky introduces a different take on moderation. Moderation on X and Threads is centralized, meaning the company makes the final decision. But Bluesky lets users tackle moderation as they see fit. They can mute and block users, create or subscribe to mute and block lists, subscribe to independent moderation services, or even self-host their own data on their own server.

Mute and block lists

While X is dialing back the power of the block, Bluesky users can block individual users or subscribe to mute or block lists.

There’s not a central directory of block or mute lists, but lists a user has created are available on their profile under the Lists tab. From there, you can subscribe to any list that looks like a fit for you. This is also where you’ll find any customer feeds the user has built. If something is a mute/block list, it won’t offer the “Pin to Home” button that lets you set the list as one of your default feeds.

To find block lists of bad actors and others, a search for “block list” will usually turn up some posts from people who are sharing their favorites. The influx of former X users is currently making block lists of far-right and MAGA groups more popular for newcomers trying to escape Musk’s politics.

Independent moderation services

Developers and communities can also choose to create their own independent moderation services using Bluesky’s tooling called Ozone. Once these alternative moderation services are built, other Bluesky users can subscribe to them to extend moderation beyond Bluesky’s own set of options.

To seed the ecosystem, Bluesky funded a few efforts focused on building independent labeling (moderation) services. Users can subscribe to these services’ filters by visiting the labelers’ page and clicking the subscribe button.

For instance, the XBlock Screenshot Labeller will let you hide screenshots — including those from X if you really want a clean break from Musk’s app. News Detective is another labeler that aims to fact-check Bluesky posts through a community of volunteers. (Users who subscribe will be able to see explanations and sources, and be able to request checks on questionable posts.)

A larger list of labelers is here.

Most users become members of Bluesky’s community and server for now, which means Bluesky’s own Community Guidelines apply. However, the ability to self-host became available earlier in 2024, for developers and other technical users who’d prefer to run their own community and host their own data. To do so, you’ll need to be comfortable running a Personal Data Server (PDS) in a federated environment. (Digital Ocean and Vultr are popular cloud providers for those who want to self-host.)

You don’t have to get involved with self-hosting, building moderation services, or blocklists, if you’re not technically inclined. You can simply engage with the tools built by the community or the Bluesky team, which are found in the Bluesky app’s Settings. (Go to Settings > Moderation > Bluesky Moderation Service to configure your options.)

Getting engagement on Bluesky

Gaining traction on Bluesky is not much different from other social networks, though, so far, the service’s vibe tends to favor more regular posters — or even sh**posters, who tend to be more exuberant, carefree, and uncensored.

Adult content is also permitted but can be labeled as such. Meanwhile, users get to control what level of NSFW content they’ll see by configuring their choices in the moderation settings. Here, they can also set how Bluesky should handle other types of sensitive or harmful content, like misinformation, scams, spam, extremist content, threats, intolerance, rude content, self-harm, impersonation, and much more, allowing people to build a feed they feel comfortable with. Plus, you can choose to “Hide,” “Warn,” or turn a filter off entirely, depending on your preferences.

This solution addresses an issue that has long plagued X: Everyone has different thresholds when it comes to the type of content they want to see in their feeds. Some prefer the uncensored firehose, however horrific it may be at times, while some want the opposite: heavy-handed moderation. Others want more control based over what type of content is displayed, hidden, or blocked.

After finding your community and preferred vibe, you should stop lurking and begin to interact. To generate engagement, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber suggests the following: “Post into some relevant feeds, comment on other people’s posts, find mutuals in feeds or elsewhere, use hashtags.”

Unlike Threads, which redesigned the way hashtags work (they’re links but don’t include the hash symbol itself), Bluesky embraced the traditional hashtag. That means you can search for topics, interests, or communities much like you do on X, like #Neuroscience or #BlackSky or #TechNews or anything else.

No trends!

Bluesky does not yet have a trending topics page, like X and Threads, which may make it feel a bit less like a real-time information hub. But it doesn’t make it hard to escape its algorithmic feeds, if you prefer something else — like a feed that’s centered around political news or updates from media publishers, for instance. And while Threads is no longer recommending political content to users — an editorial decision many disagree with, including creators — Bluesky leaves that choice up to each end user.

To stay in touch with what’s news, users can also follow accounts or (unofficial) feeds focused on what’s trending, like Now Breezing, a bot that updates “on the :10s”, or Catch Up, which highlights the most popular posts from the last 24 hours.