Twitter’s competitor Bluesky encountered technical difficulties after Elon Musk’s revelation that X would discontinue the “block” feature, opting for mutes only. Users on Bluesky reported slow load times, errors when accessing posts, and delayed image and graphic loading. The company’s status page acknowledged the performance issue under investigation.
Bluesky often contends with an influx of users displeased by Twitter’s changes. Although the Bluesky team hasn’t confirmed the cause of the problems, data from an API tracking new user registrations showed a significant spike, possibly linked to the sudden removal of the “block” function.
Bluesky’s status page mentioned “degraded PDS performance,” referring to the “Personal Data Server.” The AT Protocol documentation revealed PDS as an account’s trusted agent that routes requests and hosts repositories.
Techmeme CEO Gabe Rivera reported timeouts when using Bluesky’s APIs, prompting the suspension of posts to the platform.
The issues plaguing Bluesky seemed to be gradually resolving, with updates indicating the main problem was fixed, albeit with some image loading issues.
Meanwhile, conversations on X platform suggested a potential exodus from both Bluesky and Threads, as users responded to the surprising news.
While Bluesky’s performance isn’t easily trackable beyond its status page, Twitter previously accounted for a significant portion of referrals to the platform. Recent data from Similarweb indicated a drop in social referrals from Twitter, along with a decline in daily traffic.
Notably, X had recently slowed referral traffic to various sites, including competitors like Threads and Bluesky.
