When US President Donald Trump won his first presidential term, his opponents were declaring they were “moving to Canada;” this time, they are trying to make the microblogging platform Bluesky happen, as a place of exodus from the “hostile” environment on X.
But they haven’t quite managed to do that yet, at least according to the EU standards: user numbers are not big enough to consider it a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP – the threshold is 45 million monthly users or more) and it, therefore, is not subjected to the bloc’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Yet Bluesky is kept in the news, even if only to quote an EU Commission spokesperson who said that regardless of not qualifying for regulation under the DSA, all platforms, including this one, should have a page on their website that discloses the number of users in the EU.
Bluesky has no such page as of now, the spokesman said – but apparently, the EU is yet to even contact the platform regarding this, although the spokesperson, Thomas Regnier, promised Brussels would “reach out” to the social media company – as soon as the 27 member-countries individually come round to identifying a representative based in any of them.
For now, the comments are used by the likes of the Financial Times to remind everyone that Bluesky is reportedly gaining major traction because of Trump’s victory, and X owner Elon Musk’s involvement in the campaign and the incoming administration.
But Regnier’s comments did not threaten any action, other than asking member countries to “find some trace” of a legal presence of Bluesky in their jurisdictions – and saying the EU would “reach out” to the platform to make sure it meets the disclosure requirements.
Now, we’re hearing that Bluesky’s representative has emailed Bloomberg to say that its legal team is “actively consulting” to comply.
Meanwhile, for a while, “VLOPs” like X, TikTok, and Meta have been pressured and are investigated under DSA’s provisions, which could see them stripped of up to 6 percent of global revenue.
The more interesting part of the story around Bluesky is the fact it is continuously covered by corporate media – whether it’s to report about a minor regulatory tiff like the one it’s now had with the EU, or to, in the same breath, effectively promote it as the place where those unhappy with both X, and the outcome of the recent US elections, are now “escaping” to – in apparently large numbers.
Even though the legality of its operations in the EU might be in question – given that national governments have been instructed to find “any trace” of a Blusky EU-based office, the Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, is among those who have, possibly performatively, opened a Bluesky account.
According to FT, other public figures include “academics, journalists, and left-leaning politicians.”
Bluesky has an interesting history with X – it started out as a project within Twitter in 2019 and had former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on its board until May of this year. The project became an app after Musk’s Twitter acquisition in 2022 and is now run as a public benefit corporation owned by CEO Jay Garber.
