Bluesky, the decentralised social network once hailed as the progressive refuge from Elon Musk’s X, has seen its active user numbers fall.
Data from digital intelligence firm Similarweb shows the platform’s mobile app had just 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, a 27.2 per cent drop year-on-year.
Daily active users fell further in July, down 25.6 per cent to around three million.
The decline is sharper still when measured against the platform’s late-2024 peak.
After Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2024 and the subsequent wave of users leaving X, Bluesky’s quarterly average monthly active users reached roughly 22.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.
By the second quarter of 2026 that figure had fallen to 10.7 million, a 52 per cent fall.
Registered accounts continue to climb, now standing at nearly 46 million, but the gap between sign-ups and actual engagement has widened.
Those who remain are relatively sticky. Bluesky’s ratio of daily to monthly active users sat at about 29 per cent in June, roughly level with Meta’s Threads.
Yet the broader picture is one of attrition. The platform that marketed itself as a cleaner, kinder, less “toxic” alternative has failed to convert its post-election surge into lasting habit.
Under CEO Toni Schneider, the founding chief executive of Automattic, the company behind WordPress, Bluesky is openly shifting emphasis away from the main app.
Schneider replaced Jay Graber in March 2026 and dropped the “interim” from his title in July.
The priority is now the underlying AT Protocol, the open standard intended to power a wider ecosystem of independent social apps, services and communities.
Projects such as BlackSky, Eurosky and the video-focused Skylight (already claiming 380,000 users) are being pushed as evidence of a broader future.
Eurosky is the project with the clearest European resonance. Run by the Netherlands-based non-profit Modal Foundation, it launched a European-hosted identity and data service on April 16, 2026.
It promises social media infrastructure held on European servers and governed by European law, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The pitch lands amid a wider EU push for digital sovereignty and reduced dependence on American platforms.
The company has also launched Attie, an artificial intelligence (AI) research tool, and is working on private-data features aimed at users who prefer closed communities over public squares.
Whether the AT Protocol pivot can reverse the decline remains to be seen. Building infrastructure is cheaper than retaining users who signed up primarily to escape another platform.
Similarweb figures suggest many of the users who fled X did not return there.
X’s own mobile monthly active users (around 302 million) were down 3 per cent year-on-year in June, with daily actives off 7 per cent in July to 123.7 million.
Web traffic, though, rose 5.3 per cent to 4.7 billion visits.
Threads, Meta’s answer to X and Bluesky, is expanding fast. Daily active users up 21.3 per cent year-on-year to 147 million in July 2026, web visits up 112 per cent to 471.6 million.
This success of Threads seems to indicate that traffic is moving sideways rather than back to Musk’s platform.
Bluesky’s trajectory illustrates a familiar pattern: Platforms grow on the back of political migration and then struggle once the initial outrage subsides.
Bluesky has faced repeated criticism for intolerance and political bias in moderation.
Its user base, swollen by progressive migrants from X, developed a strong left-leaning monoculture.
Conservative or gender-critical posts, such as statements that there are only two genders or satirical content about transgender officials, were frequently labelled “intolerance” and hidden, while accounts were suspended or mass-blocked.
Shared blocklists targeting “MAGA” users proliferated. Trump administration accounts quickly ranked among the most-blocked on the platform.
The White House account drew about 91,000 blocks against 10,000 followers within 48 hours of joining in October 2025, according to tracking service ClearSky.
Journalist Jesse Singal faced a petition signed by more than 25,000 users calling for his removal in December 2024.
Even early supporter Mark Cuban complained in June 2025 of a lack of diversity of thought, with mild disagreement often met by accusations of fascism.
