X/Twitter competitor knocked offline after mass exodus from Elon Musk’s site

BlueSky appears to be suffering technical problems after an exodus of users from X, formerly known as Twitter.

The issues come after Elon Musk, X’s owner, announced that the site would be changing how its “block” button works. That option previously allowed users to hide their profile from certain accounts – but will no longer do so.

In the wake of that change, X competitor BlueSky announced that it had seen more than 100,000 new signups. But it appears to be struggling to cope with all of those new users, with many reporting issues getting online and logging in.

”welcome to the 100k+ people who have joined Bluesky in the last 12 hours!!!” the site’s official BlueSky account had posted earlier on Thursday. But, hours later, hundreds of people reported problems getting online at tracking website Down Detector.

After the changes on X went into effect, BlueSky had used its official account there to highlight the function of its block button.

“At Bluesky, we take online safety seriously,” it wrote. “If you want to block someone, you can! It’s your experience to customize.”

Elon Musk has claimed the current behaviour of the block button “makes no sense”. He has argued that the change is long overdue and has previously suggested that it could be removed entirely.

But critics have said that the change could put the site’s more vulnerable users at risk. The block button can be used to hide posts from abusers, for instance, and stop them from replying.

“One of the biggest functions of blocking is giving women the ability to stop weird men from constantly making them uncomfortable and scared,” one user wrote. “So of course Elon had to change that.”