The blocklist was introduced after the White House and other government agencies under the Trump administration signed up for Bluesky last October to post messages blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. The accounts that joined at the time included the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Transportation, the Interior, Health and Human Services, State, and Defense, in addition to the White House itself.
The move made the White House one of the most-blocked accounts on Bluesky, and today it remains in the No. 2 position, just behind Vice President J.D. Vance, per stats shared on the tracking site Clearsky. (The site leverages Bluesky’s API to track which accounts are the most blocked and other blocking activity.)
ICE, however, did not join Bluesky in October. According to Bluecrawler’s Join Date Checker, the account @icegov.bsky.social joined the social network on November 26, 2025.
The account was verified a few days ago according to the independently-run Verified Account Tracker, which suggests that either Bluesky’s team didn’t have enough information to apply the verification checkmark, was somehow unaware of the account’s existence (doubtful!), or was internally debating how to handle the issue. Bluesky hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
One tracker now shows the ICE account as being over 60% of the way to being the most-blocked Bluesky account.
ICE today has many accounts across other social media sites, including X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. These accounts tend to be verified on platforms that have a verification mechanism, with YouTube being an exception.
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The decision from Bluesky to host and verify ICE establishes the social network as one that’s now fitting in more with other, larger social media giants, rather than with the original ethos of the open social web known as fediverse, where the user community is more in control of which accounts gain attention and traction.
The fediverse, which represents a network of independent but interconnected social media platforms, includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard, and, to some extent, Instagram Threads, though Meta’s app isn’t fully federated. The U.S. government doesn’t have Mastodon accounts, but users can follow accounts like @potus on Threads from their Mastodon accounts, if they choose.
One reason for avoiding Mastodon, an open source federated app that runs on the ActivityPub protocol, could be its smaller size. But also, any government account joining this network could be easily blocked by individual server operators. This wouldn’t prevent the account from setting up its own server to post to the fediverse, but other communities could refuse to federate (interoperate) with that server, greatly diminishing its reach.
Reached for comment, Rochko wouldn’t confirm whether or not ICE’s participation on Bluesky was a factor in his decision to leave the bridge, saying that the decision was a “personal” one.
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – A free roadside safety kit is being offered under the auspices of AAA, but it’s actually a phishing scheme that not only levies a “shipping charge,” but uses bank card numbers for unrelated items.
The Tahlequah Daily Press followed the link provided in a press release received by newsroom staff, preparing to write an article on something that sounded like a good deal for drivers who are members of AAA.
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TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – A free roadside safety kit is being offered under the auspices of AAA, but it’s actually a phishing scheme that not only levies a “shipping charge,” but uses bank card numbers for unrelated items.
The Tahlequah Daily Press followed the link provided in a press release received by newsroom staff, preparing to write an article on something that sounded like a good deal for drivers who are members of AAA.
This page requires Javascript.
Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – A free roadside safety kit is being offered under the auspices of AAA, but it’s actually a phishing scheme that not only levies a “shipping charge,” but uses bank card numbers for unrelated items.
The Tahlequah Daily Press followed the link provided in a press release received by newsroom staff, preparing to write an article on something that sounded like a good deal for drivers who are members of AAA.
This page requires Javascript.
Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.
Below, we’ve compiled the answers to some of the most common questions users have about Bluesky. And if you’ve made the switch, you can follow TechCrunch here as well as our team with our Starter Pack.
What is Bluesky?
Bluesky is a decentralized social app conceptualized by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and developed in parallel with Twitter. The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation.
Bluesky is using an open source framework built in-house, the AT Protocol, meaning people outside of the company have transparency into how it is built and what is being developed.
Dorsey introduced the Bluesky project back in 2019 while he was still Twitter CEO. At the time, he said Twitter would be funding a “small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers,” charged with building a decentralized standard for social media, with the original goal that Twitter would adopt this standard itself. But that was before Elon Musk bought the platform, so Bluesky is completely divorced from X.
Upon signing up, users can create a handle which is then represented as @username.bsky.social as well as a display name that appears more prominent in bold text. If you’re so inclined, you can turn a domain name that you own into your username — so, for example, I’m known on Bluesky as @amanda.omg.lol.
The app itself functions much like X, where you can click a plus button to create a post of 256 characters, which can also include photos. Posts themselves can be replied to, retweeted, liked and, from a three-dot menu, reported, shared via the iOS Share Sheet to other apps, or copied as text.
You can search for and follow other individuals, then view their updates in your “Home” timeline. Previously, the Bluesky app would feature popular posts in a “What’s Hot” feed. That feed has since been replaced with an algorithmic and personalized “Discover” feed featuring more than just trending content.
For new users, Bluesky introduced a “Starter Pack” feature, which creates a curated list of people and custom feeds to follow in order to find interesting content right out of the gate. You can find TechCrunch’s Starter Pack right here.
User profiles contain the same sort of features you’d expect: a profile pic, background, bio, metrics and how many people they’re following. Profile feeds are divided into two sections, like X: posts and posts & replies. In January 2025, Bluesky also added a new video tab to user profiles.
There is also a “Discover” tab in the bottom center of the app’s navigation, which offers more “who to follow” suggestions and a running feed of recently posted Bluesky updates. In January 2025, Bluesky also introduced a vertical video feed to compete with TikTok.
Bluesky is also home to news organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and of course, TechCrunch! Since August 2024, Bluesky is also now allowing heads of state to sign up and join the platform for the first time.
In 2025, some prominent U.S. political figures set up accounts on the platform, like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. By May of that year, Bluesky began verifying “notable” users with blue checkmarks, similar to how the blue check used to operate on Twitter.
In October 2024, Elon Musk announced that X’s block feature would work differently than it has in the past. The new block functionality allows users you have blocked to view your posts and your profile, but not the ability to interact with your posts. Some users believe this update to be a safety concern, leading to an influx in Bluesky sign-ups as its block feature is more traditional.
While Bluesky was initially kicked off as a project convened by Jack Dorsey in 2019 when he was CEO of Twitter, the social app has been an independent company since its inception in 2021.
Is Bluesky free?
Yes, and it is now open to the public.
How does Bluesky make money?
Bluesky’s goal is to find another means to sustain its network outside of advertising with paid services, so it can remain free to end users. On July 5, 2023, Bluesky announced additional seed round funding and a paid service that provides custom domains for end users who want to have a unique domain as their handle on the service. Bluesky has also emphasized that it does not want to “require selling user data for ads” in order to monetize its platform.
In November 2024, Bluesky announced it raised a $15 million Series A round and is developing a subscription service for premium features. Bluesky, however, noted its subscription model will not follow in the footsteps of X’s “pay to win” premium offerings. Users have spotted mockups teasing the subscription feature, dubbed Bluesky+, which could include features like higher quality video uploads and profile customizations.
In December 2024, Peter Wang announced a $1 million fund, dubbed Skyseed, that will offer grants to those building on Bluesky’s open source AT Protocol.
Is Bluesky decentralized?
Yes. Bluesky’s team is developing the decentralized AT Protocol, which Bluesky was built atop. In its beta phase, users can only join the bsky.social network, but Bluesky plans to be federated, meaning that endless individually operated communities can exist within the open source network. So, if a developer outside of Bluesky built their own new social app using the AT Protocol, Bluesky users could jump over to the new app and port over their existing followers, handle and data.
“You’ll always have the freedom to choose (and to exit) instead of being held to the whims of private companies or black box algorithms. And wherever you go, your friends and relationships will be there too,” a Bluesky blog post explained.
What is the AT Protocol?
Bluesky’s AT Protocol is a decentralized network that developers can use to build social apps. The social app Bluesky is built on the AT Protocol, which was created by the company Bluesky (yes, the naming conventions here are a bit confusing).
The ATProto community is working to rebuild much of what used to be Web 2.0, an earlier version of the social web that included social media websites, blogs, wikis, video- and photo-sharing sites, and other collaborative and hosted services. This time around, the apps are being built on open technology, not siloed into centralized services that tend to be operated by tech giants.
This open architecture gives users and developers as much power as the creators of the protocol.
Centralized tech platforms like Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and Reddit can also cultivate these kinds of developer communities by offering developers access to their APIs. However, that API access can be revoked at the discretion of those companies, leaving its developer community helpless and its users dissatisfied. This happened at Reddit in 2023. It was a total mess.
What third-party apps are built on the AT Protocol?
Many developers are building consumer-facing apps on Bluesky or its underlying AT Protocol. These apps are built on open technology, as opposed to being siloed within big tech’s centralized, opaque ownership.
Some social apps include Flashes, a photo viewing client; Spark, a TikTok-like app; and Skylight Social, which is backed by Mark Cuban.
Check out our more comprehensive list at various apps built within this ecosystem, including cross-posting apps, music apps, feed builders, and livestreamers.
Is Bluesky secure?
In October 2023, Bluesky added email verification as part of a larger effort to improve account security and authentication on the network. The addition is an important step forward in terms of making Bluesky more competitive with larger networks like X, which have more robust security controls. In December 2023, Bluesky allowed users to opt out of a change that would expose their posts to the public web following backlash from users.
Is Bluesky customizable?
Yes. In May 2023, Bluesky released custom algorithms, which it calls “custom feeds.” Custom feeds allow users to subscribe to multiple different algorithms that showcase different kinds of posts a user may want to see. You can pin custom feeds that will show up at the top of your timeline as different tabs to pick from. The feeds you pin, or save, are located under the “My Feeds” menu in the app’s sidebar.
In March 2024, the company announced “AT Protocol Grants,” a new program that will dole out small grants to developers in order to foster growth and customization. One of the recipients, SkyFeed, is a custom tool that lets anyone build their own feeds using a graphical user interface.
Is Bluesky on iOS and Android?
Yes. Bluesky has rolled out to Android users after it was initially launched to iOS users. Users can access Bluesky on the web here.
How does Bluesky tackle misinformation?
After an October 2023 update, the app will now warn users of misleading links by flagging them. If links shared in users’ posts don’t match their text, the app will offer a “possibly misleading” warning to the user to alert them that the link may be directing them somewhere they don’t want to go.
Image Credits: Bluesky on GitHubImage Credits:Bluesky on Github
In December 2024, the Bluesky Safety team posted that the company updated its impersonation policy to be “more aggressive,” adding that “impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed.” The company said it is also exploring alternatives to its current domain handle verification process.
Bluesky also added blue check verification in May 2025, which makes it easier for users to verify that notable figures are who they say they are; unlike X, Bluesky does not allow users to buy this designation.
Has Bluesky had any controversies?
Bluesky has been embattled with moderation issues since its first launch. The app has been accused of failing to protect its marginalized users and failing to moderate racist content. Following a controversy about the app allowing racial slurs in account handles, frustrated users initiated a “posting strike,” where they refused to engage with the platform until it established guardrails to flag slurs and other offensive terms in usernames.
In December 2024, Bluesky also faced criticism when writer and podcast host Jesse Singal joined the platform. Singal has been cataloged by GLAAD’s Accountability Project for his writings on transgender issues and other matters. Bluesky users have reported Singal’s account en masse, leading the company to ban him, reinstate him, and then label his account intolerant by its moderation service.
As Bluesky has gotten more popular, critics have complained that the culture is disproportionatelyleft-leaning, which could potentially be a result of Bluesky’s growth as an alternative to X, which has become increasingly right-wing.
These are broad generalizations that will vary from user to user — Mark Cuban, for example, complained that people would not talk to him in good faith about business or AI — but the architecture of Bluesky allows for users to customize a more personalized experience.
What moderation features does Bluesky have?
In December 2023, Bluesky rolled out “more advanced automated tooling” designed to flag content that violates its Community Guidelines that will then be reviewed by the app’s moderation team. Bluesky has moderation features similar to ones on X, including user lists and moderation lists, and a feature that lets users limit who can reply to posts. However, some Bluesky users are still advocating for the ability to set their accounts to private.
In March 2024, the company launched Ozone, a tool that lets users create and run their own independent moderation services that will give users “unprecedented control” over their social media experience. In October 2024, Bluesky joined Instragram’s Threads app in an effort to court users who were frustrated by Meta’s moderation issues.
In January 2025, Bluesky published its 2024 moderation report that said it saw a 17x increase in moderation reports following the rapid growth on the platform. The report also noted that the largest number of reports came from users reporting accounts or posts for harassment, trolling, or intolerance — an issue that’s plagued Bluesky as it’s grown. To meet the demands caused by this growth, Bluesky increased its moderation team to roughly 100 moderators and will continue to hire.
What’s the difference between Bluesky and Mastodon?
Though Bluesky’s architecture is similar to Mastodon’s, many users have found Bluesky to be more intuitive, while Mastodon can come off as inaccessible: Choosing which instance to join feels like an impossible task on Mastodon, and longtime users are very defensive about their established posting norms, which can make joining the conversation intimidating. To remain competitive, Mastodon recently simplified its sign-up flow, making mastodon.social the default server for new users.
However, the launch of federation will make it work more similarly to Mastodon in that users can pick and choose which servers to join and move their accounts around at will.
Who owns Bluesky?
Though Jack Dorsey funded Bluesky, he is not involved in day-to-day development and no longer sits on the company’s board. The CEO of Bluesky is Jay Graber, who previously worked as a software engineer for the cryptocurrency Zcash, then founded an event-planning site called Happening.
This story was originally published in May 2023 and is updated regularly with new information.
Instead of relying entirely on donations and grants as before, the company announced this morning it will now offer paid hosting, moderation, and support services for organizations that want to join the open social web.
That network, also called the fediverse, offers a way for individuals and organizations to set up their own servers that interconnect with others that run the same protocol, ActivityPub.
ActivityPub powers a number of different software applications, including Mastodon, Meta’s Threads, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Misskey, Lemmy, and others, and has been integrated into larger platforms like WordPress, Ghost, and Drupal through plugins.
While anyone can establish an account on a public Mastodon server, some organizations and entities would prefer to run their own so they can set their own rules and manage the service as they see fit. However, server setup and management require at least some technical knowledge. It’s comparable, perhaps, to deciding to run your own installation of WordPress versus opting for a hosted version of WordPress from a service like WordPress.com, Bluehost, DreamHost, or others.
To solve this problem and potentially generate revenue to maintain its operations, Mastodon will launch hosting services. Customers can choose to run their own servers through this model, where Mastodon’s team will manage the servers and optionally offer moderation services.
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Another option will see Mastodon offering support contracts to aid with customers’ in-house tech teams focused on server management and maintenance. The latter would be an option for those companies and organizations that already have their own IT department, but are new to running Mastodon’s federated software.
Mastodon says the servers it’s offering often operate accounts for brands or institutions, and are not general-purpose servers with external, open sign-ups.
The company did not share its pricing, noting it offers a custom billing model that’s flexible, depending on the options they select, like hosting, support, and moderation.
Hosted customers will still be able to define their own rules and policies, however.
Mastodon has already been exploring this solution ahead of today’s launch by partnering with clients like the European Commission, the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, the city of Blois in France, and AltStore, a software company making an alternative app store. Through these relationships, Mastodon has been able to establish a more predictable revenue stream, compared with its Patreon donations.
However, the company stresses that the goal is to diversify Mastodon’s revenue streams, not replace the current model of donations, grants, and sometimes, merch. The company will also continue to operate its own server, mastodon.social, as a well-established entry point for consumers interested in exploring the fediverse.
“We are excited to expand our services to organisations that share our vision of a free, open, and decentralised social web,” said Felix Hlatky, Mastodon’s chief financial officer, in a prepared statement.
“These offerings will provide financial stability for our team while ensuring the Fediverse remains a resilient, community-driven ecosystem.”
The social nonprofit explains that Mastodon doesn’t track its users, which makes it difficult to enforce such legislation. Nor does it want to use IP address-based blocks, as those would unfairly impact people who were traveling, it says.
The statement follows a lively back-and-forth conversation earlier this weekbetween Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko and Bluesky board member and journalist Mike Masnick. In the conversation, published on their respective social networks, Rochko claimed, “there is nobody that can decide for the fediverse to block Mississippi.” (The Fediverse is the decentralized social network that includes Mastodon and other services, and is powered by the ActivityPub protocol.)
“And this is why real decentralization matters,” said Rochko.
Masnick pushed back, questioning why Mastodon’s individual servers, like the one Rochko runs at mastodon.social, would not also be subject to the same $10,000 per user fines for noncompliance with the law.
At the time of our reporting on this exchange, Mastodon gGmbH, the community-funded nonprofit organization, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
On Friday, however, the nonprofit shared a statement with TechCrunch to clarify its position, saying that while Mastodon’s own servers specify a minimum age of 16 to sign up for its services, it does not “have the means to apply age verification” to its services.
That is, the Mastodon software doesn’t support it. The Mastodon 4.4 release in July 2025 added the ability to specify a minimum age for sign-up and other legal features for handling terms of service, partly in response to increased regulation around these areas. The new feature allows server administrators to check users’ ages during sign-up, but the age-check data is not stored.
That means individual server owners have to decide for themselves if they believe an age verification component is a necessary addition.
The nonprofit says Mastodon is currently unable to provide “direct or operational assistance” to the broader set of Mastodon server operators. Instead, it encourages owners of Mastodon and other Fediverse servers to make use of resources available online, such as the IFTAS library, which provides trust and safety support for volunteer social network moderators. The nonprofit also advises server admins to observe the laws of the jurisdictions where they are located and operate.
Mastodon notes that it’s “not tracking, or able to comment on, the policies and operations of individual servers that run Mastodon.”
“One of the reasons Mastodon was founded was to allow different jurisdictions to have social media that is independent of the U.S.,” per the statement shared with TechCrunch. “People are free to choose to have their account on a Mastodon server whose policies meet their needs.”
Bluesky has launched a new product roadmap for the coming months. The decentralized social network said on Tuesday that it is planning to introduce direct messages, support for videos, improved custom feeds, and new moderation controls.
In a blog post, the company said it is developing a direct messaging (DM) service that will be integrated into the Bluesky app, off the decentralized AT Protocol — the protocol that Bluesky uses — initially, and would later develop an on-protocol DM. Bluesky said that this initial version will facilitate one-on-one chat and have controls for users to limit who can DM them.
The company says it is also working on improving its custom feeds, which lets users curate their feeds. You can use third-party tools to improve what custom feeds can do, but Bluesky says it is now working on features like in-app feed creation, better feed discovery, a new trending feeds view, the ability to submit posts to feeds, curate the submissions and manually moderate them; and a way arrange feeds on the home screen better.
Bluesky said it is also working on anti-harassment tools, though it didn’t detail what these tools might do.
Additionally, the social network is looking into extending support for videos on the platform as well as an “OAuth” login mechanism that would allow users to “Log in with Bluesky” to different services related to the social network. Currently, users need to use a separate password to log-in to third-party apps and remember it.
Newsletter platform Ghost is the latest service to pledge support for ActivityPub, the open source protocol powering the fediverse. The company Monday it would add ActivityPub support later this year in a move that could bring tens of millions of people into the fediverse.
The fediverse is a growing collection of services, including Mastodon, Flipboard and Threads, that support the ActivityPub protocol. It’s part of a growing movement for services, which rely on open protocols rather than closed networks. Proponents often compare it to email, which allows people to communicate regardless of their preferred app or platform.
In a blog post laying out its vision, Ghost said it was joining the fediverse in an effort to “bring back” the open web. “On, Ghost publishers will be able to follow, like and interact with one another in the same way that you would normally do on a social network — but on your own website,” the company wrote. “The difference, of course, is that you’ll also be able to follow, like, and interact with users on Mastodon, Threads, Flipboard, Buttondown, WriteFreely, Tumblr, WordPress, PeerTube, Pixelfed… or any other platform that has adopted ActivityPub, too.”
While Ghost says ActivityPub integration will be optional for publishers, the company notes that its entry into the fediverse could bring “tens of millions” of new people into the space. A number of popular newsletters run on Ghost, including Platformer, Garbage Day, She’s a Beast, as does the independent tech news site 404 Media.
