People are flocking to Bluesky as X makes more unwanted changes

A handful of changes coming to X may be pushing users to its competitor. Bluesky, the decentralized social platform, says it added 500,000 new users in a day this week. The new wave of signups could be related to several controversial changes on X in the last few days.

This week, X users got a pop-up message notifying them that their posts will be visible even to users they've previously blocked. Those accounts still won't be able to interact with their posts, but it's a substantial change to how the block feature works that could open users up to harassment.

"Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they've blocked," an official X account posted. "Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency."

It goes without saying that blocking is a safety issue, particularly for users facing harassment on a platform or people wanting to create distance between themselves and someone else in their life. But Elon Musk has expressed his disdain for blocking, and this change to blocking was teased last month. After users got an explicit notification about it this week, Bluesky wasted no time in using it as a recruitment tool.

Meta didn't immediately respond to questions about whether Threads saw similar spikes in new user signups.

Separately, updates to X's terms of service have also caused alarm, particularly around how data is used to train artificial intelligence models. In the most current version, the X terms of service page reads, in part: "You agree that this license includes the right for us to analyze text and other information you provide ... for use with and training of our machine learning and artificial intelligence models, whether generative or another type." That clause didn't exist as of October 9th, according to the Wayback Machine.

The new terms of service also say that any disputes with the company will be brought before the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas - where a judge-slash-Tesla-investor was presiding over multiple lawsuits involving Musk and his companies. US District Court Judge Reed O'Connor recused himself from a case in which X sued a group of advertisers after NPR revealed he owned Tesla stocks; O'Connor is still overseeing a case in which Musk is suing watchdog organization Media Matters.