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Researchers at TU Darmstadt present the first comprehensive study on the Bluesky platform
The booming instant messaging service Bluesky not only represents a suitable alternative to X, but also offers users real advantages: This is the conclusion reached by a research team with leading participation from TU Darmstadt in a study of the platform with the blue butterfly as its logo.
In protest against owner and tech billionaire Elon Musk, millions of users worldwide have been leaving the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, for months. Many of them are migrating to its competitor Bluesky, launched in 2022. Scientists at TU Darmstadt, together with international research partners, have now presented the first comprehensive data analysis of Bluesky. The researchers, led by TU Darmstadt's first author Leonhard Balduf from the Communication Networks group (Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology), presented their findings at the renowned ACM IMC conference.
Bluesky may appear "at first glance to be a clone of X," but it actually offers significantly more features, explains Balduf. The participatory platform is based on fundamentally different principles and architectures. Among its greatest advantages over centralized networks like Facebook or X are openness, transparency, participation, and a more equitable distribution of power.
Bluesky users have significantly more control over their own data and identity, as well as over the content displayed to them, according to the study. Instead of being reliant on a single feed dictated by an unknown algorithm, users can choose from tens of thousands of generated feeds, most of which are created by other users. Similarly, Bluesky offers greater freedom of choice and control over moderation, which is also largely community-driven. Furthermore, all necessary components are available as open-source software and can therefore, in principle, be operated by any user.
“Bluesky’s open architecture empowers at least tech-savvy users to make a significant contribution to core aspects of a social network, namely the recommendation and moderation of content,” explains Professor Björn Scheuermann, head of the Communication Networks department. “And we have observed that this capability is being widely used by the community.” For researchers, Bluesky, with its transparency and openness, is “a paradise,” especially since Twitter/X, through the introduction of exorbitant fees, has effectively prevented access to user data for independent research purposes.
In addition to its major advantages, the decentralized platform also has its drawbacks, according to the study. For example, there is increasing discussion about who owns the rights to the content and how open data access can be protected from misuse, explains Balduf. It has also become apparent that the system could potentially be overwhelmed by the rapid growth, and the future financing of the currently ad-free service remains an open question. Since the relatively new platform was opened to the public in February 2024, the number of users has increased tenfold, from approximately 2.5 million to around 28 million today.
In addition to TU Darmstadt, five other universities from Great Britain, France, and China participated in the study. The TU Darmstadt researchers contributed the majority of the data collection and analysis. Among other things, they examined content moderation. The study was partly funded by the recently concluded Collaborative Research Center "Multi-Mechanism Adaptation for the Future Internet."
(DARMSTADT – TU / MAKI).
