Bluesky’s active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app: 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year-over-year.

There is a considerable number of users that stopped using Bluesky because of the Age Verification. I think that is playing a significant issue, along with corporate accounts being few and far between compared to Twitter. I really liked how it was set up vs my Mastodon and Twitter account I keep for contests and giveaways. It is a shame they had to go fascist like that.

Did those users not hear they can dodge Age Verification by using a different Bluesky compatible app?…

Bluesky are transphobic and Islamophobic “centrist” twats, but the protocol they’ve developed is kinda decentralized and so can be used against their wishes… there’s even one app where you can keep posting even if bsky.social or whatever your home instance is marked you as “banned”… lol.

Oh, I can post anywhere. I’m in my 50’s, and I know that alt clients can get around it, but that doesn’t change the fact that the service itself chose to “Papers Please” RLID its users when there wasn’t even political pressure to do it at the time in most of the places it operates. If it had changed to be trans and islamiaphobes then I am glad to be off there.

If it had changed to be trans and islamiaphobes

It hasn’t. Or the block lists I’m using are fucking amazing.

From what I gather, the admins could be stepping in more like they do on Lemmy for hateful behaviors/users. If BlueSky were more federated like Lemmy, I think they would have been defederated by now for not taking direct action.

The block lists themselves work great imo and should be used universally on the Fediverse, but people do have understandable gripes with admins not stepping in more and are instead differing moderation to the user level tools in place.