Bluesky promises to follow the law after Europe’s slap

Public slap in the face European Commission was enough for bluesky make a commitment comply with European Union laws. The social network came under scrutiny yesterday after it was revealed it was not reporting the number of European users, a key requirement of the bloc’s rules.

Now, Bloomberg reports that a Bluesky representative has confirmed this They have already contacted their lawyer to find out how they should comply with the law.. At the moment, it is unknown what measures the platform will take, but everything suggests that it will be able to overcome the bad situation without much inconvenience.

Regulators have confirmed that Bluesky does not exceed 45 million average monthly users in the European Union, which is the threshold for the application of the Digital Services Act. However, since the social network operates on the Old Continent, it has to provide information to ensure transparency of its work.

In particular, the European Commission requires Bluesky to include a web page showing the number of your European users. But not only that; it is also necessary to indicate In which country is it officially registered?.

The latter is because those platforms that are not large enough to be subject to the Digital Services Act to the same extent as other mass services must be regulated by the European Union countries in which they have a legal presence.

This is why the Commission has asked the 27 EU member states to conduct an investigation. if there are records or traces of Bluesky activity in their jurisdiction; for example, offices owned by a social network.

Bluesky must comply with European Union laws

Clearly, Bluesky’s rapid growth in recent weeks has attracted the attention of European regulators. The social network is represented as decentralized version of X and its development began, essentially, in the old Twitter. However, later the project became independent and became a competitor to the platform, which today belongs to Elon Musk.

At this point, Bluesky is a much smaller service than Threads or X themselves. Let’s keep in mind that most of its first year was based on an invite system. It wasn’t until early 2024 that it opened its doors to anyone who wanted to join, and from then on it slowly began to gain momentum.

Bluesky’s latest surge in popularity occurred after Donald Trump won the US presidential election. Many X users were outraged by Musk’s election campaign in favor of the Republican candidate and chose to go into competition.

By the way, this behavior is not new. In recent years every time expected outcome to alternatives such as Mastodon. However, many ended up returning due to the poor visibility of said platform or the inability to connect with people they knew.

It is true that the flight towards Bluesky in recent weeks has been more decisive. The social network has come to add over 1 million new registrations in less than 24 hoursand since the end of October it has grown from approximately 13 million users to 22.7 million worldwide. It remains to be seen whether this dynamic will continue and make it fall under the full scope of the EU Digital Services Act in the future.