Is Bluesky Down Again?
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| Is Bluesky Down |
Bluesky Users Say App Not Loading, Feed Inaccessible
On Wednesday, February 26, 2025, Bluesky, the social media platform that gained popularity as an alternative to X (formerly Twitter), experienced a significant outage. Thousands of users reported issues accessing the platform, with reports peaking at over 4,000 on Down Detector, a service that monitors online outages.
The outage began around 4:25 PM and lasted approximately 34 minutes, as documented by Down for Everyone or Just Me, another outage tracking service. During this period, users from various countries, including the United States, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom, reported difficulties accessing Bluesky, receiving error messages, or experiencing slow performance. The majority of these reports (83%) indicated that the platform was entirely inaccessible.
Despite the widespread disruption, Bluesky's official status page did not provide immediate updates regarding the incident.
This outage occurred amid a surge of new users joining Bluesky, following changes implemented by Elon Musk on X. The influx of users may have contributed to the platform's technical difficulties. In the past, Bluesky users have encountered issues such as "invalid handle" errors, which the platform attributed to infrastructure upgrades.
As of now, Bluesky has not released an official statement detailing the cause of the outage or the measures taken to prevent future incidents.
Bluesky Outages in the Past
Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform, has experienced several outages in the past, often coinciding with significant surges in user activity. Notably, in November 2024, the platform faced a partial outage due to a fiber cut by one of its internet providers, Cogent Communications. This incident occurred during a period of unprecedented user growth, with Bluesky gaining over 2.5 million new users in a single week, bringing its total to 16 million. The influx was largely attributed to users migrating from X (formerly Twitter) following the U.S. presidential election results.
In addition to the fiber cut, Bluesky encountered other technical challenges during this time, including networking issues from its bare metal provider and Cloudflare DNS problems. These complications arose independently of the increased user traffic but collectively contributed to service disruptions.
Earlier in August 2023, users reported encountering "invalid handle" errors on their profiles. This issue was linked to Bluesky's infrastructure upgrades and was resolved by users re-verifying their handles through the platform's settings.
These incidents highlight the growing pains associated with Bluesky's rapid expansion. The platform's user base has continued to swell, surpassing 24 million users by December 2024. This growth has necessitated swift infrastructural enhancements, including the expedited acquisition of additional servers to maintain service stability.
As Bluesky continues to evolve, addressing technical challenges promptly and effectively remains crucial to ensuring a reliable user experience amidst its expanding community.
