The social networking startup Bluesky is not letting the moment go to waste. While moderation issues are still plaguing rival X service Instagram Threads, the decentralized X competitor Bluesky has signed up for Meta's newest service. This way, the startup will try to cash in on the conversations now taking place on Threads following a number of users vowing to quit the service and head to Bluesky in response to this latest batch of problems.

On Wednesday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said the company was looking into the network's moderation issues, but no solution has yet materialised. Nor has Instagram explained what prompted people to have their Threads' posts downranked and blocked-or their accounts removed or falsely flagged as belonging to minors. But many suspect the company is relying on AI moderation systems, which are probably misfiring.

When the conversation about leaving Threads for Bluesky started gaining steam, Bluesky signed up for an account and then messaged Threads users, cheekily writing: "Heard people were talking about us … so we created an account to share some more information!

Then the company explained several key ways that Bluesky differs from Threads when it comes to moderation: like nearly every other social network, it does have a moderation team, and they operate within a framework of community guidelines. The team notes, however, that it will not de-rank content if it is about politics — something Meta actively chose to avoid ahead of contentious U.S. election season.

In February, Meta said that it would stop making recommendations of political content on its platform across Threads and Instagram, saying that users would only see such material in their feeds if they pursued the streams actively, and decided to follow accounts with which they agreed politically. The move sparked a backlash among creators that saw hundreds sign a letter regarding Meta's decision, saying this move to limit the reach of such material "endangers the reach of marginalized folks speaking to their own lived experience on Meta's platforms."

Furthermore, Bluesky has described Threads on how it's different from any other social networks by bringing in the "open stackable ecosystem" which implies that the opportunity of independent organizations publishing their own moderation tools that users can opt-into in order to filter their feed to their personal preferences exists.

Also, the company cited its commitment to open source code, account portability, and algorithmic choice and shared one of its starter packs (account suggestions of who to follow).

Whether the promised exodus from Threads will really make much difference for either social network remains to be seen. Threads may fix the moderation issues long before any of the departures become a meaningful number. Although Threads users can still sign up to Bluesky for a test drive, they may choose not to stay given the fact that the network in question is still much smaller than Threads, which has now reached as high as 10.7 million users, and the latter now posts over 200 million active users on a monthly basis.

Others may still want to stay on Threads despite the present issues. For these, it is because they are still bitter over the years that Bluesky remained an invite-only social network and joked about being very consistent in saying they are still waiting for their invitation.

Even if it cannot bring hundreds of thousands of Threads users to its service, as it did when X was banned in Brazil, it'll still win from the user feedback it's gathering. For instance, from the hundreds of replies it receives, people point to the need for better threading on the Bluesky app and to connectivity with ActivityPub, the protocol powering Mastodon and soon, Threads, when it fully federates.

Bluesky responded with, "We are reading all the feedback you have and taking notes," along with a link to download its app.

Bluesky also announced in Threads a few other features in the next version of its app: pinned posts, support for search language filtering, customizable options for font and text size, and more.