Why are NYC agencies being directed to launch Bluesky accounts?

New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ office has told all city government agencies to set up accounts on Bluesky, the fast-growing social media alternative to X. The reasoning behind the move is not necessarily political.

A city government social media staffer told The New York Daily News anonymously that a number of municipal employees had complained internally about staying on X after the US presidential election.

Indeed, many organizations and individuals are leaving X, where hate speech and aggressive trolling is tolerated. The day after Trump’s Nov 5th victory, more than 115,000 X users in the United States deactivated their accounts.

Among those who have left are The Guardian newspaper and ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon. The legendary writer Stephen King said: “I'm leaving Twitter. Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic.”

German soccer club St.Pauli is also leaving X, saying the platform, owned by Elon Musk, has become a “hate machine.”

“Since taking over Twitter, as the platform was previously known, Musk has converted X into a hate machine. Racism and conspiracy theories are allowed to spread unchecked and are even curated. Insults and threats are seldom sanctioned and are sold as freedom of speech,” the club said in a statement on its website.

However, New York City isn’t actually walking away from X, and Adams’ office didn’t make any reference to there being a political reason behind the directive to set up accounts on Bluesky.

In fact, Mayor Adams is a pretty conservative Democrat who praised Trump’s relationship with Musk. The owner of X, SpaceX, and Tesla will co-lead a new commission called Department of Government Efficiency.

As Bluesky keeps growing and adding hundreds of thousands of new users each day, the main purpose for the NYC move is to limit the risk that could arise from people setting up spoof Bluesky accounts in the names of city agencies.

A government-wide email, obtained by The New York Daily News, said that agencies should simply set up Bluesky accounts but not begin posting on them yet.

Bluesky, a microblogging social media platform, reached the 15 million user mark on Wednesday and is adding at least 700,000 new users per day. For a few days now, the app has been number one in the iOS app store, ahead of Meta’s Threads, ChatGPT, and the Google app.