On Friday, the White House took the cake with their announcement that they had joined social media platform Bluesky—in step with other federal agencies such as NASA. The new official account absolutely exploded onto the scene with this inaugural post. It combined extremely disturbing trumps GAINZ with a really entertaining mashup of horrible meme warfare. Accompanying the video was a playful message, “What’s up, Bluesky? We thought you might’ve missed some of our greatest hits, so we put this together for you.”
What began with much fanfare soon turned ugly for the White House’s presence on the platform. In under 48 hours the account had become the most blocked account on Bluesky. In the campaign’s last month, it was subject to an estimated 91,000 blocks while only accruing about 10,000 additional followers. As experts pointed out, Vice President JD Vance’s account was created in June. Since then, it has been hit with even greater blocking from constituents.
As the wave of government accounts large and small joined Bluesky in recent months, that was not lost on us. The U.S. Department of State got in on the act and had a huge impact by simply sharing their information in the space. Specifically, Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion, was one of the main people helping to shape the conversations happening on Bluesky.
This state of play has caused quite the uproar from users — especially in right-wing media and right-wing corners. The number of excited accounts whose achievement is going viral while getting heavily ratioed, bragging about this Trump White House. Popular Bluesky users have begun to encourage their followers to “block and move on” when it comes to the White House account. Users are taking more radical steps, and the idea of blocking as a form of protest is gaining currency. This unprecedented collective action belies a deeply encouraging trend in their behavior.
“Weirdly fun to block the White House.” – Paul F Tomkins
Bluesky has earned a reputation as a progressive alternative to Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter). That has led to needless speculation about the reasoning behind the Trump administration’s choice to pursue these social media engagements on this platform. Despite this, as increasingly radical conservative figures like J.D.
Ben Collins expressed his views on the matter, stating, “The reason they’re coming after this place is because they can’t control the people on it and it drives them nuts.” This statement captures the fear of what political discourse is like on what some believe are free speech platforms.
In just a few days, all the newly created government accounts surged into the top five most blocked accounts on Bluesky. This bottom line data is derived from a year’s worth of aggregated statistics monitored through ClearSky. This phenomenon opens up important questions around user engagement and political expression in digital spaces.
The Trump administration appears to be following a very similar strategy in practice on Bluesky. People are definitely watching how these dynamics will play out. Further analysis of the user base reveals a troubling connection between political allegiance and socially-disruptive behaviors.
