The White House joins Bluesky

The Trump administration functionally rules via decrees on social media, and extensively relies on social media for validation of their policies and proposals. The actions of the regime are done to a significant extent precisely because of how it will be perceived on social media. Like other fascist regimes, terror is a core part of how the regime projects power. Violence itself only becomes terror when it can be packaged into a message to distribute to the population. US government agencies heavily rely on X for the distribution of their messages of terror, from creating ASMR videos of deportation to sharing the videos of missile strikes on fishing boats in Venezuela. As X radicalises more and more into a place for regime supporters, the platform starts to lose effectiveness for projecting violence. It becomes more important for the administration to find the (digital) places where their political opponents gather, to spread their message of hate.

In this context, it is little surprise that dozens of US government agencies all joined Bluesky at the same time, including the White House, the Department of State, and more. When over a month ago, pundits like Noah Smith and Nate Silver started writing about Bluesky and 'Blueskyism', they shaped the opinion of what Bluesky is. To them, Bluesky is a place for leftists scolds. I wrote about their articles:

It sets up a permission structure where Bluesky is seen as a left and democratic space. This is what makes both articles relevant. I think their arguments are petty and show that they have not grappled with the subject matter well, but that matters little: it is a major contributor to the idea that Bluesky is a ‘left’ space.

We're now seeing the direct impact of this: Bluesky is seen as 'left' space, a place where the political opponents of the Trump administration gather. And that is the perfect destination for a regime that rules via social media trolling.

By and large, people on Bluesky understands the game that the administration is playing. Their goal for joining Bluesky is to spread the message of terror and fear, as illustrated by the Department of State posting that "this is a great place to research visa revocations 👀". The best way to counter this strategy is to starve the accounts of oxygen, and limit their attention and reach as much as possible. The calls on the network where loud and wide to 'block and move on', to prevent the US regime accounts from getting the attention they crave. The White House is already one of the most blocked accounts on the network after a few days (behind vice president JD Vance, who joined a few months earlier), and blocking and starving trolls from attention works to a certain extent, but there are problems that go beyond that.

By joining Bluesky, the government agencies are actively contributing to the perception that Bluesky is not a 'left' place. The logic is fairly simple, it is harder to be perceived as a 'left' place when a fascist government is actively posting on the platform.

For queer people, the Black community and other communities who shaped Bluesky's culture, the platform's identity isn't abstract concept to write Pundit Thought Pieces about. It's the difference between a space that's for them and their community, and one where they have to share a digital place with a government that wants many of them dead or deported. They joined Bluesky as a place they could joyfully be themselves. Bluesky as a politically neutral place isn't what they're interested in. This goes beyond the direct impact on safety that the presence of various government agencies creates (although that's important too). The core point is not wanting to share the same digital place with this administration. There are clear parallels with how people on Bluesky are upset with the decision not to ban Jesse Singal: the argument is just as much about not wanting to share a digital place as it is about his specific wrongdoings on the platform.

At the same time, Bluesky presenting itself as a "Twitter-alternative" works much better if a wide variety of political governments are present on the platform. Bluesky's current user base is indeed largely people on the left of the political spectrum. The presence of the White House on Bluesky provides a good counter for the company to point to, when potential groups are hesitant to join the platform because they feel that it is a niche platform for a specific political group only. It fits in with the larger viewpoint of Bluesky PBC. In an interview with Wired , interviewer Kate Knibbs asked Jay Graber point-blank: "Would you welcome President Trump?" Graber's answer is clear:

"Yeah—Bluesky’s for everyone, and we think that over time, the broader public conversation needs to be on an open protocol. That lets people choose their own moderation preferences. We think that it’s flexible enough to serve every use case and everyone."

The presence of the Trump administration on Bluesky creates a precarious situation for Bluesky however: The risk of political action taken against Bluesky is real, and can take various forms. There is the risk of a crackdown on places that are associated with Democrats and the left , a risk that Trump might lash out against anything he decides to get mad about that day, and a head of the FCC that seems excited to be crack down on what he calls the "censorship cartel", where he has made clear his intention to use whatever regulatory tools available to pressure platforms he believes are suppressing conservative viewpoints.

The administration's accounts are clearly daring Bluesky to take action against them, likely hoping to play the victim in whatever drama follows. It feels like only a matter of time before an account breaks the rules, and when that happens, Bluesky faces an impossible choice: take action and risk political retaliation, or do nothing and face the backlash from a user base that already feels insufficiently protected. Bluesky's relationship with its users over past moderation decisions has been tumultuous, to put it mildly. If government accounts get a pass when they break the rules, that tension will only intensify.

Bluesky board member Mike Masnick has written extensively how content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, calling it the Masnick's Impossibility Theorem . Masnick's argument focuses on moderation being an inherently subjective practice, and at social media scale, that subjectivity makes doing it well impossible. The presence of an authoritarian regime on the platform with the purpose of trolling only makes the Impossiblity Theorem all the more impossible.