...The paradox of Bluesky.The platform’s explosive growth after last year’s election has dwindled to marginal pre-election numbers, but everyone from pundit Nate Silver to Vice President JD Vance seems to find it important enough that they’ve been talking about that stalled growth for months and months.
Worryingly, that same paradox is supporting the entire creator economy right now. There is clearly a disconnect between the engagement figures that keep the money flowing and the wheels turning, and the reality of whether those numbers reflect anyone (viewers or creators) actually giving a shit.
That’s why I thought it was important to mention on Monday that consistently, around 5-10% of all the most popular posts on Bluesky are sexy cartoons. That matters because they exist completely outside of this paradigm — advertiser-unfriendly, completely free of AI, with all its engagement reflecting people who asked for it and enjoy it. A recent survey from Meltwater bears this out, finding that online conversation about Bluesky has almost 10-times the volume of conversation that Meta’s Threads generates, which consistently puts up much bigger engagement numbers than Bluesky does.
And even though I doubt much of that conversation about Bluesky concerns hentai, its consistency shows the priorities of the platform and its users. Though, I do think it’s worth talking about how hard Bluesky’s most visionary perverts are working to hornify the bugs from Hollow Knight: Silksong. At time of writing, more than 80% of the top results for “Hornet,” the game’s main character, is art that renders her much sexier than she is in the game. Is this the kind of growth we should be tracking?
https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/top-niche-social-networks-2025