Could Blacksky emerge as Black Twitter’s spiritual successor on Bluesky?

As Black users, aka Black Twitter, flee X in unprecedented numbers, a grassroots developer is building what many see as the future of Black social media culture. His platform, Blacksky, gained over 750,000 users in months without venture funding or promotion, operating as an open-source project on the decentralized Bluesky social network.

“I’ve never built something that hit this scale before,” says Rudy Fraser, the Brooklyn-based developer behind Blacksky. “Day one, it was immediately the most popular thing I had ever built. Now it’s just off the walls.”

The timing of Blacksky’s rise is no coincidence. The platform that was once “Black Twitter” – a powerful collective voice that helped drive movements like #BlackLivesMatter (with over 44 million tweets) and #SayHerName – has experienced a dramatic transformation under Elon Musk’s ownership. According to Blacksky’s website, its mission is to provide a platform to amplify, protect, and moderate Black content so users can safely build community online. The project’s purpose is to de-center whiteness as the default and to provide a space for Black people to discuss the Black every day in a way that feels affirming.

The numbers tell a stark story. Over 115,000 accounts were deactivated on X in a single day after the November 2024 election, marking the platform’s largest single-day exodus since Musk’s acquisition. Research shows alarming trends: racial slurs targeting Black people appeared more than 26,000 times – triple the 2022 average – with nearly 3,900 posts per day containing slurs against Black people, compared to the previous average of 1,282.

Multiple factors have driven the exodus. Under Musk’s leadership, X has become what many users describe as increasingly hostile to Black voices. The platform’s default “For You” feed has become flooded with bots and partisan advertisements, making it harder for users to interact with their established communities. Changes to the platform’s blocking features have made it more difficult for users to protect themselves from harassment. At the same time, a new term of service policy mandates that all user content will be used to train artificial intelligence systems, removing previous opt-out options.

“I don’t think that Black Twitter is going to exist within the next couple of years,” Jonathan Johnson, a 29-year-old behavioral therapist and longtime Twitter user, quoted in an NBC story from earlier this month. This sentiment has driven many Black users to seek alternatives, with over a million people joining Bluesky in a week. There is even a project to archive Black Twitter’s content but the cultural significance for future generations.

From Community Organizing to Code

Fraser’s path to creating Blacksky was shaped by his early experiences with technology and community building. Growing up facing housing and food insecurity, he saw firsthand how neighborhoods could sustain themselves when institutions failed.

“From a very young age, I had this concept that in community, you have all that you need,” Fraser explains. This philosophy carried through to his work with mutual aid organizations like We the People NYC, which provides food and clothing in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem.

That same community-first approach informed Blacksky’s development. Rather than seeking venture capital or building a traditional startup, Fraser released the code as open-source from day one. “It’s kind of how the mutual aid networks that I’m part of work – building resilience together,” he says.

A Different Kind of Algorithm

What sets Blacksky apart technically is its innovative use of the AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol), Bluesky’s decentralized social networking standard. Unlike traditional social networks, where a single company controls all user data and interactions, the AT Protocol allows users to own their identity and move their data between apps and services – similar to how email works across different providers.

“Each account is really a website,” Fraser explains. “All your data is stored on a server and you can move that server wherever you want.” This means users aren’t locked into any single platform or company’s control.

The protocol’s open nature allows Blacksky to act as a “firehose consumer,” processing every post, like, and interaction across the network to create curated feeds for different communities.

“We’re saving all that information in the database and then designing the queries that surface that content,” Fraser explains. This gives Blacksky unprecedented control over how content is filtered and displayed – a stark contrast to X’s opaque algorithmic systems that many Black users felt worked against their interests.

But with that power comes responsibility. Fraser now effectively serves as a publisher for over 750,000 subscribers, deciding what content to amplify or suppress. “I feel like I’ve been learning and having conversations about the responsible use of that power,” he says. “What do you show? Why is it wrong to show certain things?”

Safety Through Community

One of Blacksky’s most distinctive features is its approach to content moderation, particularly in addressing two persistent challenges in social media: misogynoir and anti-Black harassment. Rather than relying solely on platform-level moderation, Blacksky employs volunteer moderators with specific expertise in these areas.

Users can report content directly to Blacksky’s moderation team for review, with specialized filters for misogynoir – content that explicitly targets Black women at the intersection of racism and sexism – and anti-Black harassment, which includes derogatory language, harmful stereotypes, and targeted attacks on Black individuals or communities.

“We’re context-aware, Black moderators moderating anti-Black content,” Fraser explains. “We’re very sensitive to it and are able to respond faster than the Bluesky team because they’re handling a bunch of moderation reports from other folks.” This specialized focus allows Blacksky not just to remove harmful content but to prevent bad actors from accessing the feed entirely.

“If you’re anyone and you encounter anti-Black racism or harassment or misogyny anywhere on the Bluesky app, you can choose us as your moderators,” Fraser says. The platform can then take steps beyond simple content removal: “We’re able to prevent them from even seeing the feed. We have these controls to say, this person maybe tried to join the feed – okay, we can take their content out of the feed. They’re harassing people? We can block them from seeing it entirely.”

The platform has seen a dramatic increase in moderation needs as it’s grown, going from 10 reports per week to over 500 daily, with one day reaching 1,000 reports. The growth has been explosive: from an average of 50,000 daily visitors, Blacksky saw traffic surge to over a million views in a single day during a major event, and hasn’t dropped below 600,000 daily views since. Fraser has begun raising donations through Open Collective to compensate volunteer moderators for this crucial work, acknowledging the intense nature of content moderation, particularly around racial trauma.

An Open Future

While other Black-focused social platforms have emerged, most follow traditional startup models focused on eventual monetization through advertising. Fraser sees a different path forward.

“I’ve had really nasty interactions with venture capitalists,” he says. “They need your investment to make up for all the bad ones they’ve made for the last 10 years. I want people in my corner who believe in the long-term vision.”

That vision extends beyond any single platform. Fraser envisions Blacksky’s open-source technology, as enabling other marginalized communities to build safe spaces online. Already, he’s hosting other communities on Blacksky’s infrastructure while letting them maintain their distinct identities.

“Every time the culture moves to a new app, there’s a Black Twitter, there’s Black TikTok, a Black People Reddit section,” Fraser notes. “What if you keep your community and the interface changes?”

As Black Twitter’s future grows uncertain, Blacksky points to a new model for preserving and growing Black digital culture – one built on open source, community ownership, and mutual support rather than venture capital and advertising revenue.

“The beauty of the network is you can choose your adventure,” Fraser says. And for a growing number of users, that adventure leads to Blacksky. You can check out the Blacksky feed here.

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Readers interested in exploring Bluesky can follow the author at @tarikmoody.com and HYFIN at @hyfin.org. For a curated introduction to Black voices on the platform, check out Tarik Moody’s starter pack, which features influential voices, including Pulitzer finalist Soraya Nadia McDonald, acclaimed authors Colson Whitehead and N.K. Jemisin, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, and numerous other thought leaders across academia, journalism, creative arts, and social justice. The pack includes voices like Baratunde, who explores technology and interdependence; Dominique Ramsey, an award-winning Black illustrator; and scholars like Hakeem Jefferson and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who bring expertise in political science and theoretical cosmology, respectively.