Bluesky — Jack Dorsey’s alternative to X (formerly Twitter) — has been quietly ramping up, recently opening for general public sign-ups while adding hashtag support and the ability for users to host their own servers. The company last month appointed Aaron Rodericks to the newly created position of head of trust and safety, a title he held at Twitter before Elon Musk purchased it and decimated the division (which he now co-heads with X CEO Linda Yaccarino). The technical updates will make it easier for users to sort threads for topics of interest and takes a big step toward federation and allowing users to freely move their accounts.

The more general changes — like opening to general membership and the addition of trust and safety monitoring — seem designed to segue what The Washington Post calls “a trendy rival to X” to take on Meta Platforms’ Threads as well as to set the table for the fall presidential election.

“Hashtag support — which became a key metric of a topic’s importance on Twitter and a table-stakes feature at other social networks — has rolled out on Bluesky,” though it is not the usual “click-here” implementation, PCMag points out, explaining that “a click or tap on a Bluesky hashtag lets you choose between seeing all posts with that tag, seeing all of the current user’s posts with that hashtag, or muting that hashtag entirely if you’re bored, tired, or offended by the topic behind it.”

The updates come to Bluesky’s web and mobile apps, including Android and iOS.

Another notable change occurred on February 6, when Bluesky opened for general public sign-ups, nine months after its invite-only beta rollout in May 2023. On February 22, 2024, Bluesky announced it was launching on a test basis the federation feature that will allow users to transfer accounts in and out of the app.

PCMag says Bluesky has taken “a step beyond the portability” offered by the other social federation standard-bearer, Mastodon, where “you can choose different servers but can’t take your old posts or username between them.” Both X and Threads are closed eco-systems.

Bluesky is “opening up early access for users and developers who want to self-host their data,” The Verge writes, noting that “the social network is letting users run their own servers, with guardrails” on its AT Protocol.

“While this isn’t true federation yet, the company plans to open up federation to larger servers with even more users in its next phase,” The Verge reports, concluding that the end result will be that “when the dust settles, anyone can (in theory) create their own server with their own rules.”