'Who's really running your Bluesky' meme
The gist
Bluesky said midterm-night traffic hit 200% of usual and posts and likes doubled the next day.
The meme account behind the gimmick ran it before on Instagram.
How it unfolded
- Nov 4, 2026Before the polls closed on midterm election night, Bluesky posted that it was experiencing "200% of our usual data traffic—and climbing!" and thanked users "for making this a night to remember."
- Nov 5, 2026Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider posted that posts and likes had doubled the previous day and that the platform was "seeing a wave of new people joining and old friends coming back."
- Nov 5, 2026Gizmodo reported that Bluesky shipped a pronouns-in-bios feature the day after the midterms; Bluesky says the timing is a coincidence.
Key terms
- midterm
- US general elections held near the midpoint of a president's four-year term, when all House seats and about a third of Senate seats are contested.
- decentralized
- Describing a system where resources and functions are distributed to individual workstations rather than controlled by one central location.
- liberal bubble
- An online environment where algorithms and personalized feeds surround users mainly with viewpoints that reinforce their own beliefs.
Source: Wikipedia