European Central Bank joins Bluesky, rival to Elon Musk’s X

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By Francesco Canepa

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The European Central Bank began posting on the Bluesky micro-blogging platform on Monday, joining a rival to Elon Musk’s X just as the U.S. billionaire ramps up his political campaigning in Europe.

Bluesky is one of a slew of sites trying to unseat the platform formerly known as Twitter since Musk bought it and started using it to advance his political agenda, most recently urging Germans to vote for a far-right party.

A spokesperson for the ECB said the central bank was seeking “to diversify (its) social media presence” and had started using several new platforms last year, making Bluesky “only the latest such addition”.

The ECB kicked off its Bluesky activity by sharing an interview with chief economist Philip Lane. This was also posted on X, which the ECB spokesperson said it would continue to use.

Musk helped Donald Trump win last year’s U.S. presidential election but his platform was criticised by misinformation experts for enabling the spread of falsehoods during the campaign.

Last week, Musk hosted the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party on X, in a conversation that the European Commission said it would monitor for any spread of misinformation.

He has also thrown his weight behind Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The ECB, under President Christina Lagarde, has made gender equality and the fight against climate change a key part of its mission.

Musk has spoken out against diversity, equity and inclusion policies. While claiming to “have done more for the environment than any single human on earth”, he supports Trump who has called climate change a hoax.

A crypto enthusiast, Musk has been critical of the Federal Reserve, saying on X the Fed was “absurdly overstaffed” and resharing a senator’s post calling for it to be abolished altogether.

Several well-known organisations and personalities, including British news publisher the Guardian have left X. Bluesky added 2.5 million users in the week after Trump was elected and it enjoyed a spike in activity.

Still, with just 27 million users, Bluesky is far smaller than its rivals. Threads has about 252 million monthly active users on its mobile app, while X has about 317 million, according to Sensor Tower data.

European Union regulators said last year Bluesky was violating EU rules by failing to disclose important details, such as how many user numbers it had in the bloc.

(Additional reporting by David Milliken and Andy Bruce in London; Editing by Christina Fincher)