Conspiracy theorists are suddenly convinced that Bluesky, the social media platform that’s skyrocketed in popularity since President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, is a secret haven for pedophilia.
In posts all across X in recent days, far-right users have conjured up conspiracy theories that suggest Bluesky is somehow involved in widespread child abuse.
In one popular example, users claim that Bluesky chose a butterfly for its logo given that the winged insect has also been referenced by pedophiles.
FBI documents obtained by WikiLeaks in 2016 indicate that a butterfly is used by child abusers who wish to signal that they do not have a gender preference for their victims.
“The logo for the BlueSky social media site is a butterfly,” @mommapancakess wrote. “Now where have I seen that before?”
A similar claim was shared after a right-wing user claimed they were banned from the site.
“There are no coincidences,” they wrote, comparing the logo of “Democrats’ newest app” to the FBI material.
A Community Note on X responded, saying “It’s a [expetive] butterfly.”
Many are also pointing to a statement from Bluesky’s safety team on Friday as evidence for the conspiracy theory.
The team noted that with millions of new users, reports regarding content in violation of the platform’s terms of service have also risen.
“In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day),” Bluesky wrote. “We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports.”
Bluesky followed up by noting that it would take action on the most serious violations first, such as those related to Child Sexual Abuse Material, also known as CSAM.
“We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as CSAM is removed quickly,” Bluesky said.
Despite the fact that all social media platforms deal with CSAM, especially X, conspiracy theorists were quick to frame Bluesky’s statement in a nefarious light.
“BlueSky, the X/Twitter alternative for the far-left wing extremists, has already become a cesspool of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), spam, scams and trolling… with users submitting nearly 2000 reports per hour of harmful content,” @myuzumaki_com wrote.
The allegations follow the same playbook as Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that falsely claimed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was involved with a child trafficking ring at a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C.
“This must be a coincidence,” @TheQuartering added. “Triggered leftists flock to new platform bluesky from X, and the platform is immediately inundated with more child p*rn than it can effectively moderate.
In reality, Bluesky’s statement did not say that it has been inundated with CSAM, only that it was prioritizing removing such content from among the thousands of almost certainly unrelated complaints.
Platforms such as X and Facebook, given their size, have much more CSAM violations than Bluesky as well.
When Elon Musk took over X, he made numerous claims about cracking down on rampant child abuse material that have failed to materialize.
While Bluesky is open to all, the platform’s users have made it clear that they are uninterested in welcoming over the worst posters from X.
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