Happy 2026!
We're starting the year thinking about the choices people make. This comes to mind because of an obvious but frustrating observation: our modern social internet didn't accidentally become the depressing, harassing, impersonal sloptrough it is now. People built it this way, feature by feature, choice by choice.
People decided Instagram should mostly stop showing you posts from the accounts you actually follow. People decided it was fine to ship a button on X that can generate nonconsensual porn in seconds. People decided the best version of "digital community" was an infinite feed engineered to keep you irritated and scrolling.
But if the internet got worse because people chose to make it worse, then it can get better by people choosing something else.
So as we head into 2026, we wanted to share a few predictions about what we think people will do online this year, with a taste of how we're building Bluesky to meet them there. We can't know exactly what the next twelve months will look like, but we do believe in one small cheat code:
The best way to predict the future is to help build it.
1. People will post during more live sports and other "you had to be there" events
Last year, baseball reminded us of something social media used to be really good at: providing a way to experience a live event with strangers who instantly feel like friends.
During the World Series alone, Bluesky users posted more than 600,000 times about baseball. And during Game Seven, we saw a 30% bump in traffic. We saw something similar happen during the NYC mayoral election.
So we're predicting more live posting this year. More "did you see that?!" More real-time analysis. More perfectly timed jokes. And we're going to do our part with a new Live Event Feed feature that will create dedicated spaces in the Bluesky app for conversations about live events as they're happening.
No more chasing down a thousand disconnected posts scattered across your timelines. One feed where a moment can become more than the sum of all the people witnessing it.
2. People will click more links
The internet started getting weird when social platforms decided they were the star of the World Wide Web.
They aren't.
They are where people go to share the great things they find (or make!) on the web. All those little digital miracles that make you stop and think, "This is awesome. Someone did this." While other platforms are built to keep you stuck on them as long as possible, we are building Bluesky to be the place to find all those wonderful things, and we think links are essential to that. They are the bloodstream of the internet that carry us to all its marvelous places.
We think that this year, more people are going to remember that. Especially as creators and journalists move to platforms that don't punish them for linking to their work. Or even better: platforms that actually encourage it.
And we're giving that shift a nudge with a simple feature: Live Now, which creators can toggle when they're live on another platform like Twitch or Streamplace. We don't want Bluesky to be a place that locks you away from cool things; we want it to be a place you explore to find them.
Which leads to our next prediction…
3. People will spend less time scrolling (and more time doing cool things they find on Bluesky)
We think of Bluesky as a beach party you stop at before you paddle out to surf the rest of the web.
You show up. You hang out. You crack a few jokes. You meet some smart people. You trade recommendations. And then you spot a wave you can't ignore and head off to catch it.
Maybe it's a news story you actually want to read. Maybe it's a video that makes you laugh out loud. Maybe it's a movie you want to go see in a real theater, with real popcorn, like a human person with a human body. (We just ask that you put your phone away—including our app!—until the credits roll.)
We're predicting more intentional use and less endless scroll as people move away from platforms designed to trap them and toward spaces that are willing to say, plainly: we shouldn't build the internet to consume your life.
4. People will think a little more before they post
In 2025, Bluesky grew to 41 million people. We've watched in real time what happens when a platform grows rapidly while trying to stay true to its ideals: growth puts pressure on everything. On moderation. On trust. On safety. It's hard, collaborative work to keep "open" from turning into "anything goes."
We've put a lot of work into being able to detect and downrank posts that cross the line into being toxic or spammy. As a result, posts being reported for antisocial behavior are down 79%. We take that as a strong sign the vibe is getting better.
Still, we believe good discourse doesn't happen by accident. It happens because the people building a platform show they respect the people who use it. That means giving people control and tools and trusting that they will pause and think before hitting "Post." When that happens, those people in turn choose to care about what they say on the platform. So we'll add features like…
Drafts.
Yes, drafts. We know: "Why did it take so long?" We're still working on a snappy answer to that, but we'll be sure to kick it out of our drafts folder when it's ready.
That's what we're watching for in 2026.
If you have ideas that help make these things real—better live conversations, a more link-friendly web, healthier habits, better posting tools—we want to hear them.
Because people made the internet what it is.
And people can make it better.
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