In brief
- Bluesky’s new AI feed-building app, Attie, has already been blocked more than 125,000 times since launch.
- The total places the account ahead of ICE and the White House, second only to Vice President JD Vance in total user blocks.
- Users responding to the announcement raised concerns about automation, AI training, and the platform’s direction.
A new AI tool launched on Bluesky over the weekend has quickly become one of the most-blocked accounts on the platform, representing a strong anti-AI vibe on the rising social network rival to Elon Musk’s X.
The account for Attie, an experimental feed-building app, has been blocked 125,000 times since it was publicly announced on Saturday, according to data from analytics website ClearSky.
That total places the account second only to U.S. Vice President JD Vance among the platform’s most-blocked profiles. Attie has been blocked by users more than the accounts for the White House and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), both of which have been blocked by more than 100,000 users.
Attie was created by The Atmosphere, a development team led by former CEO Jay Graber, and built using Bluesky’s AT Protocol, the decentralized infrastructure that powers the network and lets developers build interoperable social apps.
At its core, Attie lets users type in a simple description of the type of posts or topics they want in their personalized feed. Using AI, the tool automatically searches for relevant posts across Bluesky and assembles a custom feed that matches the user’s request.
While the launch was framed as a way to make the Bluesky experience better, it drew nearly immediate pushback from some users.
“It would be kinda neat if Attie became the most-blocked account,” wrote author Dani Finn.
“Attie is almost as unpopular as ICE and JD Vance—and it’s only been about 27 hours,” writer and artist Dan Lansdowne wrote late Sunday.
Other users framed the feature as a shift away from what originally attracted them to the platform.
“You guys do realize that most of your user base came here because they wanted to get away from Twitter’s AI right?” illustrator Marco Alfaro commented. “So basically, you guys are turning the only advantage Bluesky had over X, and why most people migrated here. This definitely won’t backfire.”
Others criticized the company’s priorities as the platform grows.
“This always happens when companies start to get bigger, they start to shift more into what they think the market wants rather than fixing issues that still exist on the main platform,” tech YouTuber Sam Thibault wrote.
Unlike Bluesky, X does not make its analytics publicly available, making it unclear how many times an account has been blocked by users.
The surge in blocks reflects Bluesky’s culture, where users often rely on blocking and shared blocklists to filter accounts they don’t want to see. The practice has become a common form of user-driven moderation on the platform. When U.S. Vice President JD Vance joined Bluesky last summer, his account quickly became the most-blocked on the site, still holding that record at 180,684 according to ClearSky.
Bluesky did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
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Source: https://decrypt.co/362721/bluesky-users-revolt-ai-tool-attie-blocking-more-ice-white-house
