Bluesky experienced issues today due to a fiber optic cable cut.
The interruption seemed to last about half an hour.
Bluesky is experiencing accelerated growth in its popularity, but today there was a disruption that affected the loading speed of my feeds and notifications, both on the web version and the mobile app, while I was connected. Some colleagues also experienced similar issues. The service outage, which did not impact all users, was attributed to problems with one of Bluesky's internet providers, Cogent Communications, due to a disruption caused by a cut in a fiber cable, according to spokesperson Emily Liu.
On Cogent's status page, it was indicated that "some customers traversing our backbone network from Raleigh/Durham to Richmond, VA, may be experiencing loss of connectivity." It was mentioned that a provider was on-site to "resolve the fiber cut." Liu noted that the Bluesky disruption lasted about 15 to 30 minutes and that the platform's infrastructure "looked fine."
Bluesky developers had previously warned that inconveniences could arise throughout the day, although it seems these issues were not related to the fiber cut. This morning, developer Samuel Newman reported that the site would briefly enter read-only mode due to a failure. After the service was restored, another developer, Paul Frazee, suggested that the day would get "interesting" and recommended that if the site went down again, users should grab a snack or pet their cats. During an outage, Frazee mentioned that messages like "Invalid Handle" could be seen, as well as issues with "likes" or "random errors and blank screens."
Later, on Thursday afternoon, the site faced a second significant outage. After this incident, developer Daniel Holmgren explained that the site's problems were not related to their code, but rather due to the fiber cable cut, connectivity issues with their physical infrastructure provider, and difficulties with Cloudflare's DNS. Holmgren added that these disruptions were occurring "on our highest traffic day yet."
Bluesky surpassed 15 million users yesterday, and the app is currently the most downloaded for free on the App Store. However, Threads remains considerably larger, with over 15 million sign-ups just this month.
