'Amateur hour': Uproar as Vance instantly banned from Bluesky — then reinstated
Vice President JD Vance was banned from Bluesky within minutes of joining the social media platform regarded as an oasis for wayward progressives disillusioned by Elon Musk and rival platform X. But Vance's suspension was quickly lifted.
"Just set up my page on @bluesky, hope to see you guys there!" Vance wrote on X, attaching screenshots of his first posts on Bluesky.
X users immediately flocked to Bluesky only to discover Vance's account was immediately suspended. Axios reporter Marc Caputo clocked the suspension at around 12 minutes.
"Vance got banned on Bluesky within 12 minutes of announcing on X that he was there," wrote Caputo on X. "Update: the ban appears to have been reversed[.] He had posted a thread supporting Justice Thomas’s concurrence in the Supreme Court case upholding Tennessee’s law restricting transgender therapies."
Andrew Kaczynski of CNN's KFILE confirmed BlueSky "unsuspended JD Vance’s account."
Reaction was swift, with some celebrating the immediate ban and others slamming the platform for the decision.
"J.D. Vance joined @bluesky, but not the way a sitting @VP should. Seems like amateur hour. His team should have contacted @arcalinea & @safety team, & set up a @verified account through his website. (He was briefly suspended.) I bet he passes Singal as the most-blocked account," chided Alexander B. Howard, a writer and open government advocate.
"I can’t stand JD Vance. But suspending the sitting vice president is exactly why Bluesky is unserious & doomed to fail. If you claim to care about real debate, you can’t wall yourself off from everyone outside the progressive bubble—esp someone who might be president one day," wrote Billy Binion, reporter at Reason.
In a separate post, he added: "It really amazes me how many people want to live in an echo chamber. You don’t have to like someone to think it’s worth hearing them out—or to recognize it matters what they’re saying. Only engaging only with stuff you agree with sounds...so boring."
Rotimi Adeoye, contributor at MSNBC, wrote, "Vance knew joining would get him suspended, which only fuels the narrative that Democrats are illiberal. It’s exactly why Bluesky is unbearable, just the worst instincts of post-2020 Democratic culture in one place."
Adeoye slammed X in a follow-up post, writing, "Honestly this place is awful."
"Misinformation spreads unchecked, antisemitic accounts thrive. At the same time the most insufferable Democrats left Twitter just to recreate their illiberal bubbleo BlueSky. Every platform is starting to feel broken in its own way."
He added: "And the irony is, for all the talk about 'saving democracy,' a lot of these folks can’t handle basic disagreement: the root of democracy. They want curated consensus, not real debate."