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Billionaire Mark Cuban, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and author Stephen King are all now on Bluesky. The social media platform is the brainchild of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who conceived Bluesky as a side project inside Twitter in 2019. Bluesky, which is no longer affiliated with Dorsey, is now its own company, and following the U.S. election, the platform saw an influx of new users, most of who were looking to flee X. Bluesky now has over 28 million users, according to the company.

“The growth numbers for Bluesky are wild, and I think it’s really because there’s this vacuum being left by old Twitter,” says Meghana Dhar, a strategic advisor and former head of partnerships at Instagram and Snap Inc. “When Elon Musk took over Twitter and it kind of became X, things changed a lot, right? Content moderation changed. He changed the pricing options. So as he kind of navigated that transition, he lost a lot of people.”

“This is a platform that now seems to cater more pointedly toward right leaning or conservative users,” said Salvador Rodriguez, deputy tech editor at CNBC. “For folks who maybe don’t want to be presented with that kind of content so in their face, Bluesky is an area that, for all intents and purposes, the mechanisms are the same, but the vibe is completely different.”

Bluesky looks and feels a lot like old Twitter. Users can write short posts and include a photo or short video. They can also interact with others’ posts by commenting, liking or reposting. Users’ feeds consist of people they follow, as well as any other feeds they decide to subscribe to. But unlike conventional social media platforms, Bluesky is designed to be decentralized and give users a greater degree of control over their data and what content they do or don’t see.

“We don’t control what you see on Bluesky … There’s no single algorithm showing you things. You can browse a marketplace of algorithms built by other people. You can build your own algorithm if you want to see just cats or just art, you can do that,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said in an interview with CNBC in November. Bluesky also allows users to export out any of their posts, likes and followers to other platforms should they choose to leave Bluesky. Graber has said this makes the platform “billionaire-proof.“

Bluesky currently does not host ads, which is the business model of most social media platforms, but its leadership has not ruled that out as possibility in the future.

“I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization. We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you and locking users in,” Graber said. “That’s not our model. And so what we are going to do is give users better experiences, add new features, and then we’re doing a subscription model as well as services in the developer ecosystem. Because this isn’t just for users, this is for people who want to come build.”

But building a social media platform is no easy feat. Like many platforms before it, Bluesky has struggled with an increase of impersonator accounts and scammers as it’s grown. Bluesky recently said that users submitted 6.48 million reports to its moderation service in 2024, compared to 358,000 reports submitted in 2023. Watch the video to find out more about Bluesky’s impressive growth and the challenges facing the company in an increasingly fragmented social media market.

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Joby lawsuit accuses air taxi rival Archer of using stolen information to ‘one-up’ deal

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November 20, 2025

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Joby lawsuit accuses air taxi rival Archer of using stolen information to 'one-up' deal

An electric air taxi by Joby Aviation flies near the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 12, 2023.

Roselle Chen | Reuters

Air taxi maker Joby Aviation in a new lawsuit accused competitor Archer Aviation of using stolen information by a former employee to “one-up” a partnership deal with a real estate developer.

“This is corporate espionage, planned and premeditated,” Joby said in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in a California Superior Court in Santa Cruz, where the company is based.

Archer and Joby did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The lawsuit alleges that former U.S. state and local policy lead, George Kivork, downloaded dozens of files and sent some content to his personal email two days before he resigned in July to take a job at Archer, which had recruited him.

By August, Joby said a partner that worked with Kivork said it had been approached by Archer with a “more lucrative deal.” Joby alleges that the eVTOL rival’s understanding of “highly confidential” details helped it leverage negotiations.

Joby also said the developer attempted to terminate the agreement, citing a breach of confidentiality.

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Kivork refused to return the files when Joby approached him after conducting an investigation, according to the suit. The company also said Archer denied wrongdoing, and would not disclose how it learned about the terms of the agreement or provide results from an internal investigation it allegedly undertook.

The lawsuit comes during a busy period for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) technology as companies race to gain Federal Aviation Administration certification to start flying commercially. ‘

The sector has also benefitted from President Donald Trump‘s newly minted eVTOL pilot program.

Joby argued in the complaint that it’s “imperative” to protect Joby’s work “from this type of espionage” to promote the sector’s success and ensure fair competition.

Last week, Joby said it completed its first test flight for a hybrid aircraft it’s working on with defense contractor L3Harris. This month, Amazon-backed Beta Technologies, another electric flight company, also went public on the New York Stock Exchange.

Joby shares have more than doubled over the last year, while Archer is up about 68%.

In August 2023, Archer settled a previous legal dispute with Boeing-owned Wisk Aero over the alleged theft of trade secrets. As part of the deal, Archer agreed to use Wisk as its autonomous tech partner.

A hearing is scheduled for March 20, 2026.

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Joby and Archer year-to-date stock chart.

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Jobs data muddies the picture for a December rate cut, while the Nvidia rally fizzles

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6 hours ago

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November 20, 2025

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Jobs data muddies the picture for a December rate cut, while the Nvidia rally fizzles

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Bitcoin falls to lowest level since April

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7 hours ago

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November 20, 2025

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Bitcoin falls to lowest level since April

Andriy Onufriyenko | Moment | Getty Images

Bitcoin dropped on Thursday to levels not seen in more than six months, as investors appeared to pull back exposure to riskier assets and weighed the prospects of another Federal Reserve rate cut next month.

The flagship digital currency fell to as low as $86,325.81, its lowest level since April 21. It last traded at $86,690.11.

The release of stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs data raised questions about whether the central bank would lower its benchmark overnight rate. The U.S. economy added 119,000 in September, well above the 50,000 economists polled by Dow Jones expected.

That report sent the probability of a December rate cut to around 40%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Bitcoin’s pullback formed part of a broader cryptocurrency market decline. XRP was last down 2.3% on the day, and is below $2.00, while ether shed more than 3% to trade well below $3,000. Dogecoin was unchanged.

The world’s oldest crypto also led stocks lower, even after a blockbuster Nvidia earnings report. Traders who are heavily invested in AI-related stocks tend to also hold bitcoin, linking the two trades.

Bitcoin’s price has largely slid since a rash of cascading liquidations of highly leveraged crypto positions in early October.

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