Since at least February, the White House had considered creating a Bluesky account. What began as talk of setting up an experimental account turned into a more strategic decision last week. As the government continued into shutdown, members of the White House’s digital team decided to take its shutdown messaging to the predominantly left-wing platform as part of a coordinated blitz with several other federal agencies that officials described as an effort to “reach all audiences.”
“It should be the purpose of the government to communicate to the American public everywhere as often as possible,” says a White House official, who spoke to WIRED under the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the decision. The White House is now on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Truth Social, TikTok, YouTube, and X. “We’re just going to be there in as many places as possible because, as evident by the president’s ethos and his attitude and the sheer volume of open press stuff we do, we want to be as transparent as humanly possible and reach as many people as possible,” says the official.
But what they attempted to position as bridge-building quickly looked something akin more like trench warfare. Instead of conscientious outreach across the aisle, the Trump administration’s Bluesky launch mixed trolling and partisan messaging, creating instant backlash.
“Give us a follow so we can update you on how the Democrats’ partisan shutdown is harming America’s national security,” read one of the State Department’s first posts on the platform. “We also heard this is a great place to research visa revocations.”
“We are new here,” the Department of the Interior said in one of its first posts on Friday. “Anyone want to talk about how climate change isn’t the biggest threat to our country and that it’s actually losing the AI arms race to China?”
The account for the Department of Homeland Security launched its account with a video compilation that included a clip of Bluesky CEO Jay Graber saying that the platform was for “everyone.” The clip was in response to a question posed by a WIRED reporter earlier this year about whether Bluesky would allow President Donald Trump to make an account. The DHS account has also responded to posts critical of the agency with messages urging users to “Report criminal illegal aliens: 866-DHS-2-ICE.”
Asked about the tone of these posts, a White House official suggests the administration is using the same voice they’ve used online all year. “This is how we speak across the board,” the official says. “We’ve been very consistent in our messaging on this.” The Trump administration has spent the year leaning into memes and trollish behavior on platforms like X. On Saturday, Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself to Truth Social piloting a fighter jet that dumped feces on “No Kings” protestors and liberal content creator Harry Sisson. It’s not just Trump and the White House either: DHS has celebrated its notorious deportation strategy online through memes and more recently, the agency has engaged with right-wing influencers like Benny Johnson to create content supporting immigration officials on the ground in American cities.
The coordinated launch sparked backlash from Bluesky’s user base, which created and shared lists making it easier for others to block all of the administration’s accounts at once. As of Tuesday, a dozen of the 20 most blocked accounts were created by the Trump administration last week.
The White House account has drawn only around 12,000 followers. More than 100,000 users have the account blocked, according to Bluesky block-tracking site Clearsky, making the White House the second most blocked Bluesky user. Vice president JD Vance, who registered in June, still holds the title of the most blocked account, with more than 166,000 users blocking him.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED, but the White House official brushed off the criticism. “That’s fine. Nobody can ever say we’re not attempting to be transparent or attempting to communicate to as many people as possible. That’s the name of the game.”
According to an administration official who was granted anonymity to speak freely, the decision to launch all of the accounts at once was deliberate. “It’s not like we chose a specific date for a singular reason,” the official tells WIRED. “Doing it all at once makes it more of like a statement versus doing it piecemeal.”
“This is an opportunity for us to reach a big segment of the American population that we traditionally are not reaching even on traditional social media platforms,” the administration official says.
There was some confusion about the Bluesky verification process for these agencies as well, as representatives from the Trump administration reached out about the process on Thursday, sources tell WIRED. The administration decided to launch the accounts before hearing back from Bluesky. According to the White House official, the process was “pretty simple.”
“We welcome The White House and other government agencies to Bluesky,” a Bluesky spokesperson told WIRED. “We reached out to them right as they joined and verified their accounts.”
Billy McLaughlin, former White House director of digital content, defended the administration’s decision to join Bluesky. “The rollout was seamless, the intro video landed perfectly, and the digital strategy remains one of the most sophisticated in modern politics,” McLaughlin says.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: wired.com
