Bluesky appeared to crash on empire eroticeThursday amid a surge in users as they apparently fled Elon Musk's X / Twitter.

A status page for the Twitter alternative said some systems were down as of about 5:15 p.m. ET. Down Detector saw a bit of a spike in reports at the same time.

It's not yet clear how widespread the issue is, but the app was not loading for me on both desktop and the app on my phone. When I went to the site or app all I got was a spinning circle, as if it were trying to load. Down Detector showed a large spike in reports of issues earlier Thursday as well.

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It's perhaps expected that Bluesky might have issues. Amid Musk's high-profile support for President-elect Donald Trump lots of users made an exodus for Bluesky. It skyrocketed to the top of Apple's App Store, adding approximately 100,000 users per day since last week's election.

• Bluesky hits #1 on the App Store as users continue to flee Elon Musk's X
• X rival Bluesky sees more than 700,000 new users after the U.S. election
• Bluesky is developing paid subscriptions — but will always be free to use, it says
• Bluesky gains half a million new users in one day after X changes how blocking works
• Stephen King is ditching X for Threads

With all that added traffic, it might not be a surprise that Bluesky would have some growing pains.