Last weekend, an ugly rumor of a tragic death began rocketing around Bluesky. What made it odd was the identity of the dearly departed: Bluesky itself.

It’s not entirely clear what prompted this discussion, which ultimately seemed to be dominated by Bluesky fans rejecting the possibility that the social network had died (or at least jumped the shark). According to one theory, a story by Semafor’s Max Tani ignited the debate by mentioning Democratic congressional staffers who’d given up on Bluesky “after their bosses kept getting yelled at by Democratic users angry at their impotence.” That doesn’t sound like evidence of death to me. Another contributing factor might have been slowing user growth after millions of disaffected Twitter users arrived en masse in the wake of the U.S. November presidential election results and Elon Musk’s Trump boosterism. The service grew from 11 million users to 25 million between late October and mid-December, but has added only about 10 million more since then. Again, not a sign of rigor mortis or even a dreaded vibe shift.

For a social network, being prematurely written off is a rite of passage. It’s even a compliment of sorts—a sign that people are paying attention and care. Way back in 2014, for instance, when Twitter was still ascendant, I wrote about the fact that cranky users had started predicting its demise less than a year after it launched in 2006. So when I chatted with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber this week, I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t seem fazed by the debate on her platform and saw the parallels with early-days Twitter.

“Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated,” she told me. “It’s a similar thing, because with social sites, it’s not straight up all the time. [Growth] comes in waves, and at each stage, there’s a new era of communities being established and formed. We’re still seeing a lot of community formation, and one of the most exciting things is how structurally different this is. It’s not just another social site that has to be a singular winner-take-all in an ecosystem with existing incumbents.”