Breaking
Bumble is in advanced talks to go private in a deal worth about $1 billion, Reuters reported on Monday, October 12, 2026. Ithaca Holdings is the prospective buyer. The talks come as Bumble tries to win back users with AI. Neither company has confirmed a deal. Both declined to comment. Still, Bumble shares surged roughly 50% to $3.80 that Monday, their biggest one-day percentage gain on record. A $1 billion price tag for a $14 billion debut Founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2014, Bumble went public in 2021 at a valuation of about $14 billion. Five years later, the proposed price tells a very different story. Paolo Pescatore, an analyst for PP Foresight, said the potential agreement is proof of Bumble’s difficulties, adding that: Going private looks less like a strategic masterstroke and more like an admission that Bumble’s current strategy is failing. The numbers a buyer would inherit Bumble’s Q2 results indicate the reasons for the investors’ concerns. Its revenue declined by 15.2% year-over-year to $210.5 million. The number of paying users also dropped by 16.4% to 3.2 million. Bumble reported a net loss of $127.9 million of which $169.3 million were impairment charges, even though the adjusted EBITDA represented $72.9 million. The slide started earlier. In 2025, the company registered a near 10% drop in revenue that amounted to approximately $966 million, while its paying user base declined by more than 11% to approximately 3.7 million. Bumble Revenue and Paying Users Decline in 2025 and Q2 2026 Industry fatigue, or a Bumble problem Bumble’s competitor, Match Group, appears to be doing better as revenue fell only 1% to $853 million in the second quarter. Meanwhile, net income increased by 36% to $171 million. Tinder also showed signs of improvement. Daily active users dropped by only 4% year-on-year, which was the smallest decline in the last 10 quarters. Hinge’s revenue has increased by 22%. Match aims to bring Hinge’s annual revenue to $1 billion by 2027. Dating-app fatigue remains a challenge. But Match’s results suggest Bumble’s issues range beyond just the users getting bored with swiping. Bumble vs Match Group Q2 2026: Revenue, Profit and User Trends Can AI pull users back, or push them away Bumble hopes its AI-led Bumble 2.0 can change that. The redesign brings richer, chapter-style profiles and the possibility of swipe-free dating. Its March unveiling helped send shares up more than 40%. Wolfe Herd had earlier floated AI dating concierges, as Cryptopolitan reported. Whether users want that help is less clear. A peer-reviewed study suggests confidence in algorithms can encourage AI dating adoption. Yet an SSRN working paper reported 54% fewer usage minutes and 62% fewer app openings among the AI adopters studied. Those findings do not represent all daters. At the same time, less expensive AI will make companion chatbots more attractive than dating apps. However, the use of these chatbots raises privacy and security issues, as noted by the Congressional Research Service. The opportunity remains substantial: Grand View Research estimates a $10.7 billion global dating-app market in 2026, reaching $17.9 billion by 2033. The challenge is converting AI features into users who stay, pay, and trust the platform Micah Abiodun | usagoldmines.com
October 13, 2026

How to Mute Words and Phrases on Your Bluesky Feed Khamosh Pathak | usagoldmines.com

If you were looking for a respite from X, but Threads didn’t work out for you, you might have ended up at Bluesky. Sure, Mastodon is great in theory, but it doesn’t have nearly as many users talking in one place. And as a single app, Bluesky is simply easier to use.

Bluesky also feels like an app that has learned (or is still learning) from the mistakes of its peers. It has superior built-in moderation and troll-fighting features, and is relatively easy to get started with. But if you’re going to pick up a new social network, you’re going to want to carry over your mute words with you—that is, the collection of terms you’ve made over the years that you just don’t want to see displayed on your feed. Maybe it’s political stuff, or news about a certain celebrity, or even AI.

Bluesky makes it easy to mute words, and there’s even a feature called Moderation Lists, where you can use crowdsourced lists and bulk-mute accounts at once. Here’s how to use both.

How to mute words and phrases on Bluesky

Open the Bluesky website or smartphone app. From the sidebar, go to Settings > Moderation > Muted words & Tags.

Muted Words and Tags feature in Bluesky.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Here, you’ll see many options for muting a word. First, write the phrase or word you want to mute in the text box. Then, go through your options—though I think the default options are the best choice. Still, in the Duration section, you can choose to only mute the word for 24 hours, or 7 days, or 30 days, which can be great for, say, temporarily blocking out spoilers for a TV show you haven’t watched yet.

Next, you can choose if you want to mute just Bluesky posts, to also mute tags. Here, too, the default of Text and Tags works quite well, instead of blocking just tags.

Lastly, you can choose to exclude users you follow from your mutes, in case you still want to hear about a topic like AI, but only from people you follow. When you’re all set, click the Add button. Repeat the process to add more mute words and phrases.

Creating a mute word or phrase in Bluesky.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Your muted words will show up in the section below. To unmute a word, all you have to do is to click the little X icon next to the word and confirm from the pop-up box.

Deleting a muted word or phrase in Bluesky.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

How to mute accounts in bulk

Like other social media services, Bluesky lets you mute or block individual accounts right from that person’s profile view. Click the three-dotted menu, choose Mute account, and you’re done.

But the service goes beyond that: It also lets users create Moderation Lists that can be shared freely with a link, and it’s possible to mute or block all the accounts included on such a list with just a click. It’s a handy way to block a bunch of known NFT scammers, or notorious trolls, for example.

To create your own Moderation List, go to Settings > Moderation > Moderation Lists > New. Then give the list a name and description, and click on Save.

Creating Moderation List in Bluesky.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Use the search bar up top to search for and add any number of profiles to the list. Then, click the Subscribe button up top (confusing, I know), and from the popup, choose Mute account.

Muting all accounts in the list.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Then, click on Mute list from the popup to confirm.

Click on Mute list to confirm.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

This process becomes a lot more interesting when you start to search for crowdsourced lists about different profiles. For example, Skywatch Blue has curated many lists for blocking specific scammers or trolls. There’s even a list dedicated to people who have Elon Musk’s name or reference in their profile or description, which some people might find particularly handy in 2025.

 

This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak

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