When Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, he swiftly rebranded the platform as X, laid off hundreds of employees, and sparked a wave of celebrity departures. Fast-forward two years, and history appears to be repeating itself. With Trump back in power, a steady stream of X departures has continued since 2022, and another mass exodus is now underway. Some users are quitting social media entirely, while others are seeking alternatives, boosting membership and engagement on platforms like Bluesky, Mastodon, Meta’s Threads, and Reddit.
The platform's COO, Rose Wang, revealed in an interview with The Verge that Bluesky gained 700,000 new users in the week following the US election. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic politician representing New York's 14th congressional district, is among those who have returned to Bluesky. “I don’t even know why I stopped using this in the first place? Good GOD it’s nice to be in a digital space with other real human beings,” she posted on Monday. AOC joined the platform last April but had been inactive since July. “Should I tell Twitter I’m here? I don’t want to inadvertently cause an influx of all the worst accounts on the internet,” she added in another post.
It’s not just politicians leaving X; Swifties are also reportedly heading to Bluesky. According to various surveys, over 60% of X users are men, which could be driving this Swiftie exit. Taylor Swift has an X account but hasn’t posted since October 15. Musk responded to her in September, saying, “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.” However, it’s not just US individuals and organizations abandoning X; users across the pond are also bidding farewell.
For instance, the Berlin Film Festival, one of the world’s most prestigious, announced on Monday that it would no longer be on X from December 15. Bluesky reached 14.5 million users in November, driven by the US election results. The post-election surge is believed to come mainly from Britain and North America, a significant increase from the nine million users Bluesky had in September. However, US politics aren’t the only factor; the platform reportedly gained three million new users after X was suspended in Brazil in September.
Bluesky was initially launched within Twitter as an internal team tasked with developing an open-source infrastructure. By 2022, it had become an independent team. Bluesky is now owned by CEO Jay Graber, though Jack Dorsey was its CEO when it broke from Twitter. Although Dorsey initially trusted Musk as the “singular solution” for Twitter’s future, he later criticized Musk’s “fairly reckless” moves after taking control.
Elon Musk is increasingly aligning with Donald Trump. Trump has expressed his desire to appoint Musk, the world’s richest man, as the “secretary of cost-cutting.” Musk would be tasked with reducing federal bureaucracy by a third as part of Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency.” On election night, Musk sat close to Trump at his Mar-a-Lago party. Musk publicly supported Trump in July, hosting a two-hour audio interview with him in August. Anti-immigration policies were among their talking points, with Musk calling Trump the “path to prosperity.” The Associated Press reports that Musk’s super PAC spent around $200 million supporting Trump’s reelection.
This political stance comes as Musk changed Twitter’s philosophy in 2022, advocating for “free speech” and shifting moderation guidelines to allow hate speech. X has the highest proportion of disinformation among six major social media networks (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, and YouTube), according to a study by disinformation startup Trustlab for the European Commission. The research focused on Spain, Slovakia, and Poland, countries particularly prone to disinformation according to the EU.
Another report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified 50 cases between January and July 2024 where Musk posted election claims debunked by independent fact-checkers. Despite this, these posts continue to spread on the app. While many users are leaving X for platforms like Bluesky, many still rely on the platform for information and communication. It doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
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