Hundreds of thousands of users are abandoning Elon Musk’s X platform in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election, with an estimated 115,000 accounts deactivated in the US alone on the day following the election. Celebrities and major brands are leaving the platform due to growing concerns about the unchecked spread of misinformation and hate speech, as well as Musk’s perceived role in facilitating Trump’s return to power.
Last week, Spain’s La Vanguardia and the UK’s Guardian announced they would no longer post from the X platform using official accounts, with the latter citing the “often disturbing content” found there. “X is a toxic media platform, and its owner, Elon Musk, has used its influence to shape political discourse,” the Guardian stated.
Celebrities have also started to leave X, with figures like Mark Hamill, Alyssa Milano, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephen King, and Guillermo del Toro moving to Bluesky, a decentralized social media platform that has seen a significant increase in users since the US election results. The sports world is now following suit, with Bundesliga club St Pauli announcing its departure from X, becoming the first major football club to leave Musk’s platform.
“Following his election victory, Donald Trump has picked Musk to head up a new government department,” St Pauli’s statement read. “Musk was a major backer of the Trump campaign and also used X for this purpose.” The traditionally left-wing Hamburg-based club also expressed fears that the site could “manipulate public discourse” during the German election campaign and urged fans to switch to Bluesky.
Another German club, Werder Bremen, has become the second Bundesliga club to leave X, criticizing Musk for allowing hate speech and other negative behavior to spread. “The radicalization of the platform is being actively driven by Elon Musk and his personal posts, which include transphobic and antisemitic comments, as well as the spreading of conspiracy narratives. Next to nothing is currently being monitored on the platform. The algorithms and decision-making at X are entirely non-transparent processes,” the statement read.
In the US, NBA legend LeBron James has also quit X, announcing an indefinite hiatus from social media. The Los Angeles Lakers player, who has over 212 million followers across his X and Instagram accounts, cited negative reporting in the US media as the reason for his decision.
It remains to be seen whether other European sports clubs will follow the lead of the two German clubs and one of the NBA’s most celebrated players. Even if the limited data on global X user numbers makes measuring the full extent of the exodus from the platform almost impossible, it’s clear that the trend of declining user numbers on the platform since Musk’s takeover in 2022 is far from over.
All of this is good news for Bluesky and its blocking features designed to combat harassment and abuse. However, with politics being a major motive for leaving X, there is a risk that the platforms could splinter into two echo chambers. American writer and media critic Parer Molloy disagrees: “It’s not about avoiding disagreement—it’s about fostering an environment where disagreements can actually happen productively. On platforms like X, the problem isn’t just opposing views—it’s the sheer volume of hate, harassment, and dehumanizing rhetoric that gets amplified by algorithms.”
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