TO The massive departure of Elon Musk’s million during the same period.
The exodus has coincided with the departure of prominent figures such as filmmakers Guillermo del Toro and Mike Flanagan, and actors Quinta Brunson and Mark Hamill. Others, like politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have maintained their X account but have begun posting more regularly on Bluesky.
According to digital market intelligence company Similarweb, the number of daily active US users on X has fallen 8.4% since the beginning of October, from 32.3 million to 29.6 million.
The number of Bluesky users has increased by 1,064%, from 254,500 to approximately 2.7 million since October 6. The rise started slowly but became more noticeable when Musk took over the handle X @america to promote his Donald Trump-supporting Super Pac and began posting regularly in support of the former and future president.
The flow increased even more after Trump’s election victory. In one week from November 5, Bluesky’s total users had doubled from 743,900 to 1.4 million. A week later it had doubled again to 2.8 million. In the 50 days after Musk formed Super Pac on the platform, X had gone from having almost 127 times as many active users in the US as Bluesky, to just over 10 times as many.
Bruce Daisley, the company’s former vice president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa when it was still known as Twitter, believes the migration away from X is largely because the “digital plaza,” as Musk called it, has become in a much less pleasant place to be.
“If I went to a Christmas market and if in the corner of that Christmas market there was a group of racist protesters, I probably wouldn’t stay there,” Daisley said.
Daisley, once the social media company’s most senior figure outside the United States, says politicians on the left and right have always had a place at X, as long as they haven’t espoused violent or discriminatory beliefs. Under Musk’s direction, he believes too much leeway is given to those with more radical views.
“There’s so much content being amplified that most reasonable people would question whether it’s worth amplifying,” he said, referring to Musk. recently questioning the sentence handed down to jailed far-right activist Tommy Robinson. “Tommy Robinson is not a benign debater. This is someone who wants to weaponize racist narratives and rhetoric. “Let him have his space, I just don’t want to be there.”
Salomé Saqué, a French journalist who had accumulated 210,000 followers on X, left the site and deactivated her account in a climate of harassment and misinformation without any moderation. She feels that since the Musk acquisition, reliable – was being undermined. ”.
Saqué has found alternative platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, where he has 380,000 and 67,000 followers respectively, but like many X-pats he has also started using Bluesky, where he quickly gained 30,000 followers and which he considers more diverse and productive. Platform to share ideas and information.
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Despite finding a space that she perceives as healthier for journalism, she still feels that her departure and that of others like her has left a void that “amplifies those who use the platform as a weapon for hate, propaganda and manipulation.” , and that the decline in diverse opinions about X “feels like a defeat for critical thinking, verified information, and the democratic exchange of ideas.”
Beyond celebrities and journalists, X’s most surprising departures come from German soccer clubs. Following Hamburg’s St Pauli’s decision to leave X earlier this month, calling it a “hate machine”, fellow Bundesliga Werder Bremen issued a statement in which he said that “with the recent radicalization of the platform, a line had been crossed for the club.”
Its communications director, Christoph Pieper, said that what X had become under Musk no longer aligned with the values the club strives to uphold, and that reducing its online visibility was a price worth paying for its principles.
“We are leaving 600,000 followers on X for only 9,000 on Bluesky,” he stated. “This may have economic consequences for us, because our partners have paid for much greater autonomy on X than on Bluesky now. But in terms of values, we as a club have moral values. We as a club fight against transphobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, discrimination. For us it is not the place where there is no regulation for hate speech.”
Pieper said that the northern German club is not sure if it has found a permanent home in Bluesky, but that he does not regret its decision: “Bluesky is currently the right choice for us and other clubs are gradually adapting to it. But we cannot yet say whether the platform will be successful. However, what is clear is that X is the wrong one.”