The Swifties were The canaries in the coal mine. Last week, as the fallout from the US presidential election reverberated across the internet, Taylor Swift fans took a stand. En masse, they left X and went to Bluesky, where, as one Swiftie told WIRED, they could build a new community and not “support Elon (Musk) in any way.” They were not alone.
A lot has happened in the week since Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency of the United States. For those who spend a lot of time online, one thing in particular stood out: Trump’s relationship with Musk, the owner of X who leveraged his platform to support the president-elect’s campaign. On Tuesday, Trump named Musk one of the heads of the new, still non-existent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). That same day, Bluesky announced that he had won 1 million new users in a week. On Thursday, the company said He had made another million in 24 hours.
Not all of those new immigrants to Bluesky are Swift fans, of course, but they do represent a certain subset of internet culture: the people who, unhappy with Musk’s ties to Trump and how he ran X, eventually gave up and They decided to move. their lives on social networks. Since its launch in 2023, Bluesky has been something of a “loose and happy” place, but in the last two months, as Slate noted this weekhas become a better platform for sharing news and keeping up to date with live events, a lifeboat for “left-wing Twitter refugees.”
While Americans used to swear that move to canada if their candidate didn’t win (as if such a move were easy to pull off), they now simply set up camp on a new platform. No need to break the lease or sell the house, just post “Follow me on Bluesky” with your new handle. If you don’t like one of your new neighbors, that’s okay. Bluesky offers something most people call “the nuclear block,” which allows users to ensure they don’t hear from someone they don’t want to talk or interact with.
The Internet has always prided itself on being borderless at least to some extent. There are firewalls, language barriers, and other obstacles, but the web still helps information and stories get from one place to another much faster than anyone could travel there. No visa required.
However, that pride has always been a bit undeserved. There are gatekeepers, trolls and bullies. Musk wanted Twitter to be a town square, but he still needed an Internet-connected device to get there, and he had to be prepared to dodge insults once he did. Even online, NIMBYs want to have their say. Who can call themselves “local” on a given platform is often decided by which mafia rules. You can go to Bluesky, the Canada of the Internet, but be careful with the luggage you carry.