Elon Musk has been a staunch follower of Donald Trump. And his social media platform X has played a critical role in helping sway votes in Trump’s favour. However, that has irked up millions of users across erstwhile Twitter, with complaints of bias in their feed, allegations of Musk playing with algorithms to show a feed that is more pro-Trump and new incoming, controversial policy changes.
As a result, millions of users are now switching to Bluesky, a platform that rose to prominence as an alternative to the erstwhile Twitter. The platform has now seen a dramatic rise in new users in the wake of the US presidential election, and incoming policy changes at X.
Bluesky’s sudden growth comes as many high-profile individuals and organizations have voiced concerns about X’s direction and the nature of content permitted on the platform. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), British news publication The Guardian, and former CNN anchor Don Lemon are among those who have publicly announced their departure from X, citing worries about increased misinformation and the effects of a recent policy change. Bluesky notes that more than 1 million users have signed up on its platform in the past 24 hours (a number that rose to over 2.5 million in the last week alone). With this, Bluesky has over 16 million users.
When news broke of former President Donald Trump’s election victory, X saw a significant spike in engagement, with an estimated 46.5 million visits in the U.S. alone, according to analytics firm SimilarWeb. However, amid this high activity, the platform simultaneously experienced one of its highest account deactivation rates, with approximately 115,000 users leaving X on November 6.
Another reason behind this mass exodus of users is a new policy shift in the micro-blogging platform. X’s terms of service have got a recent update – one that is set to take effect on Friday. The update mandates that all legal disputes related to the platform will be handled exclusively in Texas, either in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District or state courts in Tarrant County. Unsurprisingly, this move has made advocacy groups and users concerned, and they argue that this jurisdictional restriction could create legal barriers for users wishing to challenge X’s policies. The CCDH even issued a statement, arguing that the Texas jurisdiction policy could steer lawsuits into courts that are perceived as sympathetic to Musk.
That user exodus has turned into Bluesky receiving millions of new users, with several more expected to join the platform soon. The platform was initially envisioned as a decentralized alternative to Twitter, and it allows users to select from user-created algorithms. It has turned out to be an attractive option for those not aligned with X, and recent developments (including several new features) at the platform have helped its cause.
Recent months have seen Bluesky add features such as video posts, custom fonts, and anti-toxicity settings as well, while its AT Protocol structure further allows for a decentralized experience. Of course, this mass exodus of users did not come without consequences, and Bluesky suffered an outage on Thursday. The service was down for several users, and they encountered issues with getting their feeds and notifications to load.
