About 2.7 million Americans left X (formerly Twitter) in just two months. Interestingly, another social network, which is increasingly considered a competitor to Xu Bluesky, gained almost two and a half million new users in the same period, writes The Guardian.
The exodus coincided with Trump’s election victory and the departure of celebrities such as director Mike Flanagan and actors Quinte Brunson and Mark Hamill.
– As of October of this year, the number of X users fell from 32.3 million to 29.6 million – reported the analytics company Similarweb. The first signs of an exodus appeared after Musk began using X as a platform for Donald Trump’s election campaign.
– The former Twitter has always been a platform for advertising politicians, be they right-wing or left-wing, as long as they did not promote violent beliefs. This has changed since Musk bought the social network – the former vice president of the company, Bruce Daisley, explained the reasons for the exodus.
– Now X is spreading a lot of content that does not suit the majority of reasonable people – said Daisley, referring to Musk’s questioning of the judgment of extreme right-wing activist Tommy Robinson.
Certain users who left the social network said they were bothered by the amount of conspiracy theories that began to spread on X. Recently, Alex Jones has also been active on the social network every day.
Journalists around the world have also left the social network. One of them is Salomé Saqué.
– I deactivated my profile on X due to the huge amount of harassment and misinformation that was spreading without any control – explained the French journalist and added that now there is a danger that it will no longer be possible to differentiate yourself on X. attitudes and thoughts.
– Since Musk bought the social network, it has become extremely hostile towards journalists and verified information – Saqué is convinced.
The French journalist switched to TikTok and Instagram, where she is followed by 380,000 and 67,000 people, respectively. Saque said that she will use Bluesky instead of X from now on.
What is Bluesky?
Bluesky is a decentralized social network similar to Xu. Users can share short text messages, images and videos in short posts colloquially known as ‘skeets’.
The social network is owned by Bluesky Social PBC, a public benefit corporation. Unlike X, Bluesky users can store their data on servers that are not controlled by the company.
Establishesč social network is former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who wanted to create a new decentralized version of Twitter that is not controlled by any one person.