Over the past week, hundreds of thousands of users have left Elon Musk’s X, with over a million joining Bluesky since the U.S. election results were announced. Many are fleeing X to escape increasing hate speech and misinformation, which have grown under Musk’s ownership.
The departure from X, formerly Twitter, has accelerated since Musk’s takeover, with many users feeling disillusioned by his alignment with former President Donald Trump. Musk, now heading the Department of Government Efficiency in Trump’s administration, has publicly stated that X must be politically neutral. However, his actions, including attending Trump rallies and appearing in family photos, have contradicted this stance. This has led to the perception that X is becoming a platform for alt-right views and hate speech.
Bluesky, a new social media platform, is gaining traction as a rival to X, with 16 million users, including one million joining in just 24 hours last week. Initially an internal project by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bluesky focuses on providing an “open and decentralized standard for social media.” This contrasts with the centralized control of X under Musk.
Users are flocking to Bluesky because it allows for greater content moderation. The platform lets users control the algorithm behind their feeds, creating custom feeds based on specific interests. Bluesky also lets users have website addresses as their handles, which could serve as a verification tool for public figures and journalists.
Some see this mass migration as the beginning of a new era for social media: decentralized networks, often referred to as the “Fediverse.” This system could allow different platforms to interconnect, similar to how Gmail can email any address or mobile networks can call across systems. Bluesky is built on such decentralized principles, offering a potential alternative to centralized platforms like X.
As users continue to abandon X, predictions about its future range from total collapse to a potential shift away from Trump and his influence. Another concern is that X could become a testing ground for Musk’s xAI project, using user interactions to train AI models for his own benefit.
