Social media users flock to Bluesky as Musk makes X a hellsite

Social media users flock to Bluesky as Musk continues to tank X

Bluesky now boasts more than 29 million users, exploding to more than three times the 9 million users recorded in September 2024. At the start of 2024, Bluesky had just under 3 million users, according to PC Magazine. 

Bluesky’s growth can be connected to Elon Musk, whose far-right politics have permeated his social media platform, and Bluesky competitor, X.

A poll by the science journal Nature revealed that an overwhelming majority of its readers (70%) switched from X to Bluesky. While the results are not representative of the entire online science community, they certainly fall in line with other studies that have found that science researchers are leaving—and preferring—Bluesky.

Similarly, an exodus of journalists and others have been making the switch from X to Bluesky over the past few months, in search of a digital forum that isn’t saturated by right-wing extremism, misinformation, and (so many) garbage ads. 

Subreddits have begun banning direct links to X, and according to WIRED, mega popstar Taylor Swift’s fans—dubbed “Swifites—have also moved away from X, citing Musk’s grotesque rhetoric.

Meanwhile, X has lost an estimated 80% of its value since Musk bought the company for $44 billion in October 2022. Every move Musk has made since the purchase—firing three-quarters of the workforce, monetizing the blue-check verification system, allowing hate speech and misinformation to run rampant, and offering up an ethically dubious image generator—has only devalued it even further.

Since Musk’s purchase of X, users have continued to flee—and at a significantly increasing rate after Musk officially threw his support behind Donald Trump and took over the @America handle on X one month before the presidential election.

While X boasts more than 500 millions users worldwide, that number is suspect to researchers who question Musk’s definition of “active users.”

According to the Bluesky user count, the social media platform gains approximately 3 users every second. Perhaps it won’t be too long now until it overtakes X.

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