One day after November 6, when elections were held in the United States, something interesting happened in the tech space. Over 1,16,000 users of X (formerly Twitter) deactivated their accounts on the social media platform. Not just that, web analytics firm Similarweb noted on November 12 that US-based users on X reached a record 42.3 million visits on the platform on the same day.
In what is being termed the ‘Great X-odus’ on social media, users majorly from the US, UK, and Canada moved to another social network Bluesky, citing concerns that the Elon Musk-owned platform won’t remain a neutral ground for free speech anymore, now that the tech billionaire will be holding a top position in the Donald Trump administration — as the co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE.
There have even been allegations that X’s algorithm was purportedly modified to promote conservative accounts and posts in the run up to the elections. Concerns about the increase of misinformation and disinformation on the platform have been growing too.
(Blue)sky’s the limit
What’s interesting though is that even Bluesky has some roots in the platform that everyone is leaving to make a run for the blue butterfly. It was developed by former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey back in 2019 as a project to “decentralise Twitter”. In 2021, it was officially launched as an independent company with Jay Gruber being named CEO; with another ‘invite-only’ launch in 2023.
This year in February, the platform was made open for general users. But even the folks at Bluesky had no idea that right after the elections, their
numbers will grow up to over 18 million users. Gruber mentioned a few days ago that close to 10,000 users are being added to the platform every couple minutes.
Bluesky even became the most downloaded free app on the App Store and Play Store last week, literally forcing the team to grow overnight to accommodate the new users. On November 15, Bluesky Safety posted, “In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports.”
It’s no surprise as well. Journalists, celebrities, politicians, musicians, and even media houses are announcing their decisions to leave X and to migrate to other platforms. British daily newspaper The Guardian put up a statement that with growing “disturbing content” on X, they’ve taken the editorial decision to not post on the platform anymore.
The many many alternatives
However, it isn’t just Bluesky that X users are migrating to, and this isn’t the first X-odus either. Since Musk acquired the platform, multiple alternatives have come up that users have preferred to sign up for from time to time.
Remember Meta-owned Threads that was launched in July 2023 as an alternative to X? The platform has a user interface very similar to X, with a focus on text-based conversations. Over the past year, Threads has grown to now host over 275 million active monthly users. Mastodon, too, has been another platform that X-loyalists have moved to.
The open-source network that came about in 2016 is part of what is called the ‘fediverse’ — defined as a network of “interconnected servers” that people can use to communicate across different social media platforms. Also a decentralised social network, Mastodon’s active users grew to over 0.8 million as people started leaving X post Trump being elected president. However, this still falls short of the peak active users that Mastodon reached in December 2022 at 2.5 million.
Koo, founded in 2020 by Aprameya Radhakrishnan and Mayank Bidawatka, was another platform that X users migrated to in the past. Hailed as India’s homegrown rival to X, Koo shut down in July this year as cash troubles seeped in. The platform had reached its peak in January 2021, boasting over 2 million daily active users.
With the other platforms, users do get features that have been watered down on X in the past few years. For instance, even if you block someone on X, they can view your activity, just not engage with it. However, that’s not the case with its alternatives. Similarly on Mastodon and Bluesky, you have the option to modify your feed and algorithm per your wish, and not let the platform dictate it to you.
But with X’s sustained charm (against all odds), the one question that then remains is this — Would this be the final X-odus, or are there more to come?
