Bluesky Booms As X Continues Into A Downward Spiral

Users are preferring Bluesky to Elon Musk’s X, particularly in the wake of the tech giant’s unwavering support towards Donald Trump.

Social media platform Bluesky has gained nearly 700,000 new users in the week following the US election. The user base is primarily from North America and the UK, pushing up the total number of users from 9million in September to 14.5million in over a month. Users are preferring Bluesky to Elon Musk’s X, particularly in the wake of the tech giant’s unwavering support towards Donald Trump. The platform was launched as a program under the larger Twitter banner but has been independent since 2022.

Social media users have been complaining about the rampant misinformation, hate-speech and extreme right-wing content on X. Bluesky on the other hand has stronger guidelines about addressing harmful behaviour, suspension or blocking problematic accounts etc. This is in contrast with the newest X feature which allows blocked accounts to still view your posts but does not allow for interaction between these accounts. Bluesky reported that it witnessed an increase in 1.2million users once X updated its block feature.

Recently, it had also gained 3million users from Brazil after X was banned in the country. Multiple social media users are turning to Bluesky as they are dissatisfied with X since the Musk takeover and the platform’s usership has been on a consistent decline. Still second to Meta’s Threads on the US Apple Store, Bluesky has distinguished itself from the former by introducing features such as direct messaging.

Yet another cause for worry among users is the company’s decision to move its legal jurisdiction from California to Northern Texas, a more pro-right-wing and conservative state, which is more in tandem with Musk’s own views.  The decline of X and Bluesky’s upward trend are two sides of the same coin.

One of the biggest reasons former X users are shifting to Bluesky is the platform’s newest privacy policy. Musk informed his user base that third-party artificial intelligence (AI) developers will be allowed to train their models using user data from X. This signals a massive data privacy concern and users are opting to discontinue using the app. Advertisers are also withdrawing from the platform due to similar reasons.

While Musk bought the social media platform for over US $44billion in 2022, the latest valuation puts X at a mere US $9.4billion. This plummet is further enabled by several firms’ decision to slash their advertising budget on X from 2025. There are growing concerns among these firms that the increasing amount of extremist content on the platform could negatively impact their brand.

According to market research firm Kantar, 26% of marketeers have resolved to decrease the spending on X. In 2023, Musk had previously used profanities against advertisers who were contemplating pulling their ads from the platform. However, understanding the losses X is incurring, he was in attendance at the Cannes Lions in France, which is the largest international advertising festival.

Musk agreed that while advertisers have the right to decide whether or not the content appearing alongside their brands are compatible, they had no right to dictate that what they disagree must have no place on a public platform such as X. However, the issue advertisers have repeatedly voiced their displeasure against was the placing of branded content alongside hate speech with improper regulations.

These trends indicate that it is not just individual users, but also large private companies and corporations such as Disney, Paramount and IBM which have shied away from using the platform. Individuals and companies alike are displeased with Musk’s erratic and toxic online behaviour and the newly added features which have raised privacy concerns. Usership from X is swarming to other social media alternatives free of hate speech and right-wing propaganda, reminiscent of old-school internet days.