Bluesky adds 700,000 new members as users flee X after the US election [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Mon 11 Nov 2024 21.44 EST


Social media platform Bluesky has picked up more than 700,000 new users in the week since the US election, as users seek to escape misinformation and offensive posts on X. The influx, largely from North America and the UK, has helped Bluesky reach 14.5 million users worldwide, up from 9 million in September, the company said.

Social media researcher Axel Bruns said the platform offered an alternative to X, formerly Twitter, including a more effective system for blocking or suspending problematic accounts and policing harmful behaviour.

“It’s become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to provide, but without all the far-right activism, the misinformation, the hate speech, the bots and everything else,” he said. “The more liberal kind of Twitter community has really now escaped from there and seems to have moved en masse to Bluesky.”

Bluesky began as a project inside Twitter but became an independent company in 2022, and is now primarily owned by chief executive Jay Graber. The platform has previously benefited from dissatisfaction with X and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who is closely tied to US president-elect Donald Trump’s successful election campaign. Twitter shed millions of users after rebranding to X and usage in the US slumped by more than a fifth in the subsequent seven months.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/12/us-election-bluesky-users-flee-x-twitter-trump-musk