Bluesky adds 700,000 new members as users flee X after the US election
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. […]
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.
Bluesky reported picking up 3 million new users in the week after X was suspended in Brazil in September and a further 1.2 million in the two days after X announced it would allow users to view posts from people who had blocked them.
“We’re excited to welcome all of these new people, ranging from Swifties to wrestlers to city planners,” Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu said.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and professor at New York University, had 250,000 followers on X but picked up 21,000 followers in her first day on Bluesky this week.
“I am still on X but after January, when X could be owned by a de facto member of the Trump administration, its functions as a Trump propaganda outlet and far-right radicalization machine could be accelerated,” she said.
Unsurprising. There’s been a ton of new posters on Threads in the last week, too, no idea how many but it certainly felt like thousands… That said, I’ve also seen suggestions that a lot of Twitter’s losses in the last few days have actually been bot accounts that have served their purpose, they don’t need to keep spreading election misinformation any more now that Apartheid Clyde got his desired results…
