BlueSky Is Reaping The Benefits
I’ve lost a lot of Twitter followers since Elon Musk bought it and turned it into a neo-fascist sewer. And that loss of followers has accelerated this year— especially since the election. But over the last year I’ve been acclimating myself to, and enjoying, other social media sites. These days I get far more reaction on BlueSky, Threads and Spoutible than I do on the Musk site. Almost everyday I post something on Twitter and get 6 or 7 reactions and the same post will get a couple hundred reactions on Threads or BlueSky. You can find me on those sites here:
BlueSky: @downwithtyranny.bsky.social
Threads: you can search for blueamericapac
Spoutible: @downwithtyranny
Mastodon: @downwithtyranny@crooklyn.social
Last week the Columbia Journalism Review reported that journalists are leaving Twitter for Bluesky. “Last week,” wrote Sarah Gotfredsen, “The Guardian announced that it would stop posting on Twitter altogether, citing ‘disturbing content’ promoted on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. La Vanguardia, a Spanish newspaper, joined the exodus, also citing ‘toxic content.’ Several high-profile journalists and media figures have individually taken the leap as well, announcing that they’re either leaving the platform completely or plan to spend significantly less time on it. While Twitter hit a yearly traffic peak on Election Day, that was followed by the highest exit numbers since Musk acquired the platform in 2022: over a hundred and fifteen thousand users in the US deactivated their accounts the day after the election, according to The Independent. The exodus has translated, at least in part, into a surge of new users joining Bluesky, a social network launched by Jack Dorsey in 2019, while he was still the chief executive of Twitter. (Dorsey left Bluesky’s board of directors in May.) As of Tuesday, the platform was reaching twenty million users, over 40 percent of whom have joined since late October. As Wired put it, when it comes to reactions to a Trump election victory, “I’m Moving to Bluesky” may be the new “I’m Moving to Canada.”
As Gotfredsen was writing, BlueSky was the number one trending app on Apple’s App Store. She noted that “According to Aske Kammer, an associate professor of journalism studies at Roskilde University in Denmark, Bluesky’s success in media circles will depend on whether journalists’ sources stay on Twitter or themselves move to Bluesky. As long as politicians, businesses, and interest groups remain on Twitter, Kammer said, it will be difficult for journalists to abandon it completely. For Kammer, ‘the big question is whether journalists will actually leave Twitter, or divide their attention between both platforms.’ Dan Kennedy, a professor at Northeastern University’s journalism school, notes that journalists’ digital footprints are becoming more scattered compared with the era when Twitter was a more unified hub of conversation. ‘I don’t think there’s going to be one platform anymore,’ he said. ‘But I do think that Bluesky is reaching a critical mass where I can read most of what I need to read and do most of what I want to do on Bluesky.’”
EuroNews reported that regular punters are leaving as well: “Hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied users have reportedly fled Elon Musk’s Twitter following Donald Trump’s re-election, with an estimated 115,000 accounts deactivated in the US alone on the day after the ballot. Celebrities and prominent brands ditching the platform cite mounting concerns over the unchecked spread of misinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech, as well as what they consider to be Musk’s role in facilitating Trump’s return to power. “Twitter is a toxic media platform and (...) its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse,” news media The Guardian said in a statement announcing it would no longer be posting on the platform… [Twitter’s] reports show that the average number of EU monthly users fell from 111.4 million in the six months leading up to January 2024 to 106 million in the six months leading up to July… An analysis by Financial Times analysts also suggests Twitter user numbers have fallen by almost a third in the UK and almost a fifth in the US in the year leading up to September 2024. The drop in user numbers has coincided with a decline in financial prospects, with some estimating the company has lost 75% of its value since it was bought by Musk.”
Bluesky, a platform developed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, is a popular destination for emigrating Twitter users.
Its CEO Jay Graber revealed earlier this week that users had hit 20 million after averaging 1 million new users per day over a five-day period. Its user numbers have more than tripled since late August.
Mastodon, developed by a German non-profit, is also welcoming users from Twitter. Its app downloads are up 47% on iOS and 17% on Android this month according to its creator Eugen Rochko.
But Meta’s Threads, rolled out last year, remains the direct competitor with most active users, estimated at around 275 million.
Given its proximity to the original Twitter interface and its emphasis on content moderation, Bluesky is being widely tipped as the biggest threat to Twitter.
"It certainly seems like an inflection point. Bluesky's growth over the past couple of years has tended to be directly correlated with Elon Musk's actions," David Karpf, associate professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, told Euronews.
He believes Musk's use of the platform to propel Donald Trump's campaign has played a significant role in convincing more users to leave the platform.
“It's all been a trickle (of users leaving) up until the past month or two,” he explained. “But it seems like what happened during the election (means that) an awful lot of people who were using Twitter decided, this is not for me.”
Bluesky operates independently to ensure big corporations do not influence its decisions, and users are able to select and fine-tune the algorithm that decides the content they are exposed to through custom feeds.
It has introduced new “anti-toxicity features,” such as the ability to detach your own post from a "quote post" made by another user. Replies to posts can also be hidden.
It also has strong blocking features, often described as a “nuclear block,” designed to stamp out harassment and abuse.
But there are concerns that if politics becomes the motive for the exodus from Twitter to Bluesky, the platforms could splinter into two echo chambers, split along political and ideological lines.
For American writer and media critic Parer Molloy, concerns about Bluesky becoming an ideological 'bubble' are unfounded: “It’s not about avoiding disagreement— it’s about fostering an environment where disagreements can actually happen productively,” she wrote this week.
“On platforms like Twitter, the problem isn’t just opposing views— it’s the sheer volume of hate, harassment, and dehumanising rhetoric that gets amplified by algorithms.”
And yesterday, The Hill, reported that it’s Democrats who are fleeing Twitter for BlueSky— nearly a million per day over last week!! Among the departing users were Don Lemon who cited a lack of a “honest debate” and Stephen King who told users to follow him on Threads. Other people— like Mark Cuban— haven’t left Twitter but are increasingly posting on BlueSky. He noted that BlueSky isn’t a “hateful world” and that it’s “a social network that actually allows you to be social. There isn’t one person driving an algorithm, influencing the tenor of the site. It is much more community driven.”
Asked if the recent uptick in Bluesky usage will last, Jonathan Bellack— the director of Harvard’s Applied Social Media Lab— said it is hard to predict but the sudden influx, especially by prominent figures, may have triggered the “network effect.”
“A lot more popular people… if they’re all somewhere else, suddenly the benefit of going somewhere else is better,” he told The Hill. “You’re not losing out as much and then you can really start to get a major shift where suddenly everybody goes.”
Bluesky’s emphasis on user choice is important and could be where the social media ecosystem is heading, Bellack said.
“If people start choosing platforms that are more open and more flexible, even if they don’t need to use that flexibility today, it means when the next thing comes along, there won’t be this feeling of having to use words like dominance or locked in and so forth,” he said. “People should be able to choose how they want to communicate and socialize with each other.”
Not everyone joining Bluesky is leaving Twitter.
Saturday, The Atlantic reported that Bluesky has grown by around 10 million users since October. “In a sense,” wrote, Ali Breland, “this is a victory for conservatives: As the left flees and Twitter loses broader relevance, it becomes a more overtly right-wing site. But the right needs liberals on Twitter. If the platform becomes akin to ‘alt-tech platforms’ such as Gab or Truth Social, this shift would be good for people on the right who want their politics to be affirmed. It may not be as good for persuading people to join their political movement… As each wave departs Twitter, the site gradually becomes less valuable to those who stay, prompting a cycle that slowly but surely diminishes Twitter’s relevance… The more liberals leave Twitter, the less value it offers to the right, both in terms of cultural relevance and in opportunities for trolling. The Twitter exodus won’t happen overnight. Some users might be reluctant to leave because it’s hard to reestablish an audience built up over the years, and network effects will keep Twitter relevant. But it’s not a given that a platform has to last. Old habits die hard, but they can die.”
