- Hundreds of thousands of users have left Elon Musk's X.
- Bluesky, an inside project by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
- There is also concern that X could become a training ground for Musk's xAI venture.
Users have been gradually leaving the microblogging platform, formerly known as Twitter, with many attributing the mass exodus to its owner, Elon Musk. In recent months, Musk has transformed the platform into a megaphone for promoting US President-elect Donald Trump during and after his successful election campaign.
With Musk now heading the new Department of Government Efficiency under Trump's administration, his previous remarks about the platform's neutrality now seem outdated. In 2022, Musk said, “for Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”
He also said, “Trump would be 82 at the end of his term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.” This statement no longer holds true for someone who played a close role in Trump's campaign, attending rallies and appearing in family photos as "Uncle Elon."
With Musk's allegiance to Trump now clear, many feel that the space for free speech on X has been overtaken by the alt-right, hate speech, and bots. Experts told *The Guardian* that X is likely becoming "Truth Social premium," referring to Trump's hard-right social media platform, which they suspect may merge with X soon.
As X experiences its largest exodus to date, Bluesky has emerged as its newest rival, amassing 16 million users, including 1 million in just 24 hours last week.
It began as an inside project by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to build an “open and decentralized standard for social media”. Bluesky has become the most popular app on the App Store, emerging as the top choice for X refugees. However, its 16 million users are still a fraction of X's approximately 317 million.
Users prefer Bluesky because it allows them to heavily moderate the algorithm that dictates the content they see and create custom feeds based on specific interests.
The platform also enables users to have website addresses as their handles, which could serve as a verification tool for journalists and public figures, as they can include a company’s website in their handles.
Reports suggest that some tech enthusiasts are excited by the X-odus, seeing it as the beginning of the era of decentralized social networks, known as the "Fediverse." They argue that social media platforms should function in the same way Gmail accounts can email any address or mobile numbers can call users on any network. Bluesky and other newer social networks are building ecosystems that enable interconnection.
While no one knows what will happen to X, predictions range from its total collapse to a potential shift into an anti-Trump platform if Musk's relationship with the president sours.
There is also concern that X could become a training ground for Musk’s xAI venture, using user interactions to build lucrative AI models for the world’s richest man.
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