Why are so many users leaving X?

Recently, the decision by The Guardian, one of the most prominent and followed British news outlets, to stop using its accounts on X has sparked much debate, as the benefits are now deemed «outweighed by the negatives.» In announcing its decision, The Guardian stated that its choice to stop publishing articles on Elon Musk's social network was not sudden: «This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform. [...] The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.» American singer Kelsey Lu commented on The Guardian's Instagram post with a simple «absolutely.» According to many observers, since acquiring the platform in 2022, Musk has progressively turned X into an environment favoring right-wing and far-right political currents, ensuring that content from such accounts is prioritized over others. Additionally, the platform is said to have become deliberately lenient in its moderation of violent and racist content, leading to the spread of posts inciting hate, promoting conspiracy theories, supremacist ideologies, or transphobia, as well as fake news. The Guardian’s decision to leave X came just hours after the announcement that Musk would take on a government role in Donald Trump's next administration, tasked with cutting U.S. federal agency spending. Musk, who has supported Trump’s campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars, allegedly influenced Trump’s election by turning his platform into a kind of "political propaganda machine." The Guardian clarified that it would not delete its accounts and that its journalists could continue using X, particularly for gathering information. However, some users viewed the outlet’s decision as a marketing move: the announcement of its departure from Musk's platform ended with a call for financial contributions from readers.

Leaving X for Bluesky

The Guardian is not the only organization to recently stop publishing articles on X (its main profile now carries the label "this account has been archived."). Other major media companies and celebrities have made similar choices. The Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia recently announced it would no longer use the platform, citing that, like The Guardian, "posts against human rights, such as hate towards ethnic minorities, misogyny, and racism, are part of the content distributed on X, where they go viral and dominate user engagement." U.S. journalist Don Lemon, who had over 1.5 million followers on the platform, pointed out X's change in terms of service requiring legal procedures to be handled in Texas courts, where conservative-leaning judges are more likely to preside. Similarly, U.S. actress Jamie Lee Curtis deactivated her account, as did Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who stated he would start posting more frequently on the competitor platform Bluesky. Many users leaving X have begun migrating to Bluesky.

Bluesky, founded in 2021, currently has just over 14 million users. X still boasts over 400 million, while Threads—also seen as an alternative to Musk’s platform—has surpassed 270 million users. Bluesky operates on a protocol created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, the same one behind Mastodon. This so-called "fediverse" ensures that a social network is not managed by a single organization (as with X, which can influence its dynamics) but by anyone who wishes to contribute to the initiative—hence its ownership is described as "distributed" or "decentralized." Both Bluesky and Mastodon have gained traction as more people leave X. In particular, Bluesky has added millions of users in recent months, fed up with recurring pro-Trump propaganda on X. The platform confirmed that since early November, it has registered over a million new users from the U.S. and the U.K. Additionally, according to some reports, an estimated 100,000 people deactivated their X accounts the day after the U.S. elections.