X rivals Bluesky and Threads get more users as some migrate from Elon Musk-owned platform

Some users have complained of rising hate speech on Elon Musk-owned X as they migrate to Bluesky or Threads [File] | Photo Credit: REUTERS

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election win, social media platform X’s rival Bluesky has welcomed around one million users in the past week.

The company posted the news on Wednesday (November 13, 2024) and hailed its new users. In late October, Bluesky posted that it had over 13 million users.

Meanwhile, Meta-owned Threads has also been seeing a surge in users, as Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted in early November – shortly before the U.S. election – that Threads crossed 275 million monthly active users.

“There’s a lot more to do, and plenty of things to fix, but there’s something exciting about this place,” said part of his statement on November 3.

As X owner Musk threw the weight of his support behind Trump, many users said they were migrating to other platforms, citing an increase in political misinformation and hate speech. While both Bluesky and Threads are growing in popularity and presence, X remains a go-to platform for news, official statements, and hard politics related to ongoing world events.

However, due to issues such as antisemitic rhetoric, pro-slavery accounts, rising complaints of hate speech, problematic placement of corporate content, and the option to monetise even illegal media, more advertisers have been pausing their spending on the platform. X’s value has been steeply downgraded.

Some high-level users have opted to maintain their X accounts in order to control their usernames, but said they will post more actively on other channels they believe are more suitable to their needs.

Though Bluesky was the brainchild of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, he no longer seems to be actively involved with the social media platform that aims to become decentralised.

Published – November 13, 2024 01:16 pm IST