After presidential elections in the United States, many users are leaving the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) owned by Elon Musk, an entrepreneur and close associate of the president-elect Donald Trump. Similiarweb journalist and analyst David F. Carr contributed NBC Newsthat although on November 6, portal X recorded the highest traffic of the year, a day later 115,414 Internet users canceled their accounts. This is the highest number in one day since Musk took over the social networking site in October 2022.
Among other things, he announced his resignation from running an account on X “The Guardian”. The British daily explained the decision by the “disturbing content” promoted by the platform, which, according to the editors, includes “extreme right-wing conspiracy theories and racism.” “X is a toxic media platform, and hers owner Elon Musk used her influence to shape political discourse,” we read in the statement. In addition to journalists, numerous celebrities decided to take a similar step, including actress Jamie Lee Curits and the author of horror novels Stephen King. The official profile of… Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, UK.
Users are abandoning Elon Musk's platform. It's not just politics that decides
Adam Tinworth, a journalist and analyst specializing in social media and lecturer at City St George's University in London, explained the situation in an interview with Sky News. In his opinion, users are actually put off by Musk's political connections and “using the platform to promote the interests” of Trump. He emphasizes, however, that for many Internet users, “pragmatic” factors turn out to be decisive. There are numerous voices pointing to the low level of content moderation or the intensification of bot activity, which affects the comfort of using the website.
Tinworth attributes the problems to job cuts. Shortly after acquiring Platform X, Musk informed the media that he had reduced the number of employees by approximately 80 percent. According to the analyst, it was this decision that contributed to changes for the worse. – It no longer has the same resources, and its priorities are not necessarily trust and security issues, i.e. content moderation, bot removal and the like – he explained.
The competition is seeing record growth in users. One million new accounts in one day
The Bluesky platform has become an alternative for many X users. Its origins date back to 2019, when it was initiated by the then president of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. It was originally intended to decentralize the platform. However, in 2021 it became an independent company. When Musk took over Twitter, he severed all ties with it. As of May this year, Dorsey is no longer on the Bluesky board.
Although Bluesky is based on a model and interface similar to Twitter, it boasts, among other things, greater moderation capabilities and combating “toxic content”. It is perhaps for these reasons that the platform has seen a dynamic increase in the number of users in recent days. Since September, the number of Internet users using the platform has increased from 9 million to 15 million. On Friday (November 15), Bluesky boasted that one million new users registered on it in just one day.
Google trusts information from the X website less and less. “Bluesky is 20 times smaller and 10 times more important”
In an interview with Sky News, Jason Barnard, general director of the Kalicube online marketing agency, noted that X is losing the trust not only of Internet users, but also of Google. The journalists' interlocutor professionally deals with, among other things, the issue of data analysis, based on which the search engine verifies which information are substantive in nature.
– Bluesky is 20 times smaller in terms of number of users. If you search for people in Google, there will be 10 times fewer results from Bluesky than those from X. Today, however, they are 10 times more important for Google when it comes to substantive issues – explained Barnard. He also added that the growing number of users in the future will only contribute to greater trust from search engines and AI models such as ChatGPT.