Social media platform and X competitor Bluesky announced on Tuesday that it’s added one million new users in the week since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.
Many of those new accounts appear to be the result of a mass exodus from X, which is owned by Trump surrogate Elon Musk, who used his platform to promote the MAGA leader’s successful return to the White House.
hello and welcome to the 1M people that have joined Bluesky in the last week!!!
“Hello Less Hateful World,” billionaire businessman Mark Cuban posted on the platform Tuesday. Cuban had been largely antagonistic toward both Trump and Musk in the lead-up to the election.
Bluesky’s COO Rose Wang told tech site The Verge that most of its new users are from the United States. On Tuesday, it was the second-most downloaded free social networking app in the U.S. App Store, trailing only Threads, which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s mega-company Meta.
For almost a year, users had to be invited to join Bluesky until the company made the platform available to everyone in February, according to TechCrunch. It now boasts nearly 15 million users.
“Hello Bluesky, you made such a lovely platform,” one new user posted. “Happy to be here.”
X is largely regarded as a platform rife with toxicity and disinformation.
Public figures like multi-hyphenate Bette Midler, who was often badgered on X over her liberal politics, left Musk’s site after the election ended. Taylor Swift fans orchestrated an online campaign to jump from X to Bluesky when Trump was elected.
“This site definitely allows us to get to know our followers without the sea of hatred in the comments!” one activist organization that recently joined Bluesky posted on Tuesday.
X is believed to still have more than 500 million monthly active users worldwide, though the company is said to have lost 80% of its value since Musk took ownership in 2022.
An account booted from X that tracked Musk’s private jet reemerged on Bluesky a few months ago.
Trump also owns a social media site called Truth Social. It averaged around 4 million monthly visitors from May 2023 through April 2024, according to CNBC. That number is reportedly down 39% from the previous year.
