Liberal Social Media Users Are Abandoning X for Bluesky

I think a lot of us, regardless of how good or bad it is for our mental health, like to have a social media feed that we can scroll in five-minute increments periodically throughout the day. It kills a little time, gives us a (skewed) window into the world, and there are sometimes jokes! And memes! And shitposts!

X/Twitter is not that place anymore for most of us. The skewed perspective it offers is toxic, the jokes suck, and there’s little substance to break up the shitposts. It’s also owned by Elon Musk, who has done everything in his power to make it as unwelcome as possible to those who do not align with his worldview. It sucks.

A lot of people have just given up text-based social media altogether. I personally cannot abide by TikTok because it’s a bigger time investment than I want to make, and, also the algorithm feeds me the same kind of videos over and over because one time I accidentally laughed when a guy got hit in the nuts and now the entire feed is America’s Funniest Home Videos and Mormon Wives drama because I wanted to see what happened to Whitney Leavitt once.

I made the switch to Threads last year, and it was OK. Kind of. It’s a good place to follow news outlets, but most of the journalists themselves weren’t making the transition, in part because Zuckerberg specifically discouraged real-time news and politics on the platform. It also wasn’t very funny.

Meanwhile, some of those media figures had moved to Bluesky, but there wasn’t enough engagement there to sustain it. I could check once a day and consume the entire feed. That, however, has rapidly changed in recent days, weeks, and months. Now, not only is liberal X moving over to Bluesky, but so are most of the media personalities. Users are deleting their X accounts in droves, while Bluesky is quickly adding hundreds of thousands of new (and engaged) users.

A tale of two platforms:

BlueSky user numbers have hit a new record high in recent days, while the number of people deleting their accounts on X/Twitter has rocketed 🚀

[image or embed]

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch.bsky.social) November 13, 2024 at 6:21 AM

I don’t know how long it will last, but the vibe feels like early Twitter: It’s not controlled by a deranged algorithm. It’s being effectively moderated. It’s not owned by a billionaire (and Twitter’s former owner, Jack Dorsey, is no longer associated with it); it’s owned by Jay Graber (pictured) and Bluesky employees. It’s fun, and this morning’s announcement that The Onion had bought Infowars turned the whole platform into a goddamn party.

I don’t know how long the party will last, but I am encouraged by the platform’s distaste for trolling right-wingers (exhausting) and Blue Anon — all those liberal accounts that grifted on hopium/copium, two words that I never want to see again. It also allows you to block phrases that you might not ever want to hear again, like “ground operation” or “permission structure.”

In any respect, give it a try! The site is not on there — and may never be — but I am, and Dan put together a list of the other Pajiba writers you can follow with one click right here. Join us!