X competitor Bluesky rocketed to the No. 1 spot on the Apple App Store’s US chart this week, as many users of Elon Musk’s platform said they were decamping in the wake of his significant role in the US presidential election.
Bluesky’s user base has doubled in the past 90 days — on Tuesday the company said it had gained 1 million new sign-ups in the past week alone, bringing it to more than 15 million total users.
The energy on X is markedly different: Musk spent months using the site to boost President-elect Donald Trump. In recent days, researchers have recorded surges in sexist language like “your body, my choice” on the site. And that’s on top of previous changes by Musk, like cutting moderators, restoring banned accounts, allowing racist and Nazi accounts and changing the platform’s verification system to boost anyone who was willing to pay, regardless of what they posted — all of which helped to tank the company’s core ad business.
A number of prominent journalists announced their exit, accordingly, from X to join Bluesky this week, including the Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel, the New York Times’ Mara Gay and former CNN anchor Don Lemon. UK newspaper The Guardian also said Wednesday that it will no longer post to X from its official channels, calling X “a toxic media platform,” although it did not specify which other platforms it plans to use to promote its work.
But while Bluesky may be having A Moment three years after its launch, any claims that it will kill X should be taken with a grain of salt.
As a private company, X doesn’t share user numbers. Recent third party estimates of user trends are mixed, although the consistent user growth the platform enjoyed prior to Musk’s takeover does appear to have been upended in the past two years. But — for better or, probably, worse — the site has so far weathered the creation of multiple other competitors, the reinstatement of White supremacists and the spread of racist conspiracy theories from Musk down without fading into irrelevance.
“X usage is at an all-time high and continues to surge,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a post Wednesday. “To all of our users — of every interest, political party, and point of view — You will always have a place to engage and join the global conversation freely and safely.”
