Bluesky gets 700,000 new users after exodus from X since the US polls
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New York: More than 700,000 new users joined social media platform Bluesky from North America and the UK in the week since the US presidential election, The Guardian reported.
The trend signals at users’ growing dissatisfaction with the platform form X over alleged misinformation and offensive posts, according to the report.
The influx of new users helps Bluesky mark a rise from 9 million users in September to reach 14.5 million.
It is reported citing Social media researcher Axel Bruns that Bluesky’s effective controls over harmful behavior and problematic accounts made it an alternative platform to X.
‘It’s become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to provide, but without all the far-right activism, the misinformation, the hate speech, the bots and everything else,’ he was quoted as saying.
Axel Bruns pointed to the trend of liberal minded users fleeing X en masse to Bluesky.
Owned by chief executive Jay Graber, Bluesky started off as a project at Twitter before it became an independent company in 2022.
Bluesky benefited from X users’ dissatisfaction with it and its owner Elon Musk who rebranded Twitter leading to shedding millions of users alongside usage in US slumped by more than a fifth in the subsequent 7 months.
Bluesky got 3 million new users after X was suspended in Brazil in September.
The platform found 1.2 million users joining it after X announced to allow users to view posts from people who had blocked them.
Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu welcomed new users saying that they included people ranging from ‘Swifties to Wrestlers to city planners’.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian and professor at New York University, joined Bluesky this week picking up 21,000 followers on the first day itself.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who has 250,000 followers on X, said that X owned by de facto member of the Trump administration could accelerate its functions as ‘a Trump propaganda outlet and far-right radicalization machine’.
Meanwhile, platform Threads reached a total of 275 million monthly active users in November, rising from 200 million in August.