Journalists migrate there en masse. Famous actors and musicians pour in. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has joined the party, and the New York City mayor’s office is directing agencies to set up camp. They’re calling it the #Xodus, and it’s happening fast.
Millions of social media junkies and power users are moving from using . rubbish.
As X descends into dysfunctionality and extreme unpleasantness, Bluesky has emerged as an attractive alternative.
Bluesky was developed in recent years by Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, as a kind of open and decentralized alternative to Twitter. (Dorsey has since left Bluesky’s board.) In terms of the site’s basic user experience and design, it looks a lot like Twitter in the pre-Musk era. Bluesky had an invite-only beta launch in 2023, and in February it became available to the general public. Although it has been growing throughout the year, it has seen a huge explosion in registrations after the election. And with media organizations and politicians now setting up accounts on the site, Bluesky seems to be giving off the vibe of an “official new alternative to Twitter.”
There are many reasons why people flee X, and I don’t agree with all of them. But I can say that my personal experience on the site since Musk bought Twitter in 2022 (after which he renamed it X) has been very disheartening and at times infuriating.
Changes to the algorithms and the default user feed mean I’m constantly wading through a sickening flood of misinformation, rage bait, demagogic pundits, product placement for Musk’s other companies, and imbecile short videos that are violent and salacious. The default feed is labeled “for you,” but compared to most social media I’ve used, the algorithm has no insight into my interests. Instead, it’s just the most vulgar bid for generic user attention imaginable.
Aside from the disastrous “for you” feed, X has become unbearable to read. The company’s decision to place as many ads as possible in the interface often makes it impossible to determine whether I am reading a message or an ad. (There’s no evidence that the visual onslaught of ads has helped Musk regain the massive chunk of ad revenue he’s lost by destroying the platform.) Despite the fact that one of Musk’s premise for buy improving the platform’s bot problem was , bots now dominate the user experience at a level I’ve never experienced before on the site – or anywhere on the internet for that matter. And Musk’s decision to scrap Twitter’s verified badge policy has made it much harder for me to use the site to track reliable real-time reporting and separate rumor from fact. Musk has also said that he is lowering the visibility of posts with links – because he doesn’t want people to leave the site – so posts linking to legitimate news articles become buried in clickbait posts. Meanwhile, Musk has tweaked the site’s algorithm to prioritize his own posts, increasing his power as a colossal purveyor of disinformation and far-right propaganda.
Lately it feels like posting is pointless. Despite having thousands of followers, engagement on my posts has dropped and my average post seems to disappear into the ether unnoticed. When I do get engagement, a lot of the time it’s a bot.
That is, if it isn’t a bigoted, disparaging comment. Due to a combination of Musk reinstating verified pro-Nazi accounts, the growing popularity of place chock full of toxic racists, misogynists, transphobes and trolls of all stripes. While receiving profane insults and racism is something I have always experienced as a journalist, in my daily experience on X I have noticed a large increase in it. This isn’t political dialogue, it’s just being on the receiving end of misanthropy and hatred.
These are not just the costs of ‘freedom of speech’. X has an anti-harassment policy and suspends accounts for violating rules. It’s just that these rules are poorly and erratically enforced and are limited in their ability to mitigate a platform-wide culture of trolling. Moreover, Musk’s story about freedom of speech is a facade. Musk has shown a pattern of suspending accounts in a way that appears to align with a right-wing political agenda. He also selectively enforces free speech principles in various countries in a manner that reflects what his perceived political and business interests might be. And Musk’s decision to become a full-blown Trump activist and work with the Trump administration underlines that he is in danger as an independent arbiter of speech.
As X descends into dysfunctionality and extreme unpleasantness, Bluesky has emerged as an attractive alternative. It represents a return to the basic, common-sense principles of text-based social media. It’s easy to use and navigate, it has good tools to reduce harassment, the default feed is a simple chronological series of posts. Posts aren’t flooded with porn bots, bigoted trolls, and weird native ads. Even though I have a fraction of my old followers on my new account at Bluesky, my involvement is already much greater.
Some people have tried to criticize the exodus from X as a desire for people on the left to retreat into “safe spaces” and ideological echo chambers. (Not everyone who goes to Bluesky is on the left, but it is a crowd that generally leans left.) I can say unequivocally that this is not the case for me. I enjoy reading and talking to people from across the political spectrum, and I would like to spend most of my time on a platform with maximum ideological diversity. I’m not tired of X because it features people I disagree with. I’m tired of X because it sucks. A reactionary billionaire with no commitment to free speech or user experience has taken a wrecking ball to a once flawed but priceless digital commons.
I haven’t completely sworn off using X yet, but it won’t be somewhere I’ll put as much time into as I used to. I also don’t assume that Bluesky will be a perfect port; after all, it is run by a company. But for now, I’m mostly reading people from across the political spectrum outside of X, and tending to have conversations online in a place that’s closer to the way a public square should function.
