Social media platforms Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon have all experienced significant growth recently as users migrate away from X, formerly Twitter.
Since Elon Musk‘s acquisition of Twitter in November 2022, the social media landscape has experienced a significant shift. Users dissatisfied with changes on the platform—rebranded as X—have been migrating to explore alternatives.
Threads, owned by Meta, has reached more than 275 million monthly users this month.
In the last week, following the U.S. presidential election, Bluesky confirmed that it gained over 700,000 new users, with more than 14.5 million users globally. Mastodon, meanwhile, has expanded from 3.5 million users in November 2022 to almost 9 million this month.
Newsweek reached out to X, Mastodon, Meta, and Bluesky via email for comment.
When Did Users Begin Deserting X?
Less than a year on from SpaceX CEO Musk’s purchase of the platform, user levels appear to have lowered significantly. The Wall Street Journal reported that daily active users for September 2023 had dropped by 16 percent among those who use the mobile app. In comparison, daily users for the other main social media platforms’ apps remained stable or increased.
One of the reasons appears to be a reaction to the rise of toxic discourse on the platform; a University of Southern California (USC) study found that, following Musk’s purchase, the level of hate speech on X significantly increased.
“The proportion of hate words in hateful users’ tweets increased after Musk bought Twitter. And the average daily hate speech of hateful users nearly doubled,” said Julia Cohen, science and tech writer for the Information Sciences Institute at USC.
From advocacy groups to diversity-oriented companies, over the past year organizations have been publicly announcing why they have decided to leave X, citing reasons including a lack of moderation and a rise in harassment, misinformation, and hate speech.
Diversifying Group, a female-founded, Black-owned diversity and inclusion services organization, said in December 2023 that it had left because Musk had “gutted large portions of the team, workers responsible for crucial upkeep of the platform—critical system engineers and much of the trust and safety policy team.”
“The latter are responsible for essential safeguarding such as spotting misinformation, spam, fake accounts, and impersonation. Those left were reportedly working long hours, overwhelmed, and overworked. This is not something we would ever want to endorse,” it added.
In October 2023, LGBTQ+ youth group Belong To, blogged it was leaving the platform, adding that “throughout the past 12-months, we have experienced ongoing harassment, graphic and hateful commentary and witnessed the spread of misinformation about LGBTQ+ lives.”
Musk’s tenure at X has been marked by some decisions that have unsettled a number of users. A significant recent change in September 2024 was the alteration of the ‘block’ feature. Previously, blocking a user prevented them from viewing or interacting with one’s posts. Under the new policy, blocked users cannot engage with them but they can still see them.
“High time this happened,” Musk posted on X at the time, adding that “the block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, public post[s].”
Social media platform Bluesky displayed on a smartphone. The app has soared to one of the top positions in social network downloads in app stores in the past week since the U.S. election.
Ian Langsdon/AFP via Getty Images
Users took to X to voice their disapproval to Musk with one, @audrawrongspeak, explaining, “I don’t want to see their posts and I don’t want them to see my posts that’s why I blocked them.”
Another user, @ALestrange_1954, replied to Musk saying: “I block spam accounts, that you allow to operate on this platform, I block accounts that spew hate filled rants and I block people who DM me when I said NO DM’S on my profile. And now those accounts will be able to see what I post?” adding, “You just moved me one step closer to closing my account and I paid for the blue check. Not. Cool.”
This exodus may have experienced a resurgence in the past week since Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. Anecdotal evidence suggests the number of X users has decreased in the last week. X user @ChrisO_wiki noted a significant drop in his follower base postelection, attributing it to users quitting the platform.
He tweeted on November 11, “The Trump slump on X appears to be picking up speed again as more users quit (and presumably go elsewhere?), with more people I’m following also quitting.”
One day previously he observed that his “total follower losses are now 1,678 since the election.”
Growth of the X Contenders
The highest profile contender, launched by Meta in July 2023, is Threads, which positioned itself as a direct competitor to X. The platform saw immediate success, gaining 2 million sign-ups within two hours and surpassing 100 million in less than five days.
Despite an initial decline in user engagement, Threads has maintained significant growth. By August 2024, Meta’s Twitter alternative reached 200 million monthly active users, up from 175 million in July. Threads now sees over 275 million monthly users, a substantial increase from 150 million in April.
Bluesky, the decentralized social network originally funded by Twitter, has seen a surge in users seeking an alternative to X. With more than 700,000 new users in the past week, the platform’s expansion may be correlated with increasing levels of uncivil discourse on X in the lead up to the U.S. presidential election and postelection discourse.
Emily Liu, Developer Relations & Community for Bluesky, told Newsweek in August, “Many of our users join Bluesky because they’re seeking a positive experience online, where the platform itself does not promote hateful speech or misinformation.”
Bluesky also introduced anti-toxicity features earlier this year, including the ability to detach quote posts, hide replies, and filter notifications. These measures, said the company, aim to enhance user control and combat harassment.
The platform climbed to the number 2 spot in the U.S. App Store’s social networking category at the same time as X’s block function was changed and is currently number 7 in this category with Threads taking the top spot.
Mastodon, another decentralized social network, experienced a surge in popularity in the immediate aftermath of Musk’s Twitter takeover. Its user base jumped from 3.5 million in November 2022 to over 6 million by January 2023, with active users increasing from around 360,000 to 2.5 million during the same period.
However, this initial growth spurt has since leveled off, with Mastodon currently recording approximately 9 million users and around 880,000 active users. This suggests that while Mastodon attracted a wave of new users seeking an alternative, it has struggled to sustain that momentum.
Following a recent update, Mastodon is currently working on new features that would give it more X-like user interactions, which may appeal to former X users looking for a new platform.
In a recent blog post coauthored by Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput and developer relations manager Andy Piper, it was announced that the decentralized platform is working on quote posts. “We are resuming work on this long-awaited feature, and it will be our main focus for the rest of the year,” they said.
