The deluge of goodbye messages from individuals leaving X started shortly after Donald Trump’s election victory final week. In explaining their choice, many within the exodus cited the identical factor: The enormous assist Elon Musk, the social media service’s proprietor, gave the Republican candidate in the course of the marketing campaign and the growing nastiness on his website.
Jody Avrigan, a podcast host and media producer with 50,000 followers on X, stated on rival social media service Threads, that he was finished utilizing X, as a result of “Elon Musk is a pretty destructive force in our society and politics, I want no part of him.” Nicole Wallace, an anchor on MSNBC with over 1 million followers on X, stated on stay TV that she’d “deleted Twitter today as an act of self preservation.” Tee Wattress stated on Threads she’d been on X for 15 years sharing comedic takes on popular culture and actuality TV, however “to see it turn into the hell scape that it is today has been devastating.”
The big variety of individuals swearing off X for different providers might spell the tip to social media as we all know it. As an alternative of simply of a tiny variety of extraordinarily common websites for posting information, opinions, and memes, as has been the case for greater than a decade, a variety of new choices are gaining hundreds of thousands of customers, such Threads, owned by Fb mother or father Meta, and Bluesky.
Each day customers of X, beforehand often called Twitter, have declined persistently since Musk acquired it in 2022. Final yr, it had roughly 250 million every day energetic customers and Musk claimed that the overall would develop to 1 billion in 2024. On election day final week, X had solely 162 million every day customers—and even that was a yearly excessive, based on Sensor Tower, a market intelligence agency that tracks the platform. A day later, that quantity had already dropped by 5 million, to 157 million every day customers.
Beneath Musk’s possession, X has misplaced a mean of 14% of its customers month-to-month, based on Sensor Tower. Regardless of the slight increase in every day customers on the day of the election, an “elongated slide in active users” has continued, Sensor Tower’s analysis lead Seema Shah informed Fortune.
Shortly after taking on X, Musk made main adjustments to the platform to advance what he described as “free speech,” whittling down the a whole lot of individuals that after labored on content material moderation for Twitter to only a handful of contract workers, reinstating overtly white supremacist or in any other case vitriolic personalities, and boosting solely accounts that paid to be verified, successfully gamifying your entire platform. He additionally tilted the algorithm to favor inflammatory posts and conservative flash factors, gleefully becoming a member of the fray himself, usually passing alongside political and racial conspiracy theories to his 200 million followers.
Late within the current presidential marketing campaign, Musk overtly joined forces with Trump by campaigning for him and donating closely to make sure a Trump victory, utilizing X as a device to that finish. He has since been by Trump’s aspect in Florida and has been rewarded by the President-elect because the co-head of the proposed Division of Authorities Effectivity, which shares an acronym with a cryptocurrency Musk usually promotes.
For a lot of customers, such a platform, no matter it might have as soon as been, is not enjoyable or helpful. And it’s set off the most recent refrain of individuals proclaiming their exit from X—for good this time, even when many have determined to maintain their accounts stay, however vow to not submit something extra on them.
“There has been a steady drift away from X for a while,” Jonathan Bellack, senior director of Harvard College’s Utilized Social Media Lab that’s a part of the Berkman Klein Middle, informed Fortune. “And yes, we’re seeing more people doing it more loudly at the moment, but people have been leaving for months and months. Now, I wonder if people are choosing to leave because of their beliefs, or because the experience on the platform has gotten worse.”
This X diaspora has coincided with the rising affect of different types of media, like podcasts, long-form video, group chats, and feedback sections on YouTube and Discord, as an illustration. It’s additionally come amid the growing adoption of newly-founded social media platforms. In the present day, many public personalities and journalists—lengthy the spine of Twitter and X—submit the identical factor throughout Threads, Bluesky, and X, hedging their bets on what might go viral the place.
For years, Twitter loved close to immunity from new rivals as a result of its community impact was so robust. The extra individuals who used it, the extra helpful it turned and the extra others subsequently wished to hitch. That flywheel spun for a very long time, holding social media startups and even behemoths like Meta, from even making an attempt to immediately compete. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg quipped a decade in the past that Twitter was “a clown car that drove into a goldmine.” When Musk began to take the wheels off of Twitter, Zuckerberg put 15 engineers to work constructing a veritable clone now often called Threads.
No matter individuals’s causes for leaving X, the 2 most probably locations for individuals to land is both Threads or Bluesky, a startup initiated by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Each platforms debuted final yr and are at present jockeying for first and second place in Apple’s App retailer for most-downloaded free apps within the U.S. TikTok and WhatsApp, additionally owned by Meta, are within the high 10 as effectively. In the meantime, X is in twenty ninth place, behind different social apps like Fb and Instagram, each owned by Meta.
No third get together analysis service tracks when customers delete an app from their telephone. However SimilarWeb discovered that no less than 115,000 customers deactivated their X accounts through the online the day after the current election. That very same day, Google Search curiosity within the phrase “Delete X” rose 150% and has continued to develop by double digit share factors every day since, based on Large, a design and know-how firm that conducts customized analysis. Even information outlet The Guardian stated this week it was abandoning all 80 of his official accounts, with a collective 27 million followers, as a result of enhance in “disturbing content promoted or found on the platform.”
One other information level is anecdotal: Over the previous week, many high X customers say they’ve misplaced vital numbers of followers, starting from dozens to a whole lot and even 1000’s. Brent Troderian, who has over 150,000 followers on X, stated on Threads that he’s misplaced about 1,000 followers for the reason that election. One other well-known determine on X, Aaron Rupar, who writes a e-newsletter on politics and media, stated he hemorrhaged 10,000 of his practically 1 million followers final week. “While I’m not above a bad tweet or two, I don’t think it’s anything I posted,” he wrote.
Though there was hypothesis on-line that a few of these declines may very well be associated to bots or inauthentic accounts instantly leaving or being deleted from the platform, there isn’t any clear proof to assist the notion.
In any case, such follower losses coincide with development in exercise on rival platforms. New customers of Threads within the final month grew 394% yr over yr, based on Sensor Tower. Meta stated in October the service had reached 275 million month-to-month energetic customers. Adam Mosseri, the pinnacle of Instagram who additionally oversees Threads, stated Thursday that the platform had added one other 15 million customers up to now in November, and was “going on three months with more than a million sign ups a day.”
Whereas Bluesky has far fewer customers, it’s been a trending subject on X and Threads over the past week as individuals mentioned the place there have been heading whereas leaving X. Because the election, it has added nearly 1 million new customers, to a complete of practically 15 million.
TikTok, Fb, Instagram, and Snapchat have all added customers as effectively every month over the past yr, from 3% to 10%, based on Sensor Tower.
Regardless of all the obvious momentum away from X, and the manipulation of its content material algorithm in favor of right-wing politics and Musk himself, no less than a number of the individuals who could also be leaving X are being changed by new customers. It’s attainable there’s a type of swap occurring—use amongst individuals fed up with the pro-Trump drift and Musk’s omnipresence is, to some extent, being coated by people who find themselves attracted to precisely that.
“Although X has experienced this elongated decline in overall US active users over the past few years, it has seen a sizable uptick in new users, or those who had previously never registered a session on X,” Shah of Sensor Tower informed Fortune.
Based on Sensor Tower, new cell app customers for X jumped 17% in October, among the many few notable will increase it’s seen since Musk’s takeover.
Whereas this isn’t sufficient to offset X’s sustained loss in customers since Musk’s acquisition, the general migration amongst social media platforms is a component and parcel to a brand new period of on-line fragmentation. This on-line splintering is taking with it a number of the cultural and media energy that had coalesced round what was Twitter, based on Bellack of Harvard, and it’s doubtless that nobody platform or kind of media will take up that place ever once more.
“Twitter always had a level of influence that was disproportionate to its number of users – it had a public square feeling, yes, but there’s no reason that’s the only way social media can work,” Bellack stated. “People leaving X, the fragmentation and people sorting themselves in other places, it’s just reinforcing the notion that there will no longer be one definitive platform, and that’s probably a good thing.”
Are you a tech worker or somebody with perception or a tip to share? Contact Kali Hays securely via Sign at +1-949-280-0267 or at kali.hays@fortune.com.
