Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) is facing a significant drop in its user base, with some controversial posts and overall direction on X resulting in a notable drop in active users, especially in the UK.
What happened: The number of daily active users in the UK has fallen from 8 million to around 5.6 million over the past year.
More than a third of the drop came after Musk made controversial posts during the summer riots, including one in which he said “civil war is inevitable,” the Financial Times reported, citing SimilarWeb.
In the US, X’s active user base fell by about a fifth over the same period.
Also read: Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI in talks with Marriott and Nike, ready to challenge Google’s dominance
Frustrated X users are moving to alternative platforms, with Bluesky, a platform co-founded by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, garnering a lot of attention.
Although Bluesky has a smaller absolute reach than Meta Platform’s Threads app, it has grown rapidly over the past six weeks, becoming the preferred choice among media professionals, policy experts, academics and a broader range of users.
However, the report also pointed out a potential problem in that Bluesky’s user base tends to hold similar viewpoints, creating an echo chamber effect.
Nonetheless, many users appreciate the echo-chamber nature of the platform, likening it to “old Twitter.”
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Why it matters: The migration of users from X to Bluesky can be traced back to Musk’s controversial comments about riots across the UK.
In August, these comments reportedly led to a 60% increase in overall activity from Bluesky’s UK account.
Interestingly, Musk had previously thanked Dorsey after he called X a “freedom technology.”
This comes after Dorsey resigned from Blue Sky’s board amid the block controversy.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
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