Why are people leaving Elon Musk’s X in droves for rival Bluesky? The great X-odus explained | Trending

Hundreds of thousands of users has reportedly left X in the last week and over a million have joined the social media platform Bluesky since the results of the US election were declared. Many are trying to escape Elon Musk’s X as hate speech and misinformation grows on the platform. With Elon Musk becoming a part of Donald Trump’s government, his remarks about the neutrality of X appear outdated.(AFP) While users have been trickling down from the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter, many have found that the catalyst of the en masse abandonment of X could be its owner, Elon Musk, who has in the last few months changed the social media site into a megaphone for promoting US President-elect Donald Trump during and after his successful election campaign. Why are users unhappy with X?With Musk now taking over the new Department of Government Efficiency under Trump’s government, his remarks about the neutrality of the platform appear outdated. In 2022, Musk said “for Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” He also said ,“Trump would be 82 at end of his term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.” This statement can no longer hold true for someone who was part of the closest moments of Trump’s campaign, even going to his campaign rallies and featuring in family photos as “Uncle Elon”. (Also read: A Reddit group is tracking Elon Musk’s private jet: ‘No privacy for politicians’) With Musk’s allegiance to Trump clear, many feel the space for free speech on X has been snatched away the alt-right, hate speech and bots. Experts told The Guardian that it is likely that X has become “Truth Social premium” referring to Trump’s hard-right social media platform, which they suspect will be merged with X soon. What is Bluesky?As X suffers its largest exodus to date, Bluesky is becoming its newest rival after amassing 16 million users, including 1 million in the course of 24 hours last week. It began as a inside project former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to build an “open and decentralised standard for social media”. Bluesky became the most popular app on the app store as the choice for X refugees, although its 16 million users pale in comparison to X’s about 317 million. Why is Bluesky better than X?Users are preferring Bluesky as it offers them the chance to heavily moderate the algorithm that drives what type of content they see and create custom feeds based on special interests. It also allows users to have website addresses as their handles which could act as a verification tool for journals and public figures as they could use a company’s website in their handle. Is Fediverse the future of social media?Reports suggest that some tech enthusiasts are excited the X-odus as it could bring in the era of decentralised social networks called “Fediverse”. They argue that social media platforms should be decentralised in the same way that Gmail accounts can email any email address, or mobile numbers call users on any other network. Newer social networks like Bluesky are being built on such ecosystems that can help them to interconnect. While no one knows what will happen to X, predictions are ranging from total collapse to flipping to an anti-Trump platform if the realtionship between Musk and the president sours. There is also the fear of X becoming a training ground for Musk’s xAI venture feeding on user’s interactions to build lucrative AI models for the world’s richest man. (Also read: Trump and Elon Musk’s relationship could end over this one country, experts warn)