The deluge of goodbye messages from individuals leaving X started shortly after Donald Trump’s election victory final week. In explaining their resolution, many within the exodus cited the identical factor: The large help Elon Musk, the social media service’s proprietor, gave the Republican candidate in the course of the marketing campaign and the rising nastiness on his web site.
Jody Avrigan, a podcast host and media producer with 50,000 followers on X, mentioned on rival social media service Threads, that he was carried out 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, mentioned on dwell TV that she’d “deleted Twitter today as an act of self preservation.” Tee Wattress mentioned 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.” Even the writer and really energetic X person Stephen King joined Threads, telling his 7 million X followers that he was leaving the platform. “Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic.”
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 well-liked websites for posting information, opinions, and memes, as has been the case for greater than a decade, plenty of new choices are gaining tens of millions of customers, such Threads, owned by Fb guardian Meta, and Bluesky.
Day by day customers of X, beforehand often called Twitter, have declined persistently since Musk acquired it in 2022. Final yr, it had roughly 250 million day by day energetic customers and Musk claimed that the entire would develop to 1 billion in 2024. On election day final week, X had solely 162 million day by day customers—and even that was a yearly excessive, in line with Sensor Tower, a market intelligence agency that tracks the platform. A day later, that quantity had already dropped by 5 million, to 157 million day by day customers.
Below Musk’s possession, X has misplaced a mean of 14% of its customers month-to-month, in line with Sensor Tower. Regardless of the slight increase in day by day customers on the day of the election, an “elongated slide in active users” has continued, Sensor Tower’s analysis lead Seema Shah advised Fortune.
Shortly after taking up X, Musk made main modifications to the platform to advance what he described as “free speech,” whittling down the lots of of individuals that when 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 the whole platform. He additionally tilted the algorithm to favor inflammatory posts and conservative flash factors, gleefully becoming a member of the fray himself, typically passing alongside political and racial conspiracy theories to his 200 million followers.
Late within the latest 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 facet 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 typically 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 dwell, however vow to not publish 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 Heart, advised 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 example. It’s additionally come amid the rising adoption of newly-founded social media platforms. At present, many public personalities and journalists—lengthy the spine of Twitter and X—publish 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 needed to affix. That flywheel spun for a very long time, preserving social media startups and even behemoths like Meta, from even trying to straight 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 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 prime 10 as nicely. 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 at the least 115,000 customers deactivated their X accounts by way of the net the day after the latest 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, in line with Large, a design and know-how firm that conducts customized analysis. Even information outlet The Guardian mentioned this week it was abandoning all 80 of his official accounts, with a collective 27 million followers, because of the enhance in “disturbing content promoted or found on the platform.”
One other knowledge level is anecdotal: Over the previous week, many prime X customers say they’ve misplaced important numbers of followers, starting from dozens to lots of and even 1000’s. Brent Troderian, who has over 150,000 followers on X, mentioned 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, mentioned he hemorrhaged 10,000 of his almost 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 could possibly be associated to bots or inauthentic accounts instantly leaving or being deleted from the platform, there is no such thing as a clear proof to help 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, in line with Sensor Tower. Meta mentioned in October the service had reached 275 million month-to-month energetic customers. Adam Mosseri, the top of Instagram who additionally oversees Threads, mentioned Thursday that the platform had added one other 15 million customers to date 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 matter 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 virtually 1 million new customers, to a complete of almost 15 million.
TikTok, Fb, Instagram, and Snapchat have all added customers as nicely every month over the past yr, from 3% to 10%, in line with Sensor Tower.
Regardless of the entire obvious momentum away from X, and the manipulation of its content material algorithm in favor of right-wing politics and Musk himself, at the least a number of the individuals who could also be leaving X are being changed by new customers. It’s attainable there’s a form of swap happening—use amongst individuals fed up with the pro-Trump drift and Musk’s omnipresence is, to some extent, being lined 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 advised Fortune.
In response to 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, in line with Bellack of Harvard, and it’s probably 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 mentioned. “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.
