Bluesky, a social media startup, is experiencing a surge in popularity following Donald Trump's election victory, while Meta's Threads is seeing a decline in users. This shift is attributed to users fleeing Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) and seeking alternatives that are less politically charged. Bluesky's growth is being fueled by academics, journalists, and left-leaning politicians who are leaving X due to its relaxed content moderation policies.
Meta's Threads is losing ground to social media start-up Bluesky in capitalising on the exodus of users from Elon Musk ’s X following Donald Trump ’s election. Since election day, app usage of Bluesky in the US and UK skyrocketed by almost 300 per cent to 3.5mn daily users, according to data from research group Similarweb. The site was boosted as academics, journalists and left-leaning politicians abandoned X, whose billionaire owner is a prominent supporter of the president-elect.
Prior to November 5, Threads had five times more daily active users in the US than Bluesky, which has just 20 full-time staff and was initially funded by Twitter when Jack Dorsey was its chief executive. Now, Threads is only 1.5 times larger than its rival, Similarweb said. Bluesky’s growth in the US and UK comes after Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg chose to deliberately reduce the prominence of political content across its apps, including Facebook and Instagram. That move was widely interpreted as an attempt to rise about the partisan fray and avoid being dragged into debates over free speech. Trump, who has long castigated social media platforms for allegedly censoring conservative voices, previously labelled Meta “an enemy of the people” and threatened Zuckerberg with jail were he to return to office. Last month, Trump said he liked Zuckerberg “much better now” because he was “staying out of the election”. This contrasts with X, which under Musk’s ownership, has cut back content moderation to allow more freewheeling content to proliferate. Since its launch in July last year, Threads has prioritised engaging content from accounts that users did not follow, a model closer to that of its photo app Instagram. However, Meta on Thursday backtracked on that choice. This week, it also swiftly rolled out the ability for users to curate “custom feeds” around topics or people they want to follow, mimicking existing Bluesky capabilities, after testing the feature for only five day
Social Media Threads Bluesky X Twitter Donald Trump Elon Musk Mark Zuckerberg Content Moderation Free Speech
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