Bluesky's user numbers surged in particular after tech billionaire Musk's vocal support and financial backing of Donald Trump's successful presidential election campaign in the US. — AFP
WASHINGTON: Bluesky appears to be pulling more and more users away from Elon Musk's online platform X amid frustration over a perceived growing toleration of hate speech and misinformation, with the budding rival now cracking the 25 million user mark.
Bluesky, which shares many of the same features as the platform previously known as Twitter, has gained around 5 million users since November 19, the latest company statistics show.
Bluesky's user numbers surged in particular after tech billionaire Musk's vocal support and financial backing of Donald Trump's successful presidential election campaign in the US.
Musk has also angered some of X's user base by dismantling previous measures against misinformation and conspiracy theories, while research suggest hate speech has flourished under the platform's new leadership, which X rejects. Some X users have announced that they are leaving the platform due to its development under Musk.
Bluesky is designed as a decentralised alternative to X – a platform on which many interconnected online networks can exist. The project was launched in 2019 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey when he was still head of the world's most used short messaging service.
Since Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X, market researchers have reported that the platform's user numbers are falling and major advertisers are pulling out.
The strongest competition to date has been the rival service Threads from the Facebook group Meta, which hit 175 million monthly active users in the year since it launched. Since the takeover, X has not provided any regular information on user numbers. – dpa
