Bluesky Benefitting From X Backlash
However, its growing popularity also reflects rising disgruntlement with X for a range of reasons including politics and policies.
The surge in the past week is unofficially being put down to an exodus from the competing platform following the US presidential election. This could be attributed to owner Musk’s rampant support for Donald Trump; his attacks on Democrat supporters (including Taylor Swift) and the increasing amount of hate speech that X is spewing is certainly not winning over many users.
But other factors may also have come into play to drive X users to look elsewhere. There was anger at the new AI Training Clause that Musk snuck in four weeks ago that doesn’t have an opt-out clause. And the decision to dilute the power of the block feature also caused consternation.
Now, as Musk himself explained in a post: “The block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, public post.”
