We don’t know if there is a massive abandonment of X. What we do know is that Bluesky and Threads are growing like wildfire

X, the self-proclaimed social network of freedom of expression, has been degrading little by little. It’s not that before the arrival of Elon Musk it was a very… friendly social network, so to speak, but since the tycoon bought it, Twitter, now X, seems to have gotten worse. Hoaxes, misinformation, hateful content, zero moderation, an algorithmic feed focused on the controversial and content that seeks to generate interactions (for the sake of monetization) and bots (which were going to disappear with the verified payment) run wild and that is taking its toll.

What has happened? That users are abandoning the platform, although the contrast is curious. On the one hand, renowned media such as The Guardian or La Vanguardia have confirmed that they will stop actively publishing in X, and that already tells us something. The reason, they explain from Guardianis that “X is a toxic media platform.” From The Vanguardfor their part, state that X “has become a platform where conspiracy theories and misinformation find an echo chamber.”

On the other hand, from X they claim to have broken usage records during the United States elections with 942 million posts. Elon Musk, for his part, assured in May that X had more than 600 million monthly active users of which half used the platform daily. However, there is no way to corroborate this data, but in any case there is a particular contrast: users abandon the platform and the alternatives do not stop growing, but on X everything seems fine.

Because? Because in addition to having made questionable decisions, how to make locks uselessX has a feed whose algorithm promotes questionable content. Beyond memes and viral videos whose sole purpose is to monetize via Twitter Premium, the algorithm does not seem to have problems promoting hate content, racism, conspiracy theories, cryptocurrency scams, AI-generated content, etc. The experience is far from what it was in the past.

The alternatives grow. Every time Elon Musk / X touch something, the bread or, rather, the number of users of these alternatives increases. The Bluesky case it’s remarkable. The temporary closure of registered users. It is a figure far from the 600 million that Musk claims that X has, but much higher than what there was just a few months ago.

Bluesky Statistics. A good metric is “unique posters”, that is, accounts that publish daily. The change in these two years has been more than curious | Capture: Xataka

And then we have Threads, whose statistics are not public. What we do know is that it managed to gather 100 million users in just a few days and that, currently, the number of registered users amounts to more than 275 million. The social network seems to be in good health, to the point that Meta is preparing to monetize it through advertising, according to The Information. It’s something that, sooner or later, was going to happen.

Mastodon Statistics. You can see the growth during the last two years, but also the stagnation | Image: Xataka

In the case of Mastodon there are two major growth peaks: Elon Musk’s purchase and the fall that occurred in the summer of 2023. However, Mastodon, which has about nine million users and around one million active users, is not growing. It maintains its figures, but it does not seem that the graph is going upwards.

The problem of understanding. The good thing about X is that all users are in the same place: X. If your friend is in X, you can find him, follow him and have him follow you. Now the pie begins to be divided with users in Threads, others in Bluesky, others in Mastodon, and things get complicated. And it does so because while Threads and Mastodon advocate for the fediverse and the ActivityPub protocol, Bluesky is committed to the AT Protocol.

They are different and Bluesky, for all intents and purposes, does not get along with Threads and Mastodon. There are third-party tools to connect Bluesky with the fediverso but they are just that, third-party tools.

However, this gives us an idea of ​​where things are going: platforms with different names, functions and options, but interconnected through open protocols to form a true digital plaza. Restraint will undoubtedly be a challenge, but no one said that standing up to X and his CEO, the richest person in the world, would be easy.

Images | Xataka

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