Bye, Elon — Bluesky Is Gaining Popularity Postelection. Here's What You Need To Know.

The competitor to X, formerly called Twitter, just reached 16 million users this week.

Elon Musk, billionaire and owner of X, formerly called Twitter, has seen his relationship with Donald Trump grow ever since he used his personal fortune to help get him elected.

Since then, he’s become a prominent figure of Trump’s upcoming administration, with the president-elect tasking Musk with co-leading his new (and unofficial) “Department of Government Efficiency.” Musk has also reportedly been seen in meetings that Trump is holding at Mar-a-Lago. He is “happy to be first buddy” to the upcoming president, but for those who are against Trump’s fascist, racist views, staying on X — and thereby supporting owner Musk — has become an untenable prospect.

According to estimates from Similarweb, which tracks website traffic, X got the most U.S. visitors it has gotten in a year the day after the election, as well as the most account deactivations since Musk took charge of the social media platform, with more than 115,000 U.S. visitors deactivating their accounts.

Amid the X exodus, there is a social media platform not owned by a billionaire that is seeing record numbers this month — Bluesky. In September, the app had around 8 million users; it’s now reporting to have 16 million, with more than a million of those coming in the week after the election. Bluesky also just became the top free-downloaded app in Apple’s app store in the U.S., surpassing Meta’s Threads and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Bluesky is quickly becoming the new social network that liberal politicians, celebrities and news junkies are jumping ship for, while dormant accounts on the app are finally being used.