The great X-odus/ Breaking Free from the X


Bluesky, a small side project of Twitter that was abandoned after Elon Musk bought the platform and turned it into X — is now surging and witnessing a mass migration. Why this isn’t just a gimmick of  “a bunch of liberals trying to counter Trump" and why we all need to start understanding the significance of a decentralized network and content moderation.

Just over a year and a half ago, in April 2023, Bluesky had about 50,000 users who could only join via invite. As of writing this, it already boasts nearly 24 million users (you can track the live growth here), and the sign-up pace is around one million per week. The young network scrambled to handle the surge, quadrupling its workforce from 25 to 100 employees.

Bluesky began as a side project of Twitter in the pre-Musk era (yes, this is the third time in a row we’re mentioning him in our blog — something’s definitely wrong with us). The vision for it, as described by then-CEO Jack Dorsey, was to develop a uniform tool, a kind of product or service that Twitter could offer to anyone wanting to launch their own social network. One of Musk’s first moves after buying out Twitter and turning it into X was to ditch the project. But Dorsey, together with a small team, kept going — until he had a falling-out with his peers and left. Taking his place was CEO Jay Graber, whose Chinese first name LanTian happens to mean “blue skies.” Coincidence?

To the new user, Bluesky will look, at first glance, like everything Twitter used to be before Musk. Same design, same features, and even a very similar logo: a blue butterfly instead of the dearly departed Twitter bird (which gifted us a verb that outlasted the brand: “to tweet”). So why is Bluesky suddenly the talk of the town and what is behind this great migration?

As we said, it’s very reminiscent of the old Twitter, and that word – “old” – is key here. For a lot of people, mostly on the liberal-left of the spectrum, the violence and extremism Musk brought to X has become unbearable. Millions of users don’t want to be fighting neo-Nazis, antisemites, conspiracy theorists, and local loudmouths – they want to talk to like-minded folks about science, culture, high politics, and everyday-life’s dilemmas. The final straw for many tweeters? Musk’s decision to essentially make the block option void of meaning. Add that to Trump’s victory and his appointment of Musk to the Orwellian role of “Government Efficiency Czar.”

Even in Israel, dozens of prominent figures have packed their bags and migrated to greener pastures i.e. Bluesky, and have taken their followers with them. And It’s not just a few fed-up individuals; organizations and media outlets wanting to take a moral stand have also jumped ship. Take The Guardian for example – the British newspaper had over 11 million followers on X but recently shut its account and moved to Bluesky. Those who’ve made the move, whether they slammed the door on the way out or whether they come back for an occasional peek, describe the experience as a bit like going on vacation to Switzerland: tranquil, friendly, clean – but sometimes a little bit boring.

Behind the similar interface however are some major differences between X (Twitter) and Bluesky. First of all, the new network is decentralized – a term you’ll hear more and more when discussing social networks. This means anyone can create their own sub-network for their community (a holdover from Bluesky’s original purpose when it was still part of Twitter). A user can exist solely within their own community, seeing only that feed. Of course, you may hop in between communities which are marked in the app by various tabs. A “community” might consist of, say, Hebrew-speaking users. Or it could be much more specific.

Above all is another key principle: Bluesky has no algorithmic feed. That means you won’t be seeing things in your feed because a hidden hand wants your outraged engagement, or simply because someone paid for visibility, or because the owner believes in conspiracies and chaos. You’re also probably hearing another term making the rounds: Moderation – your ability to control, better than ever before, what you don’t want to see. political content, sexual content or… felines.

All this might sound like a private paradise for a bunch of “hippy-dippy” types, AKA there’s no sustainable revenue model. But Bluesky’s rapid growth has competitors taking note, rethinking their strategies, and even copying what works. For instance, Meta announced it would be slashing its algorithm’s power on the struggling-to-survive Threads platform, which was also founded as a competitor to X. Reddit is supposedly testing decentralization; YouTube is planning to copy moderation tools; and LinkedIn is rolling out “starter packs,” a unique Bluesky feature that lets new users quickly follow groups of people with shared interests.

So yes, Bluesky is already successful: it’s reshaping the gigantic social networks we all are living in.