The reelection of Donald Trump as president last week brought a wave of jubilation to X (formerly Twitter ). The influencers and megadonors who supported the Republican nominee delighted in the defeat of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris , while giddily speculating about the extremist agenda he would pursue once in office. The site’s owner, billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk , who had drastically overhauled the platform to amplify far-right misinformation and hate speech, was particularly pleased.
He announced in a post on Monday that the Super PAC through which he committed at least $119 million of his personal wealth to electing Trump would keep working to register more Republican voters in “key districts around the country.” For many who had hoped to see Trump lose, and were already on the fence about leaving X, this victory lap provided as good an occasion as any to finally log off. Many users noted a steady loss of hundreds or even thousands of followers as accounts were deactivated, continuing a downward trend in activity since Musk’s takeover of the social network in late 2022.
Meanwhile, its direct competitors — Bluesky and Threads — once again saw an influx of new users apparently fleeing the toxic conversation on X. Bluesky, a decentralized service developed as a project under former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and then incorporated as a separate company, announced on Tuesday that in the week since the election it had added 1 million users , bringing .
