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Bluesky hits 20 million users amid mass deactivations on Elon Musk’s X

Bluesky is also actively looking to set itself apart from X by promising to not allow user content to be used for training AI models.

Bluesky might look like X, but unlike the Elon Musk owned social media, it isn't centralized.

Bluesky might look like X, but unlike the Elon Musk owned social media, it isn't centralised. (Image Source: Bluesky)

Elon Musk-owned X’s competitor Bluesky now has over 20 million users, up from 15 million users roughly a week ago.

The decentralised social media platform, created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has seen a surge in growth lately with its user base tripling in size over the last three months.

Bluesky’s current momentum is evident in the fact that the app added a million new users on several days last week, according to a report by Engadget. Data provided by analytics firm App Figures shows that Bluesky has been the top app in Apple’s App Store since six days and the top non-gaming app in Google Play Store for the last four days.

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Bluesky’s recent surge in users could be attributed to the mass migration of users from X. Since Election Day in the US, several actors, directors, musicians, and journalists have left the platform, mainly due to concerns that X is only going to become more “toxic” with the electoral victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential race and billionaire owner Elon Musk’s bromance with the president-elect.

Also Read | New to Bluesky? Here are five useful tips and tricks you probably didn’t know (but should)

Over 1,15,000 users in the US deactivated their X account the day after November 6 (US Election Day), as per data released by web analytics company Similarweb. Coincidentally, Bluesky reportedly saw a significant spike in traffic on the same day.

Bluesky is also actively looking to set itself apart from X by promising to not allow user content to be used for training AI models. In contrast, X recently changed its terms of service to state that all users agree to let their posts on the platform be used to train Grok, an AI chatbot developed by Musk’s xAI.

Meanwhile, Meta’s X alternative called Threads is also seeing a million new user sign-ups on a daily basis, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri. At the start of November, Threads touched 275 monthly users amid plans to roll out ads on the platform from early next year.

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