Topline
“Star Wars” actor Mark Hamill posted Monday about leaving X, formerly known as Twitter, the latest in a trend of accounts with large followings exiting the platform—often for up-and-coming alternative Bluesky—after Donald Trump’s election to a second term, arguing X promotes the far right and raising concerns about owner Elon Musk’s relationship with the president-elect.
BATH, UNITED KINGDOM – AUGUST 01: In this photo illustration the logo of US online social media and … [+]
Key Facts
Mark Hamill posted on Bluesky Saturday after joining, then posted on Monday that he’s a “TwitterQuitter,” although his X account is still active and has 4.9 million followers.
The Guardian newspaper—which controls dozens of accounts on the platform that have about 27 million followers combined—announced its plans Nov. 13 to stop engaging with the platform, citing its worries about “far-right conspiracy theories” and racism, and alleging the presidential election confirmed “X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”
Journalist Don Lemon—who has more than 1.5 million followers on X and is embroiled in a lawsuit against Musk and X—posted Nov. 13 that he once considered the company a tool for “debate and discussion” but decided to leave after seeing X’s new terms of service, which only allows future legal action against the platform to be handled through the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (seemingly a strategy by the company to remain in the hands of Texas’ conservative courts, according to reporting from The Washington Post, citing legal experts).
Author Stephen King—who has more than 7 million followers and often engaged in debates with Musk or politicians like Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene on the platform—posted to his X account on Nov. 14 that he’s leaving, will mostly use Meta’s Threads and “tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic.”
Director Guillermo del Toro posted to his more than 2.4 million followers on Nov. 10, saying his X account will “stay mostly unused (drop in on ocassion)” and he “will be more and more at BlueSky.”
Actress Jaime Lee Curtis, who had more than 745,000 X followers, deactivated her X account on Nov. 13 and posted a prayer on Instagram with a photo showing the deactivated profile, but she did not specify exactly why she decided to shut down her account.
Singer Barbra Streisand posted to her X account (which is still active at the time of writing) on Nov. 14 that “effective immediately” her comments will be posted on Bluesky, adding “#TwitterExodus” and a link to her new profile.
On Nov. 13, actor Ben Stiller, who is also still on Musk’s platform, posted “Hello BlueSky” to the budding platform and promoted his Bluesky account on X for his 5.3 million followers, later saying “I’m posting on BlueSky…” and “please come there too…”
Other celebrities have recently deactivated their X account or indicated they’ll no longer use X: comedian Andy Richter, film director Lilly Wachowski, actress Alyssa Milano, actress Gabrielle Union, actress Yvette Nicole Brown, actor Alex Winter, journalist Joy-Ann Reid and actor Matthew Lillard.
The number of big names who are joining Bluesky or an alternative platform (but may continue using X) is also growing: actress Miranda Cosgrove, singer Lizzo, actor George Takei, director James Gunn, billionaire Mark Cuban, actor Levar Burton, journalist Rachel Maddow and rapper Flavor Flav.
Tangent
Wired reported on Nov. 8, citing interviews with individuals who left X, that fans of mega-star Taylor Swift are leaving the platform after the election because of Musk’s ownership and saying it has become a “hellscape.”
Key Background
Musk was a key figure in Trump’s presidential campaign and has continued to ingratiate himself with the president-elect, developing an outsized influence that has culminated in his role in the new Trump administration as the head of a newly conceived “Department of Government Efficiency.” Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and became a controversial and increasingly far-right voice on the site. The platform also started to skew toward a conservative audience. Several high-profile advertisers dropped off the platform in 2022 and 2023 in response to antisemitic activity propagating on the platform, leading to Musk famously calling out Disney CEO Bob Iger when asked about fleeing advertisers during an interview in 2023. Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter, NPR has also left the platform after its accounts were labeled “state-affiliated media,” though the labeling has since been dropped. A similar exodus of high-profile personalities from X happened in 2022 after Musk bought the platform, with celebrity exits from author John Green, White Stripes lead artist Jack White, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, comedian and actress Whoopi Goldberg, comedian Shonda Rhimes and model Gigi Hadid. Some, like Green and Rhimes, later returned.
How Many Accounts Have Left X Recently?
Estimates from research firm Sensor Tower show X has shrunk by about 27% in terms of global daily active users on the app over the past two years, but it’s still dominant—average time spent on the platform increased 32% around Election Day, compared to the previous 30 days (Bluesky had an 18% increase and Threads had a 23% increase). X’s user base grew 17% from last year, according to Sensor Tower.
Big Number
Estimates from research firm Similarweb show more than 46 million people flocked to X (a platform record for 2024), and more than 115,000 U.S. internet-based X users killed their accounts the day after the election. Meanwhile, Bluesky’s web traffic shot into millions of visits around the time of the election.
What Is Bluesky?
Bluesky, which became widely available in 2024, is a social media platform with a similar text-based nature to Twitter. It was created by former longtime Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, a billionaire who later left the organization. Since its launch in 2021, Bluesky has accumulated more than 19 million users. It has added about more than four million users since Nov. 4 from across North America and Britain, according to Emily Liu, a spokesperson from the company. That means Bluesky is still a small fraction of the size of X—which reported in March it reaches 250 million daily users and has 550 million visitors a month—and smaller than Meta’s Threads, which reported earlier in November it has more than 275 million monthly users.