- Users and brands, like former CNN anchor Don Lemon and The Guardian, have been leaving X.
- Gordon MacMillan, ex-head of content strategy at Twitter, says Bluesky is most like the old Twitter.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gordon MacMillan, who was previously the head of content strategy at Twitter. He spent more than 10 years at the company and left in March 2023, four months before it rebranded to X. Business Insider has verified his identity and previous employment. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I led a business marketing team in EMEA, and our job was essentially to sell Twitter to the industry. Our audience was the big media agencies, brands, and advertisers. I worked with the sales team to promote the platform and show brands why they should choose Twitter over the likes of Facebook or Instagram.
The changes that came after Elon Musk acquired the platform have been well-documented, including one of his early moves to reactivate banned accounts of various individuals, with president-elect Donald Trump being one.
Under Musk's banner of free speech, there was a gradual change of direction in content strategy and the kind of characters who may be attracted to it. There's been lots of talk about algorithms being tweaked and Musk's posts appearing at the top of feeds, so I think the changes have felt like political ones.
After the US election, many people have talked about how X has essentially become a political vehicle for Musk to support his ideas compared to what the platform was like before. Before he took over, it didn't have a stance other than if you broke the rules, you get banned. But now, it feels more like anything will go, especially since a lot of people in moderation, trust, and safety teams have either been fired or left on their own accord.
There has been a tranche of users leaving X recently. I think many people left last October as a result of a rise in antisemitic conversations after Hamas' attack on Israel. Then again, after Musk said civil war in the UK was inevitable. I think that pushed another group of people over to leave, too.
Big departures feel like the beginning of the end
A lot of people appeared to move over to Threads and Bluesky in the run-up to the US election when X appeared to become a vehicle for Musk to help promote the Trump campaign. He put tens of millions of dollars behind Trump's campaign and used X to exert influence over the campaign and amplify Trump's voice.
It seems as though not much effort has been made to control the spread of misinformation on X. After the election had been called, I think this was the final straw for a lot of people, along with the rise in hate speech and disinformation, which has been a worry for both individuals and brands. They are worried about brand safety and having their content associated with a swamp of hate or lies.
With The Guardian and media figures like Don Lemon announcing their departures from X this week, it feels like the beginning of the end for the platform as a go-to place for news. The Guardian has taken that first lead, but I think other news organizations that think seriously about journalistic ethics and standards could also question whether it's still right for them to be there anymore. They, too, could flock to Bluesky or Threads.
Bluesky feels familiar to Twitter users
Bluesky, I think, is the most like the old Twitter and feels more familiar than Threads, which doesn't have Twitter-style lists and can be hard to organize content on. Bluesky seems to attract official organizations and feels like a place where brands might migrate. It also has some Twitter heritage as it was born out of an internal project and launched by its cofounder, Jack Dorsey. In that respect, it could easily be in a good position to lay claim to that.
BlueSky said this week that it crossed the 15 million user mark, and on Thursday, it said one million people joined the platform in one day alone. It's seeing phenomenal growth, and there is a wave of enthusiasm for the platform, which is being fueled by that exodus from X.
Meta and Mark Zuckerberg clearly saw an opportunity to launch Threads when they saw the mess Twitter was becoming after the acquisition. They have tweaked Threads and made improvements, but Bluesky feels more familiar, even beyond the use of the color blue.
It's still hard for people to leave X
There are clearly a lot of people still using X because it's hard to say goodbye to the networks they have possibly spent years building up an audience on and using it as a platform to make announcements. It could be hard for organizations or even individuals to rebuild audiences on another platform, but I think people will continue to drift away.
I think there might be other moments that are going to come along over the next few months and year or so as Musk continues on this Trumpian journey, which is going to alienate an increasing number of people.
Ever since Musk's acquisition, the platform has had a problem with advertisers. Could brands return? Anything is possible, but it's really not an environment for them to with hate speech on the platform.
Unless something fundamentally changes, like Musk stepping away or drawing a line in the sand about sorting these issues that advertisers are concerned about, then it's difficult to see them returning or choosing X over other platforms when it's in the state it is in.
It feels like BlueSky and Threads have a much better environment.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment made by Business Insider.