Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has become the first person to gain more than 1 million followers on the social media site Bluesky, saying “it’s not rocket science” why tens of thousands of people have abandoned X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Ocasio-Cortez’s follower count is only surpassed by Bluesky’s own official account, the platform said, per The Hill.
Bluesky’s surging popularity coincides with an ongoing exodus from X in the two years since Elon Musk’s controversial takeover.
Some of the people leaving Twitter have variously cited an uptick of hate speech, the throttling of traffic to certain news organizations, and Musk’s support of President-elect Donald Trump as reasons to get out. On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez shared her own thinking.
“People are leaving Twitter because it’s not fun anymore and no one is obligated to be on a platform they don’t enjoy,” she wrote. “It’s not rocket science.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s Bluesky account had been dormant for a year, until she posted a message days after the presidential election.
“Good GOD it’s nice to be in a digital space with other real human beings,” she wrote on Nov. 11.
Bluesky, initially backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, was launched in 2023 on an invite-only basis, and mimicked many of X’s functions.
In September, the app had around 8 million users. It now says it has 24 million, and that more than 1 million of its new users arrived in the week after the election.
Bluesky has positioned itself as an alternative to X for liberals, in the process drawing some accusations of being an echo chamber.
Democracy In The Balance
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“I don’t think that the answer for progressives is to disengage,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said of his decision to stay on X. “The idea is that in a marketplace of ideas, over the long term, the truth emerges.”
Last month, The Guardian told its readers it would no longer post content from its official X accounts, citing Musk’s impact on the “toxic media platform” and criticizing the site for amplifying “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”
Estimates from Similarweb, which tracks website traffic, suggest that visitors to X this year peaked the day after the election. But that same day, the platform also saw the most account deactivations since Musk took charge, with more than 115,000 U.S. visitors shutting down their accounts.