New York City offices will be among the many new users of the social platform Bluesky. On Thursday Mayor Eric Adams’ office ordered all city government agencies to create accounts on the social media platform. Bluesky has seen a sharp increase in new users – one million more so far – after the election of Donald Trump.
Bluesky’s increase in users goes hand in hand with an exodus from X (formerly Twitter), and with fears that far-right rhetoric and misinformation are gaining a foothold on the social platform now owned by Elon Musk. In addition to hundreds of thousands of ordinary users, The Guardian newspaper, actress Jamie Lee Curtis and writer Stephen King have left X. King twitted on Thursday: “I’m leaving Twitter. Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic.” Referring to the rival platform launched by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, he added: “Follow me on Threads, if you like.”
According to the Guardian, “the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere. This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse”.
However, Mayor Adams’s office made no mention of political motives, and so far no one has asked New York City departments to leave X. The email asking city departments to create accounts on Bluesky states that they should not start posting on them yet: “We’re working out some logistical questions … before we begin using the platform,” read the email, according to which the aim is to limit fake news that could be spread by fake accounts created on Bluesky in the name of New York government agencies. But city staff sources say several city officials complained about having to use X since Donald Trump’s re-election, funded and supported by Musk.
Elon Musk is expected to join the Trump administration in leading a new federal entity, the Department of Government Efficiency.
Adams, a conservative Democrat often at odds with his party, had words of praise for Musk’s nomination: “One of the people I think it was important to bring on board, some people may argue, is Elon Musk,” he said on PIX11. “We’re dealing with an antiquated government filled with bureaucracy, unwilling to make any changes.”
Bluesky for now surpasses Meta’s Threads and OpenAI’s ChatGPT in popularity. Wanted and funded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, it is a microblogging platform first launched in 2019 as a project within Twitter, and became independent before Musk’s acquisition and subsequent name change. Until 2023, new users could only sign up through an invitation system, while now anyone can log in. Subscribers can decide how to target the content they will see through “Discover” and “Following” feeds, can create a shareable list of users they consider interesting, and follow those curated with “starter packs.”
