X-Odus

Social Network User Migrations and Why Twitter is So Persistent

Oh, no, your favourite creators are leaving X (the site formerly known as Twitter) in droves? Well, yes — and I’m surprised it took this long for the behemoth of microblogging to finally feel pressure from alternatives. But with Threads and Bluesky now firing on all cylinders, millions of users are flocking to these sites instead of sticking it out with X.

In the few weeks surrounding the 2024 US Elections, I’ve seen more people in my online circles say that not only have they deleted the app from their phone, but they’ve also deactivated their X account entirely. I mean, it’s enough people posting about it that it can’t be a fluke. There’s a major shift happening in the microblogging niche, and Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon seem to be leading the charge on luring old X users to newer feeds. Daily, I see many people posting for the first time on Threads or Bluesky saying that they have left X, saying things like, “Hello, I am here now. Looking for x, y, and/or z.”

But this shouldn’t be that alarming. I’ve left social media sites for less than what people are leaving X for. There have been so many examples of communities moving to and from different sites on the Internet, but I think because X filled such a specific niche that hasn’t really been replicated meaningfully, it feels a little stickier, a little tough to let go of. I get it. I’ve been on X for over 15 years.

User migration is nothing new. Historically, social media site users have abandoned one platform in pursuit of another for some reason or another. Sometimes, a new site promises more of the same but better. Sometimes, a site simply murders itself. In the end, the users will be fine, but it is also why we must work to build our communities carefully and in more than one place. Twitter is just persistent and will likely remain around for a long, long time despite chunks of the userbase leaving, probably in similar fashion to Tumblr.

At the end of the day, we are social creatures, and we long for community. When a site no longer aligns with our sense of community or outright damages or destroys it, then we seek it elsewhere. No more bingo halls and bowling alleys, grandma, we’re in the digital age now.

Major User Migrations

One thing proven over time is that Internet users can be extremely fickle. X isn’t the only platform that has had to deal with user migrations and account deletions. Over the last quarter century, we’ve seen a dozen sites rise to prominence only to be squashed by the next big thing. Issues with UI, with ads, with moderation, and more have all been key drivers for user migrations. The one main thing that keeps us all together is still that we seek community, else we would just give up on these sites and not migrate to anywhere, right?

So, let’s take a look at the migrations that led to Facebook as an example.

With Friends Like These

Obviously, I am not old enough to remember Friendster in a meaningful way, but I am old enough to remember that it laid a lot of groundwork for the social media networks that would follow in its shadow. In the early 2000s, the Internet was still blossoming and recovering from the absolute circus that was the late ’90s (dotcom bubble, Y2K). It’s a miracle that Friendster even took hold, I think, but it did.

Friendster introduced a concept of connecting people through friendship. Imagine that? It allowed people to create profiles, share updates, and interact with others in the environment we came to know as a social networking site. Sounds great, just like Facebook… but, where is Friendster now?

Despite its early success, Friendster obviously ran into a lot of issues. Being the first company to do something usually means you will end up burnt more often than not. With technical frustrations, someone had to come and shake things up in a way Friendster couldn’t respond to. Even so, Friendster had some good ideas that were still implemented by other sites in the future (a theme we still see today where sites “borrow” ideas from each other as a means to not lose user time to a lack of features).

The people had gotten a taste for the bittersweet social networking life and wanted more. With Friendster faltering, the next great social networking site was poised to snake all the users that Friendster was losing. This was the first massive user migration in social media with most of the users from Friendster moving to MySpace.

MySpace or Your Wall

MySpace was founded in 2003 as a direct response to Friendster, and MySpace quickly became a dominant force in social networking by allowing users the option to highly customize their profiles with images and music. It became a hub for musicians, bands, and creative individuals, and this led to a rapid growth of users. I know a lot of you born pre-1992 were probably big into MySpace. You don’t have to lie here, this is a safe space. Nobody has screenshots.

By the late 2000s, MySpace began to stagnate. The platform became “chunky” and ads began to run amok (what else is new). Similar to Tumblr later on as well, MySpace pages would take too long to load because its users got a little too liberal with customization. What did all this mean? That’s right, another major shift was coming, this time a permanent shift.

Facebook (Meta) initially launched in 2004, but by the time MySpace was in decline, it had become a full-steam-ahead engine of social networking power. Facebook offered a clean, easy-to-use interface and focused on real identities. It also offered community building tools like Pages and Groups. MySpace’s user exodus was primarily for the opposite reasons of the migration to MySpace. Users no longer wanted customization, they wanted something simple and clean. Facebook was that.

Facebook has since dominated, based on the lessons it learned from prior sites. The userbase of the website has changed over time though. It’s an old person’s social networking site, that’s for sure. Moms sharing memes, Grandpa’s wishing happy birthdays. I’m sure you’re aware.

Facebook, for me, has taken an interesting role in my social networking though, in which, I use it mostly to keep up with news in my local neighbourhood. People post about lost cats, road closures, and other little events around town and ask questions. It’s actually been a really lovely little tool for a sense of community close to home, something other sites don’t seem to offer in the same manner.

Tumblring Down

An infamous example of a userbase collapsing is that of Tumblr, a blogging site which was big for artists and fandoms. I spent a lot of 2012–2016 on Tumblr, actually, and really enjoyed my time there. I even ran a small blog there during my college days. However, things… changed on Tumblr.

In the early days, it was a lot of art and… well, porn. Tumblr was certainly as known for its NSFW sections as it was the other parts. The demise of the site started with its acquisition by Yahoo because it came with the focus for monetization at all costs. Obviously, companies want to make money. This isn’t news. Users (like me) noticed more changes to design, algorithm , and policies, and not all of these were taken happily. When you change a site, you risk alienating some of the users, of course, but when that happens, you can learn or continue to burn; Tumblr chose to burn.

More ads, less meaningful engagement, what a recipe for a social network. This was manageable for most, but with commercialization often comes intense scrutiny over content moderation. Tumblr fell victim to corporate negligence in this department.

Porn was a big driver of traffic for Tumblr, it turns out, and in 2018, the powers that be decided to axe porn entirely rather than moderate it properly. This result in a ham-fisted approach with a lack of clear guidelines which angered a large portion of Tumblr’s userbase. This, ironically given our topic today, led to a lot of users fleeing for Twitter or Reddit.

Tumblr has never really retained its glory. Granted, I stopped using it in 2016 and deleted my accounts, but I think there are still active niche communities and fandoms hanging around, and maybe that’s all it needs to be since a lot of the other communities have moved on anyway. Niche doesn’t mean bad, but Tumblr did have a mass exodus of users leave for other sites that aligned with what they wanted from a community space.

What Does This Have to Do with X?

As we have seen, a mass exodus begins with a recipe of: attractive alternative + dejected userbase + apathy and exhaustion of core offering. So, let’s examine what this has to do with X.

Firstly, X now faces alternatives from Meta’s Threads and from Bluesky and to a lesser degree from places elsewhere on the Fediverse like Mastodon. These are quickly becoming attractive alternatives to scratch the Twitter itch, at least for me anyway.

Secondly, the userbase, or large chunks of it, are certainly dejected or getting there. I think there has always been an issue with this but the new users coming in replaced the old ones going out. It feels like the scales are tipping in favour of more users leaving though these days. This means a lot of users are actively looking for another place to go that may be better for them.

Thirdly, apathy and exhaustion. If anybody else is like me — and I’m sure there are some — doomscrolling on X is exhausting for my mental sanity and I am becoming to apathetic to the idea of opening the app to see what nonsense is proliferating on my feed on any particular day. This apathy and exhaustion means that when I do open the app that I’m spend less time there than before.

Over the years, social media sites have lost many users to core principle changes, algorithm changes, redesigns, horrible policy implementations, a lack of features, and the like. But Twitter has, honestly, had most of these issues and is still hanging around. It is persistent. It has undergone redesigns which were not well received, it has limited features and things to do beyond the main feed, the algorithm seems to get worse whenever the team touches it, and they have a history of overdoing or underdoing their policies. Is Twitter a cockroach disguised as a social networking site? Perchance. But it’s persistence may not last forever, nor may its relevance.

The Curious Case of Twitter

Twitter began in 2006 and immediately positioned itself as a force for journalism, activism, politics, sports, and more. Twitter’s brief 140-character “tweets” helped carve out a brand-new niche called microblogging. No other site has been able to rival Twitter since its inception, and perhaps that’s for good reason.

Twitter, as a company, faced constant issues with revenue. During its time as a public company, it turned a profit in only two of those eight years. It also struggled with user retention and growth. It seems a set of users stuck with Twitter, and that was about it. They struggled to hit 500 million users, while Facebook had already surpassed 1 billion.

I also highly doubt that the divisive nature we saw take over Twitter in the years before Musk’s purchase and rebranding into X — and the further divisiveness we see now under Musk’s new vision — is helping with revenue or user retention.

But Twitter confounds me for those reasons. It’s a company that has long struggled to remain profitable or sustain growth, yet it remains one of the premier social networks due to its real-time prowess and first-mover advantage in the world of information updates. With Musk’s purchase, there was cautious optimism that the site would gain new perspective and grow into a thriving platform once more. I, however, don’t think that happened at all, but it might depend on who you ask.

Why Twitter

Answering why Twitter is like answering why the sky is blue. It just is. Twitter occupies a unique space in the social media landscape. Unlike Facebook, Twitter centers around the idea of public conversation, which is why Elon Musk himself calls it the world’s town hall — and to an extent, he’s right. Whether it’s trending news, gossip, or hot takes bordering on outright stupidity, Twitter welcomed it all, and X has only turned up the volume. Let’s take a closer look at what makes Twitter and X tick.

Real-Time Information

Don’t let the current non-chronological feed of every social media app fool you. There was a time when posts appeared in the order they were published, directly from the people you followed. Twitter was a pioneer in this respect. The early Twitter timeline scrolled endlessly as the people you followed tweeted about… well, anything. This made Twitter a vibrant, happening place. News? Right there. You saw it as soon as it was posted. Sports updates? Hit refresh, and there they were. Everything you wanted to follow, all your interests, conveniently in one place.

This real-time information sharing was Twitter’s main draw. Being able to tweet during live shows was a highlight of the early years — one I remember well. Live-tweeting major events like season premieres was common, and engagement was high. I rarely see the same level of interaction with similar events today.

The ability to access breaking news as it happened truly revolutionized how we shared information (and this instant news posting is relevant to our discussion on misinformation). I still think X has a strong use case as a real-time information platform, but its management can be overbearing at times.

Hashtag Trending

The hashtag system was one of Twitter’s key offerings, and the trending page remains one of its most prominent features. Being able to see what’s happening in the world or in your country by browsing top trending hashtags or searching for them fundamentally changed how we expect social networks to function. In fact, when Threads launched, it didn’t even support hashtags or keywords. This made finding content much more difficult, and it was a major pain point for us early adopters.

Twitter’s hashtag system set it apart and bolstered its sense of community. I remember using the #writingcommunity hashtag to connect with fellow writers and build a little group. It was probably the most fun I ever had on Twitter. And it was certainly much better than the early 2010s shitposting I used to do.

Discourse and a World Stage

Another major draw of Twitter was its focus on public discourse, open debate, and creating a network where people could interact with strangers and “follow” each other. This fostered a global community bound together by the platform, and it redefined what a social network could be.

Public discourse was a major concept for Twitter to tap into — and it still is, in many ways. The platform quickly established itself as a force for the people during the Arab Spring, when protesters organized using the site. Twitter has also been the birthplace of movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, sparked by trending hashtags. Activism has always had a home on Twitter… well, mostly. I feel as though it has lost its appeal in that department at times and especially lately.

Twitter provided a direct line for politicians, celebrities, and other public figures to engage with regular, everyday people. Engagement of this nature was previously unthinkable save for meet-and-greets. This type of discourse could certainly be explored at length, but for now, let’s simply note its crucial role in shaping Twitter’s identity and explaining why the platform has remained so persistent as a social network.

Early Alienations

Twitter has certainly been through a lot. As it grew into a leading platform for political discussion, it also became a lightning rod for controversy. The toxicity that can emerge in some threads is astounding. This has always been an issue, partly due to the site’s relative anonymity — though, of course, toxicity isn’t unique to Twitter. Any social network must contend with it to some degree.

The platform’s algorithm has also been a challenge — for users and for the site itself. In fact, I’d argue that this is one reason why some users didn’t stick around during Twitter’s early years. For many, engagement (of the user themself and of the user’s posts) simply wasn’t there, and as a result, Twitter struggled with user growth and retention.

The corporate ownership structure also created challenges. The site needed to turn a profit — or at least show revenue growth — to satisfy shareholders. Under Jack Dorsey, this proved difficult. Even as a user, I felt the shift toward a more commercialized platform, or rather, the idea of a commercialized platform. Musk likely shared a similar sentiment when he offered to buy Twitter and take the company private.

Moderation, Not in Moderation

Amidst Twitter’s ongoing business struggles, it managed to persist — and so did its users. However, the platform faced backlash from a sizeable group: the alt-right and far-right. The moderation policies under Jack Dorsey alienated a significant segment of users, pushing many of them toward conservative-targeted platforms like Parler and Truth Social.

One of Twitter’s core problems was a lack of effective moderation tools. The system relied heavily on user reports, which could easily be weaponized. As the platform grew more diverse — and more polarized — this became increasingly apparent. The inconsistency in enforcement only worsened the situation. High-profile suspensions and bans seemed politically motivated at times, such as the banning of Donald Trump, a sitting U.S. president, from a major social network. And this isn’t just an American issue — similar moderation problems cropped up in other countries as well.

Moderating free speech remains one of the toughest challenges for social networks. At the end of the day, a platform can ban you for anything, even for saying “bubbles,” if they choose to. They set their own terms, and we either follow them or face consequences. Twitter’s moderation became especially tricky because of its commitment to fostering public discourse. The question became: How do you maintain open dialogue while also curbing hate speech? Defining “hateful rhetoric” is no easy task. Some things, like blatant racism, are obvious, but without constant human oversight, much of what’s flagged as “hateful” could be a misunderstanding. And, as we all know, people are quick to falsely report when they’re angry.

There’s no easy answer (maybe there is, and it’s probably just don’t allow hate on your website). Anyway. You can allow hate speech on your platform, but that will drive users away, fearing harassment. On the other hand, if you over-police, you risk being accused of stifling free speech, creating an environment that feels too restrictive for meaningful discourse. It’s an issue X now faces as well, having found itself on both sides of this equation.

But the problem with moderation isn’t just about who gets banned — it’s also about the unchecked spread of false narratives, something that’s compounded by Twitter’s own algorithms

Misinformed, Disinformed, Uninformed

When I started noticing how much misinformation was getting passed around, I couldn’t help but think about the bots I had seen flooding my feed. It felt like a never-ending cycle — disinformation amplified by automated accounts that made everything feel so much worse.

Did you know that about 3 in 5 people who share articles on Twitter never actually read them? This is a big reason why clickbait headlines and misinformation spread so easily. While Facebook shares some blame, Twitter is particularly notorious for its role in amplifying mis/disinformation. The platform’s real-time, viral nature means that inflammatory headlines can quickly reach an audience of like-minded people, who, in turn, spread them even further.

You might think, “That’s crazy — surely, in this day and age, people can tell the difference between credible sources and fake news.” Yeah, you’d be surprised.

Why is Twitter such a major offender? Because its algorithm actively promotes the most engaging content — whether it’s true or not. The more likes, retweets, and replies something gets, the more it spreads. There’s no effective mechanism to flag or verify falsehoods before they gain traction. The Community Notes feature helps, sure, but it’s not a be-all-end-all, and the biases the note writers bring to the table still play a role. But the topic of misinformation is too broad to be meaningful to dive into deeper here, so we will move on.

Skynet, aka Bots Galore

Twitter also performs horribly on the eye test for bots. It’s almost laughable how obvious it is sometimes to spot them. You can copy a suspect phrase, search it, and return dozens of results of random low-follower accounts posting the same thing around the same time. I remember vividly a bot spam episode wherein a bunch of bots were posting about attending a Pierre Poilievre rally in a small Northern Ontario town. How hilarious? A town with maybe a couple thousand people? And so many posted the exact same message on Twitter? What are the odds of that?!

Anyway, my point is that bots also spread misinformation, which is getting easier thanks to LLM models that can reliably trick people on a text-based website with short little postings. Pretty scary that robots are peddling disinformation and conspiracy theories.

But bots are a problem everywhere on the internet, right? So what makes them so bad on Twitter? I think it’s the sheer volume and constant bombardment of them. Bots soured me on the platform in recent years, even before Elon touched the site. Since Elon bought it, he promised to remove the bots, but they’re actually much worse. They’re under every post these days, and so many of them are generic porn bots posting “pu$$y in bi0” on every post that contains their trigger word.

It’s actually impressive how terrible the bots are, in my experience. I posted a reply the other day, and a random Chinese bot advertising a site liked my reply. The post had ten views at the time. Elon can’t really stand there and say bots are better when, anecdotally, I can say they’ve never been worse. I know I’m not alone in this, and I know others have been driven from the site, citing bots as a reason. Some days, it feels like the Dead Internet Theory is being speedrun on X.com.

And amongst the chaos of the bots came another chaotic element: Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the effect of new leadership.

Elon Effect

Elon Musk used to be a relatively quiet figure in the public eye — a genius, a Tony Stark comparison. Now? That image is shattered. He has become a divisive political figure, known for his rants and raves, posting “concerning” atop quoted tweets, and buying Twitter for $44 billion as the “cost of free speech.” Well, as long as you’re not the Twitter user “ElonJet” or any of the journalists who tweeted about it.

Elon’s effect on Twitter was immediate. He came in, fired a lot of people, and cratered moderation on the site. This paved the way for many right-wing voices to return after having been pushed to Parler, Truth Social, and Gab in the wake of late-era Dorsey moderation policies.

Bringing these voices back was a shock to the site and pushed many users to the fringes, but they all had the same question: “Where else do we go?” Nowhere. Twitter had a captive audience. I think Elon knew that. He knew he had time to break things before any viable alternative emerged.

However, alternatives are now here. Bluesky opened up and removed its invite-only policy, and Meta launched Threads. Both are seeing growth as users migrate away from X. I was a day-one adopter of Threads because I wanted a fresh start. By then, I wasn’t really active on X at all beyond a weekly post, but Threads allowed me to interact in a fun, new space and build a community. This is dangerous for X, I think, because a competitor is succeeding where X is now failing (and reminder: I don’t live in an echo chamber, so it’s not like this just for me but for others too; the argument is if it is actually sizeable enough to matter to X).

Elon’s hard-and-fast approach, and frankly bizarre choices, have left many X users searching for better sites. Each major change Elon has made has seemingly lost more users than he’s gained. When he bought the platform, people stopped using it as much. When he changed the name to X, Threads emerged, and many users moved there. When he changed moderation policies to allow certain voices back on the platform, even more users left. We don’t even need to talk about the rise in hateful rhetoric, because that, again, fails the eye test.

It’s been a slow bleed for X, and without actual data, we can only guess at the numbers. I’ve seen estimates suggesting X lost 4% of its users in 2023 and 5% in 2024. Revenues? Anyone’s guess. They’re probably not doing well, especially since many companies have shunned the site. It’s a mess. But it’s Elon’s mess, and I don’t think he minds at all.

But it’s not just Musk’s chaotic leadership that’s driving people away from X. There’s also the political landscape, particularly the upcoming election, which has only deepened the divides on the platform.

2024 Election Season

To avoid the brunt of political talk, can we just admit that we are divided quite heavily right now along party lines? Or that’s how it feels online anyway. I will not devolve into a political discussion beyond mentioning that it is a factor in users leaving X. There’s a lot of vitriol, as is expected in a US election year, but it is that same vitriol which has fed the latest (as of writing) exodus from X.

The election of Donald Trump to a second term as the 47th president of the United States likely triggered the biggest user migration X has seen — oh, and let’s not forget Elon’s policy change regarding AI scraping your tweets and media. Musk will never reveal the full extent of the damage, but judging by the number of new users flocking to Threads and Bluesky, it’s safe to say the migration has been significant.

So, what made this election so divisive? It’s not just about Trump — it’s about Musk’s strong support for him. With Musk also holding an advisory role to the president, it’s easy to see how X has become perceived as another Truth Social, a platform many liberals never even considered joining in the first place.

This alienation of a significant portion of users, combined with controversial policies (in their eyes) since Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the new, contentious AI policy, means that more users are likely to leave. For Musk, this may not have seemed like a major issue when he first bought the company, but there are now viable alternatives. New user sign-ups on Bluesky, for instance, broke the site for a few days. And for a platform like X, where user growth has always been slow and revenue has been poor, this could spell trouble. Is Musk doubling down on these odd policies to try and salvage what’s left of X? Who knows. Not me. Maybe not even him.

The Importance of Community

All of this yapping brings me to this: my community is in shambles. Or it was. Twitter’s Writing Community was the best time I had ever had as a writer. Writing, whether it’s a hobby or a job, is often a solitary pursuit. It’s not a team sport. We all sit in our rooms with our beverages and keyboards, ready to type, but we don’t do a lot of talking. Being able to find a community of fellow writers who related to the struggles we face felt incredibly rewarding and gave us a sense of belonging.

That community is no longer the heart of the Twitter/X experience, and it sucks. I stopped using Twitter once it became X because I felt the tides changing. Threads offered me a chance to make new connections, and with those connections, we’ve built a new community.

The exodus from X, and even from Meta in some cases, has given me and a few of my friends a chance to reflect on the importance of building a community that can’t be taken away by the whims of any one social network. We’ve turned to Threads and Discord to carry the weight for now, and it’s working. We still have our public-facing community, but now we also have a more private space where we make the rules of engagement (though, of course, that comes with its own struggles).

I don’t think it matters much where we end up as a user base. What matters is who we end up with. As we’ve seen with the increasingly political nature of these platforms, we deserve the right to choose where and how we spend our time online. I often say that I never wanted my Threads to become a political battleground because I already have X or Reddit for that. I know where to go for political discussions. I wanted a place for my own creative and personal endeavors.

But community is important, regardless of where it’s hosted. Whether it’s on Bluesky, X, Reddit, or Discord, we’re all seeking a sense of inclusion and belonging. Why else would any of this matter? If we didn’t need community, we’d probably still be content with cable news and the newspaper.

Communities can be written about at length, and I’ve already taken enough of your time, so I won’t prattle on any longer (for now). But here’s some advice: Make sure you have a backup or two for your closest online friends and colleagues. You never know when it’ll be time to pack up and move to the next platform, and we don’t want to lose our meaningful connections every time we do.

Conclusion

The rise and fall of social media platforms is a story of constant evolution and searching for community. Whether we leave a platform because of algorithm changes, design choices, or some other thing, we go in search of the same general sense of belonging and connection elsewhere in the end.

This latest exodus from X is no different to the ones we have looked into from the early times of social networking sites. User migration is a normal thing — it would seem anyway — for these sites, and if we care enough about a community, we will follow that community through to new platforms regardless.

I’ve always thought it to be important that we find meaningful connections. And no matter where we may end up next, it is these communities and connections we will keep coming back to which make the whole social media circus worth it in the end.

Yours truly,
D.

P.S. You can find my socials here and donate to my Ko-fi here.