New Democrat MP Charlie Angus decided he had enough.
“I have tried three times to get off X because it is a dismal, toxic, hole of disinformation,” said Angus, who used to regularly post to his 47,200 followers on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“After seeing what went down with the Trump election, the belligerent role of Elon Musk in undermining democracy, there is no way that I can be part of that.”
A few days ago, Angus opened an account on Bluesky, a social media platform that began as a research project at Twitter before cutting ties with Twitter after Musk acquired the company and rebranded it as X.
“I had no idea what to expect,” Angus said. “I thought I would end up with 10 followers and be just calling out in the wilderness. It has been a phenomenal experience. I feel like I have woken up sober after a month on a bender with rot gut.”
While Angus has garnered 4,700 followers over a few days, a fraction of his following on X, he says engagement is up and the kind of hate and threat he has experienced on X is way down. He says he will keep his Twitter account, for now, but has switched to posting on Bluesky.
He’s not alone.
While some people joined Bluesky in 2023 — when it launched as an invite-only service — in the wake of the U.S. election, the platform has exploded in popularity. In Canada, the trend has included members of Parliament. A count by CBC News identified at least 21 MPs with accounts on Bluesky, including NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has 6.5 million followers on X, isn’t yet on Bluesky but hasn’t ruled it out, said spokesperson Jenna Ghassabeh in a statement to CBC.
“The Prime Minister does not currently have a Bluesky account,” said Ghassabeh. “We will continue to engage on a range of existing and emerging social media platforms and connect with Canadians where they are at.”
Aides to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has 1.1 million followers on X, did not respond to questions from CBC News. The accounts in his name on Bluesky are parody accounts.
‘Reconfiguration’ of social media landscape
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who has 308,400 followers on X, said in an email response she is looking for a viable alternative.
“I am quite disgusted by X-Twitter and how its algorithms are used in rage-farming and misinformation…We really need a public bulletin board that is free of corruption and manipulation.”
Meanwhile, the Green Party has opened an account on Bluesky, she said.
The Treasury Board says each government department can decide whether to continue to use a social media platform, but if they want to open an account on a new platform, they need the approval of the Privy Council office (unlike individual employees or politicians, who can do as they choose).
Pierre-Alain Bujold, spokesperson for the PCO, said departments currently use a range of platforms to reach Canadians including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and YouTube, but to date, none have asked to start accounts on Bluesky.
It looks quite similar to X, formerly known as Twitter, but some politicians say Bluesky is filled with more constructive discussion than its counterpart. Officials like the mayors of Montreal and Laval have started using it.
In recent days Bluesky has grown rapidly, often attracting a million new users a day. It now boasts more than 22 million accounts. Registered as a public benefit corporation, it is owned by CEO Jay Graber along with the Bluesky team and has an estimated 20 employees.
Philip Mai, co-director of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, said they are seeing a shift in where people spend their time online.
“Basically, what we’re seeing is a reconfiguration of the social media landscape,” said Mai. “A lot of things are still up in flux, but you can really see that people, eyes are a little bit more open now since the [U.S.] election and they’re looking for basically a new home.”
X influenced U.S. election, experts say
A recent Australian study suggested that X changed its algorithm during the U.S. election to amplify Republican voices around the same time that Musk, who has 205 million followers on X, threw his support to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who went on to win the election.
Mai and Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory, both say the study has not been peer-reviewed and didn’t look at a large enough sample of accounts.
However, they agree X did influence the U.S. election.
Bridgman said X amplifies what Musk posts.
“He has so many followers,” he said. “He has so much of a reach on that platform, and so any sort of algorithmic tweak is likely to really amplify his content.”
Bridgman said the Observatory ran a mini study looking at engagement on X and found that while engagement — which includes people reading and commenting on posts — with Democrats had remained constant, there was a marked change in engagement with Republicans.
“Republican content, engagement with Republican content and top Republicans has exploded,” he said.
Mai said many right-leaning accounts on X have bigger audiences to start.
“Around July, there was some tweak,” he said. “We don’t know exactly what because X is now basically a black box to researchers like us on the outside. But when you change the algorithm to boost all the accounts on the platform, it will always boost whoever has the most followers to begin with.”
‘Echo chamber’ concerns
Mai said X’s and Musk’s influence could extend to the next Canadian election.
“This is something very concerning,” he said. “This is an outside force that might have the ability to influence and steer the election in a particular way.”
Bridgman said there are a number of things that Musk — whom Trump has named to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency in his administration to find cost savings — or X could do to influence the next Canadian election that would be hard to detect.
“In a world where Musk is so nakedly partisan and has already messaged or posted numerous times about Trudeau, this is certainly something to be concerned about.”
Liberal MP Alexandra Mendes shares those concerns.
“Foreign interference for sure and that is definitely one of the big issues with X,” she said.
“We saw what it did in the States and what it can do anywhere. It still has an enormous amount of people who support it and who use it.”
Mendes will keep her account on X but has recently opened one on Bluesky.
“I am fed up with X so I thought it was time to move to something more convivial. It’s so bloody toxic.”
X, formerly known as Twitter, saw its largest user exodus since the Elon Musk takeover after Donald Trump’s election. The National asks two social media experts to break down whether X is becoming a platform for the hard right, and what happens when people only interact online with people they agree with.
Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull is one of the few MPs who have been on Bluesky since 2023 and now plans to use it more frequently.
“I find it to be a refreshing global Town Hall where followers can engage in open dialogue directly with MPs without the usual abuse and for me to share the many initiatives I am working on,” he said in an email.
However, some have expressed concerns that the exodus of many progressive users from X to Bluesky risks creating a left-wing echo chamber.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner opened a Bluesky account a few days ago. She has posted a few times but she remains more active on X.
“As an experiment, I created an account on bl**$ky,” she wrote in a post on both platforms. “Based on the comments I’ve received over there, I can safely say it is not the bastion of open, free, brilliant thought many are making it out to be. It’s a different flavour of echo chamber.”
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