• Users and brands, such as former CNN anchor Don Lemon and The Guardian, have left X.
• Gordon MacMillan, former director of content strategy at Twitter, says Bluesky is most similar to the old Twitter.
• He told Business Insider that it’s still difficult for people and companies to leave X.

This essay is based on a conversation with Gordon MacMillan, formerly head of content strategy at Twitter. He spent more than 10 years at the company, leaving in March 2023, four months before it changed its name to X. Business Insider has verified his identity and previous employment. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I led a corporate marketing team in EMEA, and our job was essentially to sell Twitter to the industry. Our audience was the major media agencies, brands and advertisers. I worked with the sales team to market the platform and show brands why they should choose Twitter over the likes of Facebook or Instagram.

The changes that followed Elon Musk acquired the platform have been well documented, including one of his early moves to reactivate banned accounts by various individuals, President-elect Donald Trump being one.

Under Musk’s banner of free speech, there was a gradual change in the direction of the content strategy and the kind of characters that could be attracted to it. There’s been a lot of talk about algorithms being tweaked and Musk’s posts appearing at the top of feeds, so I think the changes have felt political.

After the US election, many have talked about how X has essentially become a political vehicle for Musk to support his ideas compared to how the platform looked before. Before he took over, it didn’t have a different stance than if you broke the rules, you get banned. But now it feels more like everything will work out, especially since many people in moderation, trust, and security teams have either been fired or left on their own initiative.

There have been some users who have left X recently. I think a lot of people left last October as a result of an increase antisemitic conversations after Hamas attack on Israel. Then again, after Musk said civil war in Britain was inevitable. I think that caused another group of people to leave as well.

Big departures feel like the beginning of the end

A lot of people seemed to move over to Threads and Bluesky before the US election when X looked to be one 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 boost Trump’s vote.

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It seems that not much effort has been made to control the spread of misinformation on X. After the election was called, I think this was the last straw for many people, along with the rise of hate speech and misinformation, which has been a concern for both individuals and trademarks. They are concerned about brand safety and their content being linked to 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 the initial lead, but I think other news organizations that are serious about journalistic ethics and standards may also question whether it is still right for them to be there any longer. They could also be flocked to Bluesky or Threads.

Bluesky feels familiar to Twitter users

Bluesky I think is most similar to the old Twitter and feels more familiar than Threads, which does not have Twitter-like lists and can be difficult to organize content on. Bluesky seems to attract official organizations and feels like a place where brands can migrate. It also has some Twitter heritage as it was born out of an internal project and launched by its co-founder, Jack Dorsey. In that respect, it could easily be in a good position to claim it.

BlueSky said this week it passed 15 million users, and on Thursday it said a million people joined the platform in just one day. It is seeing phenomenal growth, and there is a wave of enthusiasm for the platform, fueled by the 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’ve 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 obviously a lot of people still using X because it’s hard to say goodbye to the networks they’ve possibly spent years building an audience for and using as a platform to make announcements. It may be difficult for organizations or even individuals to rebuild audiences on another platform, but I think people will continue to drift away.

I think there may be other moments that will come in the next few months and a year or so as Musk continues on this Trumpian journey, which will alienate an increasing number of people.

Ever since Musk’s acquisition, the platform has had one problems with advertisers. Can Brands Come Back? Anything is possible, but it’s certainly not an environment for them to have hate speech on the platform.

Unless something fundamentally changes, like Musk stepping aside or drawing a line in the sand to sort out these issues that advertisers are concerned about, then it’s hard to see them returning or choosing X over other platforms when it’s in that 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 from Business Insider.