Users are fleeing X after Trump victory, but the platform will be hard to replace
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election victory, X (formerly Twitter) is experiencing what some are calling a “digital exodus” as users – from celebrities to charities to ordinary citizens – announce their departures from the platform.
As they seek new digital homes, some are gravitating towards emerging alternatives that promise a more civil discourse – including the brand new Sez.us, a “pro-democracy” platform that launched on 8 October.
The migration from X seems largely driven by owner Elon Musk’s explicit support for Trump’s campaign, including substantial financial contributions and the perception he is turning the platform into a propaganda tool for the president-elect’s messaging.
“He’ll use it as a propaganda organ, which is precisely why he bought it,” tech journalist Kara Swisher told CNN this week, predicting a possible merger between X and Trump’s own social media platform, Truth Social.
While such a merger might do away with any semblance of X as an open and neutral “digital town square”, Swisher also argued that it could be a hugely profitable move for Trump and Musk, by taking the site public.
The relationship between Trump and X is complex. After being banned from Twitter following the Capitol riot of 6 January, Trump launched Truth Social. But while the platform has proven financially lucrative for Trump – his 53 per cent stake in its parent company is currently valued at around $3.6bn (£2.8bn) – it has not achieved the global reach of X, which remains a dominant force in political and social discourse.
After Musk purchased Twitter, he reinstated Trump on the platform in November 2022, where he maintains some 93 million followers – compared to only about eight million on his own platform.
Among the high-profile exits, actress Bette Midler deactivated her account shortly after Trump’s win, having earlier joked she would “drink Drano” if Trump was re-elected. Wired reported that “Swifties” are abandoning the platform en masse for Bluesky.
In the UK, numerous charities are reportedly preparing to leave the platform, citing concerns about Musk’s political alignment and the platform’s direction.
Social media industry analyst Matt Navarra says X has experienced “peaks and troughs” of user exits in recent years, typically triggered by Musk’s controversial statements or unpopular platform changes.
Bluesky and Threads do seem to be benefiting from these departures: in October, Meta said their X-alternative network Threads was signing up a million new users each day – reaching almost 275 million monthly active users, up 38 per cent from three months earlier.
Bluesky gained half a million new users in a recent 24-hour period following controversial changes to the X block feature, according to the Financial Times.
Digital and social media specialist Mark Wainwright of Headland Consultancy, however, points to a study that says 97 per cent of tweets are generated by just a quarter of its users, and claims that X would only really get in trouble if those “power users” start leaving the platform en masse.
“There is some evidence of journalists moving away, but it doesn’t feel like critical mass,” he said.
Navarra suggests X’s problems run deeper than just user dissatisfaction. “The platform is not really growing – if anything it is shrinking in monetary value,” he says, pointing to declining metrics across advertisers and total user numbers.
But the analyst believes X will maintain its dominance in real-time news and information sharing, an advantage none of its competitors has successfully replicated. Most alternative platforms are hesitant to fully embrace controversial political content and news as X does, Navarra said, because it tends to scare advertisers away.
Wainwright suggests that the platform’s relevance may increase under a second Trump presidency, regardless of user objections.
“If Trump will be the same president who ‘governed by Twitter’ like he did four years ago, where one Trump tweet would dominate the news cycle, X becomes a necessity,” he said. “If it’s where the leader of the free world posts, it will be a significant platform for journalists across the world to be there, and that lends itself some legitimacy.”
Among the new alternatives emerging is Sez, which launched in October 2024. Unlike platforms that attempt to clone Twitter’s model, Sez takes a radically different approach to social media engagement.
The platform differentiates itself through a unique community-driven moderation system that seeks to emphasise civil discourse over controversy. Rather than traditional “likes” and “reposts”, users can rate content on multiple dimensions including importance, insight, and civility. These ratings contribute to users’ “civility scores”, which affect their reach on the platform.
“We have freedom of speech, but you don’t have freedom of reach,” says founder Joe Trippi, a long-time Democrat strategist. “If you develop a bad reputation as an anonymous name-caller, your reach will eventually go to zero. The lower you go, the more isolated you become.”
This approach directly challenges the business model of platforms like X, where controversial content often drives eyeballs, engagement and therefore advertising revenue. Sez wants to explore an alternative revenue strategy where advertisers can choose to associate their brands only with users maintaining high civility scores.
Trippi bootstrapped the platform along with 11 co-founders, who all contributed between $25,000 and $75,000 to pay the software engineers they needed. While he declined to give numbers on how many people are currently using the platform, he said they had seen tremendous growth – particularly following Trump’s election victory – and have attracted users from 55 countries so far.
“We believe that advertisers do not want their content or their brand associated with the extreme comments and content that their brands are being placed with right now on X,” says Trippi.
Wainwright, who believes community management is an “underrated and underestimated part of being a social network”, suggests platforms like Sez that emphasise civil discourse could succeed if properly managed. “The biggest subreddits have relatively civil discourse, clear rules of engagement and people enforcing them.”
Navarra – while cautioning that he has not had yet tried Sez – is more sceptical about such platforms achieving widespread adoption.
“A lot of platforms come and go very quickly – it’s very expensive, hard to pull in people to a new social platform and get them posting regularly,” he warns. He points to platforms like BeReal and Clubhouse, which despite substantial venture capital backing have struggled to maintain momentum.
While features like community moderation tools might be interesting and could be adopted by larger platforms, Navarra notes a disconnect between what users say they want and what they actually use. “People cry out for parenting control features for Instagram, etc, but very few people actually use them.”
While platforms like Threads and Bluesky continue to grow, and niche platforms like Sez emerge with new approaches to social discourse, X remains the dominant platform for real-time conversation about current events.
Many journalists and public figures who have spent years building substantial followings on the platform remain reluctant to leave despite their misgivings about its political direction and hateful content that has grown more rampant since Musk took over.
With Trump returning to the White House, X’s influence on public discourse seems set to grow even as its character evolves further away from its original vision of a neutral digital town square.
