By GB News (World News) | Created at 2025-01-18 09:51:21 | Updated at 2025-01-18 13:06:57
3 hours ago
A staggering number of leading liberals who vowed to leave X or drastically scale back its use continue to regularly post to Elon Musk’s social media platform, a GB News deep-dive has revealed.
Following the fall-out of the summer riots, several leading commentators and even Labour MPs condemned Musk and looked at alternative platforms, including BlueSky.
Despite condemning Musk’s subsequent interventions in UK politics, it would appear that many have subtly returned to the social media platform.
Industry experts believe that X, unlike its left-leaning rivals, continues to garner such appetite from its critical users due to both its reach and addictiveness.
X counts on around 611 million monthly active users, with the daily figure still standing at a respectable 245 million.
Musk concluded the acquisition of the platform then known as Twitter, in October 2022, when the figure was only marginally higher at 255 million.
However, BlueSky emerged as a logical place of refuge for many liberal-leaning commentators in the UK following a backlash.
The Guardian, Bristol Suspension Bridge and German minnows FC St Pauli became some notable organisations to quit X.
Elon Musk, Jon Sopel, Diane Abbott, Alastair Campbell and Dawn Butler
GETTY/PA
However, rival company BlueSky appears to have struggled to mirror the reach of musk's platform, counting on less than 28 million users almost 11 months after its launch.
In fact, page visits to both X remain almost completely unchanged over the past three months, with Musk's platform attracting around 4.5 billion monthly visits.
Meanwhile, following a 300,000 surge to 450,000 in November, BlueSky suffered a December decrease to just under 390,000, SimilarWeb data has revealed.
Despite warnings of a million strong British "X-odus", the hiatus for many critics did not last long.
And their subsequent usage compared to BlueSky is telling.
Former Shadow Equalities Dawn Butler quit X in April 2024 due to “all the haters and abuse” only to rejoin the platform less than 24 hours later.
Dawn Butler vowed to leave X but U-turned within 24 hours
X
Butler even posted a 10-part thread on the platform just yesterday, sharing old content and asking her 230,000 followers to vote on her best “viral” moment of 2024.
Butler, unsurprisingly perhaps, elected not to share the same post to her 7,500 BlueSky followers.
Despite vowing to only call in occasionally on X in November and plugging his BlueSky account in a half-departure sign-off, ex-BBC journalist Jon Sopel has made six active appearances on X since the start of the New Year.
Sopel’s last posted on X’s liberal-leaning rival some 19 days ago following the death of ex-US President Jimmy Carter.
Another one of the leading centrist dads, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, mulled over leaving the platform altogether.
He said: “Like a lot of people, am thinking about leaving Xitter given how truly awful it has become since Toytown Trumpy Fashboy Elon Musk took over.”
Despite plugging his BlueSky profile in the same post, Campbell posted just 11 times on X’s rival since the turn of the New Year.
The number equates to around two days of Campbell’s activity on X, with the outspoken Brexit-basher posting four times within the space of 15-minutes last night about the heroics of his beloved Burnley FC.
Jon Sopel remains more active on X than BlueSky in 2025
X/BLUESKY
Ex-Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott separately confirmed that she is "limiting" her use of the platform.
She argued: “The changes in X under Musk have made it worse.
"Only a handful of MPs would say it is better and they would mostly be Reform members."
Despite attracting 17,500 followers on BlueSky, Abbott is yet to make a single post on the platform.
Since her announcement on August 13, Abbott has already posted 100 times on X.
However, other users have notably scaled back from the social media platform.
Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, who was at the centre of a number of attacks from Musk over her refusal to hold a national grooming gangs inquiry last year, vowed to reduce her usage after describing the platform as “a bit despotic” and “a place of misery”.
Despite being more active on BlueSky, with Phillips recently posting about hit BBC series The Traitors, the Birmingham Yardley MP continues to repost on X and waded in on controversial comments made by Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope about Kemi Badenoch.
Alastair Campbell posted three times in just 15 minutes, with his last BlueSky repost coming two days ago
X/BLUESKY
Sebastian Ellis, managing director at digital marketing agency Ellis Digital, told GB News that X’s addictiveness and audience reach makes it incredibly difficult for commentators to keep away from.
Speaking to the People’s Channel, Ellis said: "There's been a whole concern around Elon Musk and the ownership of the platform and the optimisation for, I guess, free speech, and a lot of people have made the decision to sort of come off the platform because they don't agree with Elon Musk and being quite open on the platform that they don't like it anymore, since it changed from Twitter.
"Now, they've made this big thing about it. They've tweeted it say, 'I'm leaving the platform and follow me on platforms, like BlueSky, Instagram, etc.
"But the reality is, as Twitter, which is now X, has quite a unique space within the social media world.
"It's the go-to for news, it's the go-to for breaking stories and information and it's very addictive.
"It's got fantastic reach - with around 611 million active monthly users. There just really isn't anywhere like it and there's also nothing else that quite replaces it."
Diane Abbott's attempt to scale back on X resulted in 100 posts in just over 150 days
X/BLUESKY
After highlighting how X is a go-to platform for news platforms and social media influencers, Ellis added: "BlueSky has been around but we don't manage it, we don't use it, none of our clients use it.
"It's the same with Threads, isn't it? Threads came out, it was the next big thing, and then no one's talking about."
Ellis concluded by comparing the threat of an 'X-odus' to recent concerns about Americans fleeing the US after Donald Trump's victory in November.
He told the People's Channel: "Remember when the election was going over in the States, big celebrities came out going, 'if Trump wins for the second time, I'm leaving America'.
"And then he he wins and none of them have actually left - It's the same thing with X."
Addressing the issues with BlueSky after its December slump, media innovation consultant Sophia Smith Galer wrote on LinkedIn: "The rush to Bluesky is happening partly because of a media yearning to cling to a form of social media that suited them, and not their audiences.
"By all means try it out - I am, and you can find me on there as well as Threads - but don't use it again at the expense of trying out a video platform that's going to futureproof you and reach audiences a lot more successfully."
GB News has approached X and BlueSky for comment.
