The celebrities who have left Twitter for Bluesky

Call it a blue wave. A host of actors, directors, musicians, journalists and other prominent people are dumping X (formerly Twitter) and flocking to the social media platform Bluesky.

In the past week, a growing number of fat-faced names have announced plans to post less on X, or leave the platform altogether, citing myriad problems with the social media company, including far-right content, hate speech, transphobia, racism, harassment, pornography, crypto scams, bots and the political views of owner Elon Musk, the billionaire oligarch who is a vocal supporter and financial supporter of Donald Trump.

Musk’s ownership of X and his updates to content moderation on the platform have pushed brands and media groups closer and closer to exit. This week, The Guardian The media group announced it will stop writing on X, describing the site as a “toxic media platform.” On November 4, the Berlin Film Festival became the latest European party to leave the social media platform. NPR stopped using X in April 2023, and luxury fashion house Balenciaga completely deleted his account way back in November 2022.

One of the main beneficiaries of this angst against X has been the Twitter-like social media upstart Bluesky, which has seen incredible growth since the presidential election, with more than 1 million new users joining the site on Thursday alone. Earlier this week, Bluesky said it had crossed 15 million users, a massive increase from the 10 million users it had in early September; moreover, the Bluesky app has topped the list of app downloads in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store in the US

Among the prominent figures from the entertainment industry who have started to migrate to Bluesky, or have posted there more than X in recent weeks, are: Lizzo, Barbra Streisand, Quinta Brunson, James Gunn, John Cusack, Guillermo del Toro, Ben Stiller , Flavor Flav, Chuck D, Alex Winter, Carrie Coon, Scott Derrickson, George Takei, Mike Flanagan, Mike Shur, Patton Oswalt, Lilly Wachowski, Franklin Leonard, Tim Heidecker, Akilah Hughes, Yvette Nicole Brown, Andy Richter, Weird Al Yankovic, Titus Welliver, Jon Cryer, Ed Solomon, Jeri Ryan, Ken Jennings, Gale Ann Hurd, Marc Bernardin, Duncan Jones, Kumail Nanjiani, Dionne Warwick, Colson Whitehead, Mara Wilson, Kashana Cauley , Megan Amram, Brian Duffield and Robert Kirkman.

Several more Hollywood figures, including Rian Johnson, Matt Reeves, Edgar Wright, Christopher Miller, Phil Lord, Rob Delaney and Ryan Reynolds, have active Bluesky accounts but have not recently posted on the site.

Outside of the entertainment industry, other prominent figures and leaders, including billionaire Mark Cuban and Democratic superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have also started using Bluesky in earnest. Journalists, who are often seen as the backbone of X, have started to migrate in large numbers and, especially in the past week, have gained impressive numbers of followers.

Bluesky has seen boomlets of new users before, only for the momentum to slow down, but what looks different this time around is the general dissatisfaction with X, the divisive nature of the presidential election, and the ability for new accounts to quickly find followers and like-minded people through the ingenious use of “starter packs” – curated lists of people to follow in specific niche areas, all at the click of a button.

Talking Point Memo journalist Hunter Walker created a “Bluesky Has the Juice” starter pack featuring prominent journalists that has proven particularly popular.

Among the prominent journalists and columnists who have migrated to Bluesky are: Joy Reid, Jamelle Bouie, Mehdi Hasan, Lewis Goodall, Margaret Sullivan, Don Lemon, Chris Hayes, Alex Wagner, Rachel Maddow, Mina Kimes, Kara Swisher, Michelle Goldberg, Karen Attiah, Paul Krugman, Ryan Mac, Kate Conger, Charlie Warzel, Adam Serwer, Casey Newton, Keith Olbermann, Dave Weigel, Osita Nwanevu, Elizabeth Spiers, Dell Cameron, David Roth, Drew Magary, Ed Zitron, Taylor Lorenz, Paris Marx, Aaron Rupar, Judd Legum, Donie O’Sullivan, Jeremy Scahill, Philip Bump, Nicole Auerbach, Timothy Burke, Andrew Kaczynski, Oliver Darcy, Walt Mossberg, Jay Rosen, Charlie Savage, Anna Merlan, Ben Smith, Mark Joseph Stern, Noah Shachtman, Amanda Mull, Brandy Jensen, Ken Klippenstein, Michael Hobbes, Greg Sargent, Parker Molloy, Dave Itzkoff, Molly Jong-Fast, Kat Tenbarge, Brandy Zadrozny, Asawin Suebsaeng, Katie Notopoulos, Ryan Cooper, Tom Nichols, Phil Lewis, Radley Balko, Philip Gourevitch, Lydia Polgreen, Jason Leopold, Spencer Ackerman, Talia Lavin, Amanda Marcotte, Erin Reed, Owen Jones, Clara Jeffery, Joel D. Anderson, Will Sommer and Mike Isaac.

The growing number of journalists is reinforced by the growing number of media outlets opening Bluesky accounts. Athletics, The information, The edge, New York Times, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Washington Post, BellingcatProPublica, NPR, IGN, 404 mediaCNN, El País, Le Monde, The Times of London, Guardian Australia, Slate, San Francisco Chronicle, HuffPost, The Daily Beast, Vox, The onion, The cut, Drop site, Gizmodo, Kotaku, TechCrunch, The Globe and Mail, Hong Kong Free Press and Newsweek all now posting regularly on Bluesky. Vanity Fair and The Wall Street Journal opened Bluesky accounts in the last few days.

But what could tip Bluesky over into mainstream use is the migration of fandoms that make up a significant portion of X’s active users. There is some evidence that fans of artists such as Taylor Swift, BTS and Beyoncé, as well as Fantasy Premier League supporters and fans of the English Premier League, NBA, MLB and NFL, are starting to switch to Bluesky.

Despite its rapid growth, Bluesky still has some way to go to compete with X and Meta’s Threads, with the former boasting over 300 million monthly active users and the latter over 250 million MAUs.