“God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” Jamie Lee Curtis wrote of her decision to leave social media site X.
The actress is one of several big names to jump ship from Elon Musk’s platform this month, citing right-wing leanings, misinformation and a lack of moderation. “Tried to stay, but the environment just got too toxic,” said author Stephen King.
X-odus, or X-it, as it’s variously dubbed, saw an average of 60,000 people deactivate their accounts every day last week, according to Similarweb, leaving a gap in the lives of many workers. has been born Professions including educators (#edutwitter) and doctors (#medicaltwitter) have used the site, formerly known as Twitter, to foster community and exchange ideas. It provides an illuminating commentary on office life and a way for freelancers to promote themselves and their network. Now, many people are abandoning career resources and questioning where else they can find the benefits it offers.
Organizations including Balenciaga and The Guardian have also removed themselves. In an editorial, the paper said the US presidential election underscored what it had long pondered: that “X is a toxic media platform and its owner, Elon Musk, has the power to shape the political discourse.” has been able to use his influence for In response, supporters have described the progressives’ exit as satirical. X did not respond to a request for comment.
From a work perspective, James O’Brien, LBC radio presenter and writer, said X had become less productive, with some well-intentioned responses and “sewage in your feed preferred over people who You might find it really interesting.” For those who value “relationship, pluralism and good manners”, he said, “it has become almost unbearable”. Now he’s posting more frequently on Bluesky, a new platform that’s benefited from a surge in usage as people switch off from X.
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Rhett Butler, chief executive of Mongabay, a non-profit environmental organization, says he started seeing declining profits from Twitter in November 2022, a month after Musk bought it. Along with the decline in engagement were “more negative interactions, accusations of bias and other challenging dynamics” that “made the platform less bearable for the staff managing it”.
LinkedIn has emerged as a preferred alternative. “As a nonprofit, we prefer to understand who uses our reporting and how they use that information, rather than just focusing on traffic numbers,” says Butler. ”
Tatiana Prowell, an oncologist, has historically used Twitter to share information about cancer. During the pandemic, he used it to highlight emerging data, which helped “the public and my colleagues stay informed.” She co-founded Healthcare Workers vs. Hunger (@HCWvsHunger), a friendly competition that raised over $2.3m for food banks.
Now he has also started posting on Bluesky. “It feels more like Twitter did years ago. The exchanges were more productive and the atmosphere was more positive,” says Perville. But she will stay at X, because she can hear from patients and “people deserve reliable, balanced, understandable science and health information”.
Others with public duty have reached a different conclusion. North Wales’ police force got off Twitter because it was “becoming increasingly difficult. . . to provide timely, factual and relevant information,” according to Chief Constable Amanda Blackman. Patrick Hurley, a British member of parliament. that X now “promotes an agenda at odds with the values of the British public, and encourages clicks through anger”. Blusky for reviewers and colleagues.
While they stand to lose a large audience by abandoning X, some creators believe they have no choice: it’s no longer fit for purpose. “I think the toxic nature of X works against the desire to spread joy through reading,” says Jonny Geller, chief executive of talent agency Curtis Brown Group. Novelist John Niven puts it bluntly: “The use of it [for] News feeds and book ads are no more than wading through a sea of filth.
Comedy writer Jon Harvey, better known as Count Bonface, believes that the flood of “junk content” has had a material impact on networking and generating ideas. “A lot of what I do is reactive, getting rid of what I see in my feed,” he says. “As the algorithm got more malicious, I was seeing a lot more tweets from users I didn’t follow.”
But while many have migrated, finding audiences and unusual opportunities on other platforms can be difficult. Fashion blogger Camille Charrière, who has more than a million Instagram followers, dropped out of X after the US election, but is missing out on the text-based platform. “On Instagram, I feel like a fashion girl influencer [X]I was able to connect with people who didn’t see me that way.
Harvey says the opportunity to challenge the perspective is a loss. “As much as Bluesky feels like a new beginning to many, there may be a price to pay if different sections of society retreat to their safe space.”
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