We alerted you of a forthcoming modification – and now, it has been confirmed by X: The blocking feature on Elon Musk’s social media platform, previously known as Twitter, will no longer restrict users from seeing content. This has led to a noticeable exodus of users from X.
Basically, a block on X will now simply prevent a blocked user from engaging with your posts. They can, however, still view them, which wasn’t possible prior to this modification. The change to the block feature has been largely met with disapproval, even among Musk’s followers who raised concerns about user safety due to this transition.
Why Musk’s modification to X’s blocking feature is potentially risky
It seems that this tweak in the block feature led some users to switch to a new social media platform. X’s rival, Bluesky announced on Thursday that it had attracted half a million new users within 24 hours of X’s formal announcement about the change.
Bluesky’s User Base Expands by 500,000 in a Day
Bluesky is one of the few successful alternatives to X that emerged after Musk took over the then-Twitter. It ranks third among micro-blogging type social media platforms, trailing behind X and Meta’s Threads. Unlike these two, Bluesky operates as a public benefit corporation and promotes itself as a decentralized social media platform, similar to Threads.
“We welcome the 100k+ individuals who have joined Bluesky in the past 12 hours!!!” the official Bluesky account on Bluesky stated just after 2am on Oct. 17.
Mashable Light Speed
Bluesky later provided an update nearing the end of the 24-hour period.
“Latest: half a million new individuals in the past day,” the official Bluesky account reported.
Both Bluesky and Threads tend to witness an increase in user registrations whenever Musk takes a step that seems to distance X users. Despite having fewer resources than Threads, which is linked to Instagram, Bluesky consistently manages to entice hundreds of thousands of new users every time X users migrate to a different platform.
For instance, when X was prohibited from operating in Brazil last month due to its failure to abide by local laws, Bluesky boasted another spike in user growth. The social media platform added 3 million new users in just one week.
Shortly after this increase in user count, Bluesky declared that it had reached 10 million users. Now, thanks to X’s latest decision, Bluesky’s user base has just exceeded 11 million. It remains to be seen how X’s next move will influence Bluesky’s forthcoming milestone.
