Bluesky Surge Exposes Leftist Elites As Exactly Who We Thought
Left-leaning public figures continue to flock to Bluesky, a left-wing alternative to X, in protest of Elon Musk's support for Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election.
Nearly every notable participant in the exodus (or the "Xodus," as MSNBC markets the trend) has felt the need to post about their decision on, wait for it, X. They include Sunny Hostin, Stephen King, Jemele Hill, Joy Reid, Cari Champion, Keith Olbermann, Oliver Darcy, Taylor Lorenz, and –- you get the point.
We aren't complaining. We don't miss seeing their screeches on X. That said, this group's decision to leave behind their millions of followers on X for a frequently crashing, full of bugs rip-off is quite revealing.
Comparisons have been drawn to the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election when conservatives fled Twitter, as X was then called, for Parler. The comparisons are not valid.
Lets recap:
By January 2021, Parler's momentum was real. High-profile conservative pundits like Mark Levin left Facebook in its favor. However, Parler crashed and failed to recover after Amazon abruptly crashed its backend web servers – which ran on Amazon's AWS – for not censoring content after the events at the United States Capitol on January 6.
And that's the difference between what was Parler and Bluesky: censorship.
The Blueskay and X, formerly known as Twitter applications are seen in this illustration photo taken in Warsaw, Poland on 18 November, 2024. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Conservatives had a reason to leave Twitter for Parler. Twitter, pre-Elon Musk, had aggressively engaged in politically motivated censorship that disproportionately targeted conservative accounts, influencers, and thoughts.
Twitter banned Donald Trump while he was the sitting U.S. President, censored accounts that shared the accurately reported Hunter Biden laptop story, and suppressed voices that first doubted the Russia Hoax.
After Musk's purchase of the platform in 2022, he published internal documents (#TwitterFiles) containing confirmation that previous Twitter management also placed conservative pundits like Dan Bongino on a "search blacklist" (better known as shadowbanning) and acted at the behest of the DNC and later Biden-Harris administration.
In sum, Twitter 1.0 was a ruse – a rigged carnival that operated as a proud ally of the Democratic Party.
X is not that. Elon Musk does not censor voices of any political ideology. In fact, X is hardly the "right-wing hellscape" that it's portrayed as each night on Abby Phillip's panel.
Under Musk, X is more ideologically balanced than Twitter was. Pew Research released a study last week that found, in 2024, 48 percent of X users identify as "Democrats" and 47 percent identify as "Republicans." In 2022, before Musk took over, 65 percent of X users identified as "Democrats," while just 31 percent identified as "Republicans."
You don't say?
Conclusively, leftist elites are not fleeing X because it's rigged against them. They are fleeing X because it is not rigged in favor of them. Notice the stark difference.
On X, liberals have to play by the same rules as conservatives. They can't stand that. They were accustomed to better than that.
Twitter used to be a place where liberals could ambush and pile on their censored opponents with legacy media propaganda. Now, every user on X is subjected to Community Notes, a device to fact-check the fact-checking.
Community Notes might be Musk's best addition to the app yet:
X is far from nirvana. The default "For you" tab is widely unpopular. The app is too reliant on still developing artificial intelligence. Engagement farming is real.
Still, X is the closest app available to an organic town hall. X is perhaps the only social media service where free speech is prioritized over a specific ideology.
NBC News attributes the rise of Bluesky to the "toxic" nature of X. Not quite. The rise of Bluesky is a response to liberal brats struggling to exist outside their inclusive echo chamber.
As we cited in a post-election column last week, most of the media and the Democratic Party have grown increasingly intolerant of people who have different political opinions. In their minds, those outside their bubble have shifted too far to the right. In actuality, they are the ones who shifted too far leftward, leaving the median voter behind.
Ultimately, Sunny Hostin, Stephen King, and the others are not looking for a robust conversation online, but for a circle jerk of their peers and sycophants. They don't want their thoughts tested. They want their challengers censored, punished, and silenced.
Elon Musk won't do that. Therefore, they have taken their talents to Bluesky.