Article in The Guardian by Gaby Hinsliff, 11/15/24

Headline:  “The exodus from X to Bluesky has happened – the era of mass social media platforms is over”

Subhead:  “There’s comfort in being surrounded by like-minded people, but challenge is important, and we may have to look for it elsewhere”

“Hell is other people. Or, more specifically, other people on social media. Hell is millions of people who would avoid each other like the plague if they met in real life, but who are shoved into each other’s faces and essentially egged on to punch each other online . . .”

“Hell is a social circle so vast and remote that human brains just aren’t wired to cope with it: it’s sociability without accountability, and it was making us miserably stressed long before Elon Musk bought X and drove it at a wall. But even then, people stayed for the reasons people do stay in toxic relationships – inertia, fear of being lonely, misplaced hope it may get better – and because it seemed intrinsic to many working lives. You had to be on X because everyone else was, a circular logic that this week finally snapped: a stampede away from X has seen rival Bluesky add 1 million users since the US election . . . ”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/15/x-bluesky-social-media-platforms