Users appear to be making yet another exodus from the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X , with other microblogging sites rocketing to the top of app download rankings and courting millions of new users in the week since the US election.

Whether users are permanently leaving X (formerly Twitter) or simply establishing new accounts elsewhere is unclear.

But brands and individuals alike are citing Musk's substantial financial and rhetorical backing of Donald Trump in the US election as well as the polarizing nature of the X platform as the reason for their departures.

Bluesky — originally a Twitter project that was spun off into its own company reported more than 1 million new users in the last week. It now has 15 million in total.

While it's a minnow in the social media field, the platform has shot to top spot in Apple's App Store rankings this week, just ahead of Instagram's own X competitor Threads.

This is not the first time X has seen a decline in active users. Downturns notably happened after Musk took ownership of Twitter in October 2022 and when Brazil banned the platform this year.

But it looks as though Musk's support for Trump has proven the final straw for certain account holders.

"This is kind of a tipping moment to some extent," Bart Cammaerts, a communications and democracy researcher at London School of Economics, told DW.

Cammaerts points to the whittling down of moderation and the ramping up of Musk's own rhetoric around X's future direction as long simmering developments that may have helped to push users away.

"I think the fact that we see........

© Deutsche Welle