The sky is bluer on the other side: fleeing from toxic vibes on #Xodus

Abstract

Although Twitter has been subject to modifications since its conception, the acquisition by Elon Musk in 2022 represented perhaps its most dramatic vibe shift. The rebranding to X and the extremist political orientation increasingly encouraged by Musk have recently led to a mass exodus of users to alternative platforms – a pattern of migration many referred to as #Xodus. We explore this transition in which ordinary users have decided that it was time to move away from Twitter/X and, simultaneously, attempt to make sense of the logics, affordances, and atmospheres of competing apps – particularly, Bluesky. To examine how users perceive and articulate the atmospheres of Bluesky (and how those, in turn, are compared to X’s), we conducted a mixed-method study combining NLP Semantic Analysis and qualitative Thematic Analysis of messages mentioning ‘Twitter’ posted on Bluesky in October-November 2024. Our preliminary findings indicate that some of the main themes are: mourning the Twitter that once was; celebrating the escape from a toxic environment; and actively cultivating Bluesky as a ‘good place’. While Bluesky’s technical affordances are described in many posts as ‘almost identical’ to X’s, users seem to associate its ‘vibe’ with an older, better, pre-Musk social medium. Also, many of the analyzed posts included tips and suggestions on how to protect the new space from toxicity, such as how to block and avoid feeding trolls – demonstrating the acquired literacy of atmosphere staging and the resistance tactics of platform migration.