The beginning of the "era of the Musk": the exodus of users from Twitter

Mastodon and Discord are seeing a rapid increase in the number of new profiles: Twitter account holders are actively creating “alternate airfields” there for themselves after the change of power on the social network.

A week before Elon Musk completed his Twitter deal, writer and transgender community member Cassie LaBelle (@CassieCeleste) created her own Discord server. She explained this by saying that she has always considered Twitter a safe place for transgender people, where those who are afraid of persecution can freely communicate and post anonymously. After Musk's purchase of the network and his announcement of the abolition of existing content moderation rules, the sense of security disappeared. For the likes of Cassie LaBelle, this threatens to flood them with trolling and hate unchecked.

Some Twitterers have decided to leave because they do not want to publish quality free content on the social network, which is now owned by the richest man in the world. They are now actively informing their followers how to find them on Mastodon or Discord.

Decentralized microblogging platform Mastodon has already begun to benefit from the situation after the change of ownership of Twitter. Its founder Evgeny Rochko said that from October 20 to October 27, the network was replenished with approximately 18,000 new accounts. True, most of those who used the #TwitterMigration hashtag shared that they do not yet plan to completely “burn bridges” with Twitter, but just in case, they registered with Mastodon.

Elon Musk is a significant, but not the only reason for the increased interest of Twitterers in other platforms. According to Reuters, Twitter has been steadily losing its most active users since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Such an outflow, apparently, was a response to the sharp discourse on the social network and its struggle for innovation.