Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and subsequently turned it into X, disgruntled users have talked about leaving once and for all. Maybe they’d post about how by Donald Trump. Then they would leave. Or at least some of them did. Essentially, X has presented itself as the closest thing to a central platform for political and cultural discourse.

But that may have changed. After Trump’s election victory, more and more people seem to have seriously considered leaving. According to Similar websitea social media analytics company, the week following the election corresponded to the largest increase in account deactivations on X since Musk’s purchase of the site. Many of those users fled to Bluesky: the Twitter-like microblogging platform has added about 10 million new accounts since October.

X has millions of users and can afford to lose some here and there. Many liberal celebrities, journalists, writers, athletes and artists still use it, but it is not guaranteed that they will continue to do so. In a sense, this is a victory for conservatives: as the left flees and X loses relevance, it becomes a more overtly right-wing site. But the right needs liberals on It may not be as effective in persuading people to join their political movement.

The number of people leaving X indicates that something is changing, but the raw number of users has never fully captured the point of the site. The value proposition of Twitter was that relatively influential people talked to each other on it. In theory, you could log on to Twitter and see a country singer lashing out at a news anchor, billionaires gossiping, artists talking about media theory, historians getting into vicious arguments, and celebrities sharing vaguely interesting details about their lives. More than anywhere else, one could see the unvarnished thoughts of those who are relatively powerful and influential. And anyone, even you, could perhaps strike up a conversation with such people. As each wave leaves X, the site gradually loses its value to those who remain, triggering a cycle that slowly but surely diminishes X’s relevance.

This is how you get something close to Gab or Truth Social. These are two platforms that have small but persistent usage and can be useful for conservatives to send messages to their base: Trump owns Truth Social and has announced several of his Cabinet picks on the site. (As Doug Burgum, his nominee for Secretary of the Interior, said, earlier this month: “Nothing is true until you read it on Truth Social. “) But the platforms have little use for the general public. Gab and Truth Social are rare examples of true echo chamberswhere conservatives can come together to energize themselves and strengthen their ideology. These are not spaces that mean much to anyone who is not only conservative, but extremely conservative. Normal people don’t log into Gab and Truth Social. These places are reserved for political obsessives whose appetites are not satiated by radio and Fox News shows. They are for avowed anti-Semites, neo-Nazis shamelessly displaying swastikas, transphobes and people who say to want has kill the democrats.

Of course, if X becomes more explicitly right-wing, it will be a much bigger conservative echo chamber than Gab or Truth Social. Social truth would have had just 70,000 users in May, and a 2022 study found that only 1% of American adults get their news from Gab. Yet the fact that the right has succeeded in shaping It would just mean that even more people with moderate and liberal sympathies would become disgusted and leave the platform, and that the right would lose the ability to shape a broader narrative.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who successfully sowed moral panic around critical race theory and DEI hiring practices, pointed directly at as a tool this allowed him to reach a large audience. The reason right-wing politicians and influencers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nick Fuentes, and Candace Owens continue to post on this site rather than conservative platforms is because they want what Rufo wants: a chance to make express their points of view to the general public. This usefulness diminishes when most of the people watching X are just other right-wing people who already agree with them. The most marginal and vanguard segments of the online right seem to understand this and I’m trying to follow the libraries to Bluesky.

Liberals and the left don’t need the right to be in line like the right needs liberals and the left. THE nature of reactionary politics demands constant confrontations – literal reactions – to the left. People like Rufo would have a much harder time trying to influence opinions on a platform without liberals. “Triggering the Libraries” sounds like a joke, but it’s often essential for right-wing segments. This explains the popularity of certain X accounts with millions of followers, like Libs from TikTok, whose goal is to troll liberals.

The more liberals leave X, the less value it offers to the right, both in terms of cultural relevance and trolling opportunities. Exodus X will not happen overnight. Some users might be reluctant to leave because it’s difficult to reestablish an audience built over years, and network effects will keep X relevant. But it is not obvious that a platform must last. Old habits die hard, but they can die.