Oxford Councillor's Blue Sky thinking
Emily Kerr is the latest to leave X for Blue Sky: "In the longer term it offers a better way for politicians to communicate directly with their electorate."
Oxford councillor Emily Kerr, who serves St Mary’s ward, has announced that she will be leaving X at the end of the month in a statement posted to X on Tuesday, joining swathes of others who are leaving the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.
In her tweet, the Green Party councillor says she was inspired by others who have also decided to leave the platform including Luton North MP Sarah Owen, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and doctor and academic Trish Greenhalgh.
When contacted for comment about leaving X, Emily said:
“I had long been worried about the worsening quality of X as bots took over and abuse escalated. For example, I read in 2022 that 70% of the hate directed against Harry and Meghan came from just 83 accounts.”
“The narrative on X does not represent how real people are feeling, but how bad actors are manipulating the algorithm.”
Kerr added, “I basically agree with everything Sarah Owen MP wrote in the letter when she resigned from X the day before I did, and also with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo's resignation statement.”
In the latter’s resignation from X issued in November last year, Hidalgo said “Twitter has in recent years become the weapon of mass destruction of our democracies.”
“This platform and its owner are deliberately acting to exacerbate tensions and conflicts.”
In Kerr’s tweet, she said “we’re all on the other place” referencing the platform Blue Sky, which has acquired 1 million new users in the last week, according to a recent announcement by Blue Sky, ironically on X.
This large movement of users is attributed to a dissatisfaction among X users after the re-election of Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential Election, who was heavily supported by X’s controversial owner Elon Musk, now appointed by Trump to Head of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Blue Sky’s account on X, to push more users towards their own platform, published a series of posts that highlight the engagement benefits of Blue Sky over X as quoted by users. One post said: “It’s absolutely incredible how I have similar engagement over here compared to the hellsite with like 2000% less followership.”
On the newer platform, Emily Kerr believes that:
“Blue Sky's decentralised structure makes it harder to manipulate and people's interactions there are more polite. I believe in the longer term it offers a better way for politicians to communicate directly with their electorate.”
“And I already know several other councillors who have resigned from X; I expect we will continue in the short term to see more political figures migrating to both platforms and then in the longer term many will leave X altogether.”