Twitter lost users after Elon Musk's takeover: Where did they go?

Elon Musk’s new policies at Twitter have driven away a sizable number of users, but where are they all going?

Following the billionaire’s purchase of the social media platform, Twitter shed more than 1 million users, according to the MIT Technology Review. 

Bot Sentinel, a platform dedicated to fighting disinformation and targeted harassment, analyzed millions of accounts and determined that around 877,000 Twitter users deactivated their accounts and a further 497,000 were suspended between Oct. 27 – the day Musk completed his takeover – and Nov. 1. 

But those users didn’t just cut off their social media activity: In most cases, they shifted to alternative platforms, which recorded huge increases in their user bases over the past two weeks. 

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Most of the smaller platforms that saw an uptick in users share common elements and goals, namely the absence of ads and algorithms, which can help tailor an experience for users but at the cost of mining their data. 

The biggest winner of Twitter’s plunge appears to be Mastodon, a six-year-old decentralized social media platform in which users apply to join specific servers run and moderated by users on those servers. The platform recorded around half a million new users since Oct. 27, racing from 381,000 users to over one million users a week later. 

One of the biggest draws that Mastodon touts is that it aimed to address issues its founder, Eugen Rochko, felt were present on Twitter. 

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Mastodon does not have ads or use algorithms to tailor content for users, and users have the ability to customize their experience with a greater range of options, including a character limit of 500. 

Some older platforms have seen a revival, such as Tubmlr, where Ryan Reynolds made his new virtual home following the Musk buyout at Twitter. The platform saw a growth of 96% in the U.S. and 77% worldwide, according to Business Insider. 

Twitter still saw growth, but of a much smaller 21% in that time. Musk claimed the company hit its highest-ever total of active users with 250 million last week. 

Another platform that has seen growth in that time is Counter.Social, which also doesn’t allow ads and goes even further by banning users from countries known for hosting bots, such as China, Iran or Russia, according to zdnet. The site claims it has guards against trolls, abuse and general disinformation. 

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Some smaller platforms that took issue with the more perceived left-leaning bias at Twitter have also seen a bump in user bases. 

Gab, founded by CEO Andrew Torba, aimed to provide an alternative to the "entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly." The site declares itself as a "champion" for "free speech, individual liberty and free flow of information online." 

Data on Gab’s user growth was not readily available. 

And the news already highlighted sites like Parler and former President Trump’s Truth Social which had already made waves as alternatives to Twitter even before Musk started his takeover earlier this year. 

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Statista data indicates that Truth Social saw its greatest spike in users at the start of summer when around 1.3 million new downloads hit the Apple App Store, bringing the total user base to over 2 million. The app has seen tens of thousands join each month thereafter, with 111,000 new users around the start of September, but no significant bump in recent weeks.