It was revealed on Friday that actress Gabrielle Union was leaving X (formerly Twitter). Union is the latest famous person to leave the social media site because they don’t like its new direction or policies.
Union wrote a goodbye post titled “It’s been real!” in which she discussed her choice to leave Elon Musk’s platform. She also discussed planned changes to the platform’s terms of service and what she sees as a move away from its original goal of helping people make real connections.
Union’s departure comes after celebrities like Jamie Lee Curtis and Don Lemon did the same. It happens at the same time as the new X terms of service, which are set to go into effect on November 15 and have been heavily criticized.
All legal issues must now be settled only in Texas courts, specifically the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas or the state courts in Tarrant County. Critics say this change might protect X from court challenges while making it easier to act against critics.
end of an era ✌🏾 pic.twitter.com/DfUxoGz2HX
— Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) November 15, 2024
Union told her fans that she isn’t leaving social media, even though she quit X. She told her friends to keep talking to her on other sites, like Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, Bluesky, Spill, and TikTok.
This platform departure isn’t just happening to celebrities. Big companies are also thinking again about their X presence. The Guardian has stopped writing to its editorial accounts because it thinks the platform’s problems are now bigger than its pros. The Berlin Film Festival has also stopped its X presence, following in the footsteps of NPR and Balenciaga.
Bluesky, a different social media site, has become one of the biggest winners in this move. The site said it got more than a million new users in a single day, bringing the total number of users to more than 15 million. There are accounts for famous people like Barbra Streisand, Quinta Brunson, James Gunn, and Lizzo.
These people are leaving because X has greatly changed since Musk bought it for $44 billion in October 2022. The platform has been criticized for cutting back on content moderation teams and supposedly adding more harmful material.
People on social media are still looking for sites that support their beliefs, so it’s becoming increasingly difficult for X to maintain both individual user and organization accounts.
