Black Twitter helped define the internet — so where will the exodus from X lead?

Black users make up some of social media’s most engaged, influential audiences. They are now also among the thousands of people who have left X, formerly Twitter, citing a flood of bots, harassment and partisan ads surrounding the polarizing presidential election. With throngs of people leaving, “Black Twitter” may become a thing of the past as more users move to alternative text-based social media apps.

“I don’t think that Black Twitter is going to exist within the next couple of years,” said Jonathan Johnson, a 29-year-old behavioral therapist in Houston and a longtime Twitter and X user.

The future is unclear for Black Twitter, an unofficial group of users self-organized around shared cultural experiences that convenes sometimes viral discussions on everything from social issues to pop culture. It has played a key role in movements such as #SayHerName, #BlackLivesMatter and #OscarsSoWhite.

Through memes, gifs, threads and hashtags, Black social media users have been able to navigate moments like Mike Brown’s murder and the rise of Donald Trump, as well as come together to live-tweet award shows, discuss current events and watch Black-centered television shows together.

“Black Twitter is one of the most important forms of community that made the platform what it was,” said Ashon Crawley, a professor of religious studies and African American and African studies at the University of Virginia. “Social media is only important because of the social part, and if you don’t have that, people aren’t going to use” the app.

Johnson joined the app in 2009 when he was a teenager. Last week, he signed up for an alternative app, Bluesky. “Everyone is on the same page of what we don’t want to see.”

Elon Musk’s involvement in Trump’s campaign and his changes to the social media platform have prompted many people to abandon X in his two years as owner of the company. More than 115,000 accounts deactivated on the day after the election, the most dropped accounts in a single day since Musk acquired the platform, according to data from Similarweb, a third-party company that tracks social media analytics, shared with NBC News this week. Like many others, Black users have been eyeing an exit from the app since 2022, but users told NBC News that this mass exodus feels more permanent.

X did not return a request for comment on this story. Earlier this week, a spokesperson for X cited record engagement on the platform during Election Day.

The move away from X coincides with the platform adopting a new terms-of-service policy as of Friday that states users’ posts will be used to train artificial intelligence. Users could have previously opted out of this AI machine learning, but the new policy states that all users agree simply by having an X account.

“I’m not interested in having my content feed that monster,” Crawley, 44, said. He criticized the functionality of the app and said it will suffer without a mass of Black users.

Many have opted to join Bluesky, with others considering Meta-owned Threads or the Black-owned social media site Spill. More than 1 million people joined Bluesky in the past week, the platform said, bringing its user base to more than 15 million people. There were about 429 million X accounts worldwide at the beginning of 2024, according to Statista.

Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu said the company does not collect information on users’ race, but is pleased to see so many new accounts. “In many ways, Black Twitter was one of the cornerstones of Twitter, and we’re eager to welcome this community to Bluesky,” Liu said in an email to NBC News.

The exodus has been a long time coming. Researchers tracked an uptick in hate speech after Musk acquired the site in 2022 and began changes to its algorithm. Users told NBC News that X has become less user-friendly. The app’s default “For You” feed, teeming with bots and ads, has made it harder to interact with their friends, they said. It has also become more difficult to block users for good. Some said Musk himself was the reason for their departure.

And now, prominent figures like Gabrielle Union and Don Lemon have left the platform, saying they’d no longer contribute to the Musk-run site and lamenting the new terms of service.

Musk has transformed the site into a Republican media hub and an overall echo chamber amplifying right-wing ideologies, according to academic research, public opinion surveys, various X data and reports about X working directly with Trump’s campaign. This week, the president-elect announced Musk will co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” with Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Musk was “the main reason” Joella Still, a 37-year-old education consultant from Los Angeles, left, she said, noting that the owner and executive chairman supported Trump’s presidential run. “And he used Twitter to help do that. I just can’t contribute to something that is part of my demise.”

She added, “I’m seeing his tweets, which are pushing a bunch of misinformation and straight-up lies, basically. I’m seeing that, but I’m not seeing people I follow.”

Johnson, Crawley, Still and others have joined Bluesky and cited its user-friendly interface, its moderation lists, and its “anti-toxicity” safety features to combat harassment. “It feels like a very welcoming, safe space,” said Pariss Chandler, the organizer of Black Tech Twitter and the founder of the recruitment platform Black Tech Pipeline. “I wonder if that’s because they have lots of regulations and safety protections on that platform. They provide something Twitter no longer does.”

Although Chandler is enjoying Bluesky, she said she plans to keep her Twitter account, while planning to be less active there.

“It’s really just because Twitter is where I mobilize my community. It’s where I made tons of different connections, and that’s where everything started for me and my business,” Chandler said. “I know a lot of people are migrating to different platforms, but they’re still going to stay on Twitter.”

Black users on Bluesky are already working to build a community on the site. One user, Rudy Fraser, launched Blacksky, a collection of curated, Black-centered feeds that filter out racism and misogyny to provide a safe, inclusive experience for users. The day after the presidential election, Fraser said, the feed was viewed or refreshed a record 100,000 times.

“I don’t think Black Twitter can be re-created. It was its own thing,” said Fraser, who works as an enterprise technology consultant and is a self-described activist and technologist. “But I have taken a lot of inspiration and learnings from what was done.”

While Black Twitter engagement has at times been associated with celebrities and influencers, for example, “there’s really no gatekeeping” on Blacksky, said Fraser, and Bluesky recommends the feed to new users when they sign up.

Bluesky’s content moderation tools are also community-owned and community-focused: Users can report guideline abuses to moderators, rather than a team of employees, for swifter action. Fraser, who praised Bluesky’s “stackable” approach to moderation, has enlisted a couple of his own moderators for an extra layer of protection on Blacksky. Crucially, he can also prevent bad actors from viewing the feed altogether — a stark contrast from X, which recently informed users that public posts are now accessible to the people they block.

After its record-setting day last week, Blacksky had reached 600,000 total views, Fraser said.

One million views is on the horizon, Fraser said. “People seem to be really receptive to the experience that they can get with the feed and having a good time.”

Whether it’s Threads, Spill or elsewhere, Johnson, who migrated to Bluesky, said the vibes from Black Twitter will find a new home.

“Those of us who make up Black Twitter,” he said, “will just end up going to different social media platforms and re-creating the good parts of what we had.”