After spending the weeks leading up to Election Day following Kamala Harris on her campaign trail, billionaire Mark Cuban has decided to put his feet up and take a break from politics following Donald Trumpâ€s return to the White House. The Shark Tank investor and Dallas Mavericks minority owner also deleted his posts on X about the vice president.
“Just an FYI. Donâ€t expect any politics or speculation about what might happen for a while. Iâ€m sure there will be plenty to comment on when the time comes,†Cuban said in a Tuesday BlueSky post.
Though he didnâ€t financially support Harrisâ€s presidential campaign, Cuban was an outspoken supporter of the vice president, whom he believed would make a “better president†than Trump. Cuban has sharply criticized Trumpâ€s proposal for steep tariffs and lack of ability to dive in the “nitty-gritty†of policies. But Cuban insisted his spring cleaning on X, where he scrubbed mentions of his support for Harris, was nothing more than routine.
“Iâ€ve been deleting posts from twitter for more than 10 years,†he told Fortune in an email. “Where were you when I deleted posts about players the Mavs have traded lol.â€
“Itâ€s a non event,†he added.Â
But Cuban has made a fresh start for himself on social media, moving away from posting on X—where CEO and owner Elon Musk has intensely pushed his support for Trump—and instead posting more frequently on BlueSky. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey developed that platform and opened it to the general public last February. Prior to his Tuesday posts on the app, Cuban hadnâ€t posted on BlueSky since July 2023.
“Hello Less Hateful World,†he wrote on the platform Tuesday.
Greener grass, bluer skies
Cuban joins 14.5 million other BlueSky users, as the app balloons in popularity following the election and a mass exodus from X. Over 700,000 others have joined BlueSky in the past week. Three months ago, the app had 6.18 million users; a month ago, it grew to 10.85 million users. Similarly, Metaâ€s X alternative Threads surpassed 275 million monthly users earlier this month after launching in July 2023.Â
Meanwhile, X has hemorrhaged 2.4 million users in the UK from September 2024 to this year. In the U.S., active users on Muskâ€s platform have fallen by 20% in a 16-month period, according to data from Similarweb. The Guardian announced that it would stop posting on its official editorial accounts on the platform given “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.†The publication wrote that the U.S. Presidential Election underscored what it had long contemplated: “that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.â€
The shift towards BlueSky and Threads coincides with Xâ€s well-documented proclivity toward spreading misinformation. Muskâ€s X posts spreading lies about election security—including erroneous claims that certain ballot machines were switching votes—were viewed 1.2 billion times and were not fact-checked by the appâ€s Community Notes feature, according to August data from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Muskâ€s attachment to Trump has strengthened since the election, with the X CEO being appointed the co-head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, cementing the monthslong courtship between Musk and the next U.S. president.
The migration away from X has, in turn, created an online utopia for left-leaning users who perceive BlueSky as a friendlier, more accepting platform, according to Axel Bruns, social media researcher at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
“Itâ€s become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to provide, but without all the far-right activism, the misinformation, the hate speech, the bots and everything else,†he told the Guardian.
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