As users continue to leave X (formerly Twitter) en masse, many in favor of the newer Bluesky platform, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has embarked on its own metamorphosis from one text-based social media service to the other.
In a message sent to its press contacts via email on Friday, the EMA said it would stop posting on X, though it will stop short of deleting its @EMA_news account so as to “avoid any attempt of impersonation and to be able to continue listening to conversations pertaining to public and animal health topics.”
“We believe the X platform no longer suits our communication needs,” the statement continued. “After careful consideration, the Agency has decided to open an account on Bluesky.”
The EMA’s Bluesky page is now active. Its first post Friday morning offered an introduction to the agency: “Hey, nice to meet you!” it began, before describing the agency’s purpose and linking to a two-minute video further explaining its work.
The EMA is far from the only X user to flee the platform for bluer skies. As CBS reports, since billionaire Elon Musk took over the app in 2022, tens of thousands of users have deactivated their accounts, including surges in 2023 when Musk allowed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to return to the platform and in 2024 following Donald Trump’s reelection to the presidency.
Many of those ex-X users have turned instead to Bluesky, which was started by then-CEO Jack Dorsey as an internal initiative at the company then known as Twitter, in an effort to decentralize the platform. Following Dorsey’s departure from Twitter in 2021, Bluesky became an independent company, launched as an invite-only platform in 2023 and was opened to the public in early 2024.
Bluesky looks remarkably similar to the original Twitter layout and features a simple blue butterfly logo that hearkens back to the original blue Twitter bird. But the new platform is designed to give users more control over what they see in their feeds—likely a major attraction for those who disagree with Musk’s views and feel that those views are being amplified on their X feeds.
Indeed, per CBS, two days after Trump announced on Nov. 12 that Musk would lead a new cost-cutting initiative dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, Bluesky announced that “1,000,000 people have joined Bluesky in just the last day!!!”
According to an analysis by The Guardian, between October and December 2024, X’s daily active U.S. user count dropped by about 2.7 million people, while Bluesky added 2.5 million new users during the same period.
One U.S. user that has yet to fully make the switch is the FDA, which lists 23 active X accounts on its website, including one in Spanish. The regulator does appear to have made a Bluesky page, though it hasn’t yet posted anything on the platform.