How I migrated from X (Twitter) to Bluesky
I started using Twitter in May 2009. For the first 10 years or so, I loved it—new followers! So many tweets! TweetJams! Meeting new people was just incredible. It eventually filled my niche social media need when I deactivated and deleted my Facebook account.
I use LinkedIn professionally (as in, not posting dinner pictures there), and X eventually filled in the gap of a feed where I could post anything. My ethos has always been with social media—since the dawn of BBS in the early 1990s—that I try to keep a positive attitude and think the best of everyone.
Eventually, X started to feel less and less like a place I enjoyed being in. Sure, dozens of great people I interacted with, but I also sensed my friends grew tired of the place. It began to feel like a dated shopping mall, where we used to gather as teenagers, but when you revisit the place as an adult, you're not sure what the big thing was back then.
I was semi-proud of myself for 'reaching' about 5800 followers on Twitter/X. Sure, everyone left and right had hundreds of thousands of followers, but I try not to compare my journey with everyone else's. After about 25,000 tweets, I knew it was time to leave.
What's funny is that if you stop using a social media service, you don't get hundreds of followers to knock on your door to check what's happening. Why did you stop posting? Where are you? Nope. Occasionally, someone might ask - after months - that they haven't seen you in a while. It was the same with Facebook - when I unceremoniously left in early 2019, it took about eight months until someone asked me why they couldn't tag me in a post there. And that's fine - we're all very busy with our stuff.
Bye, X - hello, Bluesky
After sending one last tweet to announce, "I'm gone," I logged out, and that was it. For a brief moment, I was content with just LinkedIn and the more private chat groups and communities I frequent. Then I saw people starting to migrate to Bluesky.
When Elon Musk acquired Twitter, we had Mastodon, Bluesky, and so many other services that I decided not to try them all. Let's see which one ends up with the most tech people, and I'll try it. And that's Bluesky today.
Currently, Bluesky seems to be approaching about one million new users daily. That's not nothing. And I can understand it perfectly. It feels like the old Twitter in all the great ways:
- Frictionless web interface
- APIs and open attitude
- No ads (well, yet at least)
- Newsfeed is curatable
- Block words work well
You can verify yourself with a simple DNS record so that you can find me on Bluesky as @jussiroine.com.
Removing old content from X
I like to be tidy in most aspects of my life, so I wanted to clean up my history from X. With 25,000 tweets, nobody will do that manually. Also, the APIs are not available, throttled, or costly.
Someone had crafted lovely social media images that I reused for my profile. I unfollowed everyone manually but left my immediate family because they matter most.
For all the tweets, I used a client-side browser extension called Tweet Delete - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/tweet-delete-bulk-delete/mppblpedoemekekejafmcopafmkagkic
It works once for free. You'll need to request all your data from X, and then you can use that dump locally against browser automation. It's a neat trick, and I had a sandboxed and isolated virtual machine available for this purpose. It ran for about six hours.
I see some people making the extra effort to migrate their tweets TO Bluesky, but I'm unsure why. It's like moving unopened cardboard boxes from your 1995 flat throughout the years of each house you move into and still not opening them. Discard the stuff from your life that doesn't make you happy.
The way forward
Right now, Bluesky is a joy to use. Sure, at about 19 million users, it's not as lively as Facebook was back in the day. But it's also much healthier and nicer—less noise. I've muted a lot of stuff to keep it clean and interesting.
I also don't rely on Bluesky that often - there are other services, such as WhatsApp, Signal, and Teams, that have filled a lot of those needs for me with closer groups of friends, but Bluesky is the 'open' social media platform that I genuinely like.