The social media platform Bluesky has welcomed a wave of new users in the wake of the presidential election, with more than 1.25 million flocking to the site in the last week.

Bluesky has added 1.5 million users over the past week as former President Donald Trump’s election victory prompted users to flee X, the platform owned by Trump ally Elon Musk.

Is Bluesky stepping out of the shadow of X in the wake of the US election? The spike in users and another startup of prominent departures would seem to suggest so.

The social media platform Bluesky has acquired more than one million new users since the US election, said a company spokesperson. This influx of new members, largely from the US and UK, has been put down to users seeking to "escape misinformation and offensive posts on X",

I care a lot about the future of social media. It’s how many of us learn about the world and connect to each other; putting something so important in the hands of a handful of centralized corporations has repeatedly proven itself to be harmful.

Following Donald Trump's reelection a wave of exits from X, the platform run by Trump's political ally Elon Musk, has been underway. Some users have moved to Bluesky, which has 14.5 million users to date in November,