Trending on Twitter: #LeavingTwitter

While conservatives and site co-founder Jack Dorsey, among others, are celebrating Elon Musk's deal to buy Twitter, a lot of users are talking about moving on to less Musky pastures. The hashtag #leavingtwitter was trending on the site Tuesday as users debated what changes Musk might make to Twitter and several celebrities announced their departures. More:

• The new "moving to Canada." Adario Strange at Quartz likens threats to leave Twitter to the rarely fulfilled promises to move to Canada often heard after elections. "Given the lack of large-scale alternatives to Twitter, vows to depart the platform are likely just as superficial, for now," Strange predicts.

• Celebrity departures. Newsweek has a list of celebrities who have quit Twitter or announced their intention to, including civil rights activist Shaun King and British actress Jameela Jamil. George Takei and Rob Reiner are among those have declared they will be staying despite the looming Musk takeover.
• LGBTQ users are disheartened. Musk's controversial activity on Twitter has included mocking transgender people. Some LGBTQ users, worried that the looser moderation policies Musk advocate will lead to a rise in harassment and hate speech, say they're now considering leaving the platform, the Hill reports. "We’ve seen in other cases absolute free speech platforms often fail because of the fact that it chases everybody else away,” says activist Erin Reed. "If Twitter goes down that route, I can see it doing the exact same thing."

• Some are seeking alternatives. Alternatives to Twitter trended on Twitter Monday, but users seeking new platforms had mixed success, with the CounterSocial social network quickly crashing under the weight of new traffic, Bloomberg reports. Vice looks at other alternatives including Mastodon, Pillowfort, Tumblr, Spacehey, and Neocities, which is modeled on Web 1.0 favorite Geocities.
• Big swings in follower counts. After the Musk buyout was announced, some users saw big swings in follower counts, with conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz gaining followers and progressives like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez losing followers, Forbes reports. But the trend wasn't universal: Joe Biden gained more than 26,000 followers.

(More Twitter stories.)