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For decades now, liberals and conservatives have sought their own friendly spaces in the media. The rise of cable news in the 1990s created echo chambers that allowed people on both sides of the political aisle to hear just what they wanted to hear—to be validated rather than challenged. Now, the great conservative-liberal split seems to have come to social media.
Earlier attempts, like Parler for conservatives and Mastodon for liberals, have mostly failed. But now, after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, user migration on social media platforms shows a clearer political separation. What will this mean for the future of polarization? Polarization only increased with the arrival of opinionated cable news, so the trend is certainly worth watching.
The Demographics of Social Media: Two Waves
From the start, social media platforms were dominated by liberal views, largely due to the demographics of their users. Early adopters were young, educated and urban—a group naturally aligned with a progressive worldview. They brought the anti-establishment “Revolt of the Public [ [link removed] ],” to use Martin Gurri’s term, and sparked grassroots Twitter revolutions everywhere, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street.
When traditional institutions rushed to build their own digital presence, they had to cater to these left-leaning audiences. As a result, media, entertainment, academia and corporations embraced the values of the most progressive strata, sidelining others. A paradoxical situation emerged: Because of the digital transformation, the establishment adopted the essentially disruptive culture of an anti-establishment minority.
Social media, however, continued to proliferate. By the mid-2010s, older, less educated, less urban and less progressive users arrived. They began discussing everything and soon revealed how different their views and values were from those represented in the progressive-dominated mainstream. This second, more conservative wave of social media users consolidated their anxiety into a political force, much like their progressive predecessors just a few years earlier.
These two demographic waves of social media adoption amplified the political split in society, fueling culture wars between digital progressives, who got to control most of the media discourse, and the growing conservative resentment about that. Though not always eloquent in the battle of narratives, conservatives still had an opportunity to resist through voting. In many places, representative democracy came into conflict with the progressive aristocracy.
Brexit, Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Germany’s AfD, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and many other right-leaning figures and movements emerged around the world and advanced through voting mechanisms, despite—or thanks to—the dominance of progressive views in the mainstream. By the late 2010s, the medium of elections had proved to be more diverse and inclusive than the diversity and inclusion promoted by progressives, as elections still represented the entire population, including conservatives.
Yet, having been promoted into the establishment during the Digital Rush [ [link removed] ] of the early 2010s, progressives continued to dominate social media, now using these platforms not to challenge but to protect the establishment, to which they now belonged, from conservative pushback.
The Reign of the Twitterati
Before 2016, social media platforms encouraged engagement and paid little attention to its side effects. One major side effect was the amplification of extremes: Seeking socialization and competing for responses, users engaged more actively with agitating content, leading naturally to polarization. Discussions quickly descended into quarrels. Political activists and operatives, both domestic and foreign, also exploited the potential for fast, efficient and uncontrolled personal engagement. Platforms readily facilitated all this and rarely interfered, proclaiming “content neutrality.” Their commitment to neutrality, however, did not mean actual political neutrality; rather, it was a formal stance intended to shield them from liability for content posted by users.
This protection began to fade after Trump’s surprise win in 2016. Political elites found an explanation for Trump’s shocking victory: Russian meddling. The practice of blaming social media for enabling Russia’s hostile activities soon expanded to include other bad actors, primarily political opponents. This was partly justified: Social media platforms do amplify contrarian views and undermine the authority [ [link removed] ] of traditional institutions. This is what social media did for progressives in the early 2010s. After progressives became co-opted by institutions, social media just kept doing the same—but now the platforms empowered conservatives against the newly formed alliance of progressives and institutions.
Progressives now wanted to neutralize the very source of disruption that had once propelled them to power. They started demanding censorship—who could have imagined this just five years earlier? The most astute among them didn’t just demand it—they helped develop the mechanisms of combating disinformation [ [link removed] ].
Shaken by the Cambridge Analytica scandal [ [link removed] ] over harvesting personal data for political targeting, Facebook appeared eager to avoid political risks altogether. It shifted its algorithms to depoliticize conversations, prioritizing users’ interactions with family and friends. Twitter, on the other hand, could not effectively suppress politicization due to its design: Short tweets invited impulsive political sharing and commenting. The platform had to engage in sophisticated content moderation of the right, which inevitably reinforced liberal voices. By 2022, Democratic-leaning users comprised [ [link removed] ] two-thirds of the top 10% of tweeters, who produced 92% of the platform’s content. The growing left-leaning political power of Twitter earned them the title “Twitterati.”
The Twitterati became so influential that they affected HR decisions and editorial policy at the leading news outlets, contributing to the rise of postjournalism [ [link removed] ]. For example, it was mainly the backlash from the Twitterati that forced The New York Times to abandon any attempts at balancing its coverage in 2020, leading to the resignations of op-ed editor James Bennet and writer Bari Weiss after they dared to present opposing views in the paper. “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” wrote Weiss in her resignation letter [ [link removed] ].
Parler: Conservatives in Exile
Following escalating content moderation on major platforms, many conservative users migrated to alternative social networks. Parler, a notable example, grew explosively in 2020: It went from under 1 million users early that year to becoming the most downloaded app in the U.S. in November, the election month. In a week after the 2020 election, Parler gained 3.5 million users [ [link removed] ], eventually reaching 15 million [ [link removed] ] in January 2021.
However, its rapid growth and conservative user base immediately made Parler a target. Due to their agitating nature, social media platforms with little or no moderation—from the early 2010s’ Twitter or Facebook to the later 2010s’ Telegram or Parler—are easy to blame for hosting extremists, especially from the perspective of the regimes those extremists oppose. Parler users were likely more involved in the January 6 riot than users of any other platform—simply because they had been expelled from other platforms and gathered on Parler.
After the January 6 Capitol attack, Parler was removed from app stores and soon went offline after Amazon canceled [ [link removed] ] its hosting. Later attempts to return with stricter moderation failed, and Parler has never fully recovered. Sometimes called “Conservative Twitter [ [link removed] ],” Parler was literally “deplatformed” exactly when it was booming due to its minimal moderation amid increasing censorship elsewhere.
Following January 6, Twitter and Facebook also banned Trump himself and tens of thousands of his supporters, accusing them of promoting “harmful QAnon-associated content” and “stop-the-steal” conspiracies. These were not bots or foreign operatives, but real Americans who were denied the right of talking in certain public settings because of their contrarian views. This kind of widespread silencing of speech had likely never happened to Americans in the entire history of the nation—or at least to such a large number of Americans. Since personal customization is inherent to social media, these bans and the subsequent massive “moderation” reached each affected user individually, not just as part of a social group but with a jarring, personalized touch.
With Parler dismantled and the right banned from major platforms, conservative users scattered across smaller networks like MeWe, Gab, Rumble and Truth Social, launched by Trump in February 2022. As progressive views dominated both legacy and social media, conservative voices were fragmented and marginalized. Not only was nearly half of the population sidelined, but the manner in which this imbalance of views’ representation was imposed on society also increasingly outraged many, gradually extending beyond just the right, and ultimately paving the way for Trump’s triumphal return in 2024.
Bluesky: From Sobriety to Agitation?
The story of Bluesky—a growing outpost of progressive social media users frustrated with X under Elon Musk—mirrors Parler, but with notable differences. First, Bluesky has shown much stronger growth, expanding from 13 million [ [link removed] ] to 24 million [ [link removed] ] users in November 2024 alone, whereas Parler peaked at 15 million at its best time. Second, Bluesky enjoys a more favorable environment—nobody has called for it to shut down or restrict uploading and hosting. Lastly, while conservatives were driven to Parler by bans and shadow bans, progressives have voluntarily flocked to Bluesky, choosing self-isolation over coexisting with views they don’t like.
In its early stages, lacking monetization and unaffected by bots, Bluesky hosted much more realistic engagement and meaningful discussions compared to X, essentially resembling early Twitter with its socially homogeneous and intelligent user base. But the recent influx of millions of newcomers—now comprising more than half of the pre-election Bluesky’s population—is changing the platform’s culture. Many of these users are driven by outrage toward Musk and Trump, often actively displaying their rejection of unacceptable views and people. Users used to praise Bluesky’s calm and lack of bots or adversaries. However, the influx of newcomers is driving not only engagement but also agitation. This shift threatens to disrupt the platform’s cozy atmosphere even before monetization and bots take effect. Some are already noticing the signs of increasing rage [ [link removed] ].
Bluesky’s growth may have already reached a threshold at which a network can sustain a conversational ecosystem. Parler never got to prove its sustainability, but Bluesky might offer an interesting experiment. Since Bluesky users’ attitude seems unlikely to escalate into actions like storming the Capitol, the platform can “organically” test the sustainability of a politically secluded social network. The earlier exodus of the Twitterati to Mastodon, in protest against Musk’s takeover, failed—but this time, there’s a chance for them to establish a massive political echo chamber.
The rapid growth of Bluesky has stirred enthusiasm among those involved, but this is seeming to fade. The platform has just reached a milestone of 30 million users, making it a notable social media player, especially considering its self-selected demographic specificity. Yet, it’s still far from the giants [ [link removed] ] like Facebook (3.065 billion monthly users), Instagram (2 billion), TikTok (1.58 billion) and X (611 million). Besides, not all Bluesky users will be active. Some joined out of mere curiosity—perhaps to observe the progressives’ post-election demarche. Others, initially driven by post-election enthusiasm, will cool down. Over time, the number of hardcore users, many former Twitterati, will crystallize. Their activity will serve as a census of digital progressives, revealing the number of those who dominated public discourse over the last 15 years but have now retreated into exile. The broader public will see how many of them were there.
Some argue [ [link removed] ] that splitting social media into political bubbles could reduce polarization. This is unlikely. Users in both echo chambers will continue to stalk, quote and mock each other, indulging their mutual outrage. Besides, isolated from others on Bluesky, the most zealous Twitterati risk engaging in canceling their own—a fallout of political encapsulation. When the Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia expelled and executed all the bourgeois, they turned on each other, starting with the most prominent. Among progressives, there will always be someone who slips into centrism or bothsidesism, for example.
Bluesky, a smaller and likely more insular bubble than other social media platforms, also carries higher risks of marginalization. If the former Twitterati continue using their usual rhetoric, it will, of course, be reported to the broader public through X. Bluesky and its users may be marginalized in public perception as a group of “far left,” “alt-left” or whatever pejorative emerges. However, the political split and lack of balance may carry the risk of marginalization for X, too. The potential for marginalization of one or both political sides due to the split into two political online bubbles threatens to deepen polarization even further.
All these projections may be relevant for “normal” conditions, but the coming situation might lack “normalcy.” Donald Trump and his allies are pushing hard to dismantle the previous political and governmental arrangements, while the alliance of bureaucrats, progressives and the media resists. Trump’s relationships with both his foes and allies are likely to generate high volatility. For example, a rift between Trump and Musk could profoundly shake the political landscape. There are also other disruptions that could critically affect the system, such as judicial or economic backlashes to Trump’s abrupt actions. In such a scenario, the former Twitterati might regain power. Bluesky could see a stronger future if Trump’s presidency is overly turbulent or faces major setbacks.

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