The vibes on X, the everything app, are in shambles. Rampant bots. Scant content moderation. Election-gloating and taunting from high-visibility accounts who pay a monthly fee for the privilege. Many users who managed to stick around during previous “X-oduses” throughout Elon Musk’s rocky tenure as owner may have finally had enough of his MAGA house of mirrors. They’re fleeing in droves.

To where, though? For better or worse, there are currently two major options for X-pats looking to cultivate a Classic Twitter experience: Threads and Bluesky. If X has become microblogging’s past, one of these two just may be its future—the proverbial marketplace of ideas where posts go viral and people find community, jobs, and romantic partners. Straddling both platforms is certainly possible, but anyone exhausted just thinking about cross-posting every link, screenshot, and meme might want to look deep within their hearts and decide on a main feed.

The UX on X had been going down the tubes from the beginning of Musk’s 2022 acquisition, well before the platform assumed its final form as a means to help Trump win reelection. Meta took notice of this decline. In March of 2023, Zuckerberg and co. announced an imminent “Twitter-killer,” which ended up becoming Threads. By the time it launched a few months later in July, though, it had another Twitter-competitor to contend with.

Bluesky began life in 2019 under the direction of Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey. (He has since parted ways with both platforms.) The project was intended as a decentralized social media app that could eventually allow multiple platforms to connect together, rather than being siloed off from each other. Bluesky launched as an invite-only beta app in early 2023, before opening its gates to everyone in February 2024. By then, the platform had attracted over three million users.

Considering that Threads was backed by Meta and reportedly got to 100 million users in its first three months, the idea of it being in competition with Bluesky evokes images of Goliath drop-kicking David in the general direction of the sun. It also made the underdog’s Wild West looseness even more pronounced.

The early days of Bluesky were populated by powerful Twitter “shitposters” like Dril, public figures including Jake Tapper and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, LBGTQ folks, and the kind of internet natives who post Animorph jokes and sexy pictures of Alf. Everyone talked perhaps too much about Bluesky on Bluesky, with some folks near-militant about calling posts “skeets,” but they appeared to do so out of genuine affection for their new digital home. It was a bit cliquey and a lot chaotic, but mostly a happy place. Unless a new user arrived from X with the intent to harass, that is; at which point, they would find out how many Blueskiers were great at harassing back, and organizing a mass-block.

Meanwhile, the early days of Threads were marked by total brand saturation. Social media managers everywhere had apparently been preparing for the platform’s release like they were stocking fallout shelters, and as soon as it launched, they started an upbeat food fight. Making the experience more pleasurable, though, users were able to instantly migrate their Instagram followers over to the app and enjoy a built-in audience for their new text-based posts. The fact that many influencers quickly turned out to be better at posing in exotic locales than crafting relatable observations and opinions lent an air of schadenfreude for some users.

So, what have these very different platforms evolved into over the past year?

Threads announced back in March an effort to limit the amount of political content its users see, even though many had already complained that the site was abysmal for keeping up with politics. They had good reason. Beyond making the app nonchronological by default, Meta’s algorithm seemed to devalue news, making it hard to keep up with current events—a primary motivation for many social media users. It also served those users so many relatively stale posts, a common jokey refrain on the app went “Hi, it’s me from two days ago.” (Bluesky, in contrast, is among the only remaining social media apps whose feed is chronological by default.)

Not that Threads’s algorithm is a total disaster. Anyone opining about a specific movie, song, or book might just find their post automatically crossing the transom of some of Threads’ reported 275 million users, based on those users’ engagement patterns. Also, someone must have gotten the memo about brands, as their presence seems reined in of late. Though not entirely.

As for Bluesky, the same Wild West energy that animated the invite-only days remains, even as the population has ballooned to over 15 million users. (With a full million joining in just the week since the election.) In the meantime, its engineers have been busy. They’ve added video capabilities and direct messaging, both of which were missing at launch, beefed up anti-toxicity protection for dealing with the inevitable trolls, and introduced new features like Starter Packs, which make it easier to help new users find the right people to follow.

The steady trickle of X-pats onto the platform over the past year has also vastly expanded the breadth of voices overall and diluted some of its high-test absurdity. In fact, some of those who’ve been around from the start (Bluesky elders) have been clashing with those who gave the app a go at some point in 2023 and are coming back now, underwhelmed. In other words, there is also still plenty of talk about Bluesky on Bluesky. And some of that talk is now on Threads too.

Ultimately, whichever site appeals most to those fleeing X is a deeply personal matter of taste. Some folks are making the migration because they can’t handle another four years of Trump news, and the reaction to it, dominating their feed all day. For them, Threads might be a barely political oasis of pop culture and hobby-happy fun. But for anyone deactivating X specifically because they miss the way Twitter felt way back in the pre-Trump era, Bluesky is the obvious answer. Better to get in now, though, before the platform gets so popular that its essential character evolves into something else.

TL:DR for choosing between Threads and Bluesky

Threads pros:

• Ability to migrate Instagram followers creates an instant audience
• Vast user base and algorithm offers potentially much wider reach
• Many celebrities, influencers, and publications prefer it to Bluesky

Threads cons:

• Nonchronological feed is the default, making it hard to keep up with current events
• Active suppression of political content makes it even harder

Bluesky pros:

• Format looks like Classic Twitter and default chronological feed makes it feel that way
• Lots of features designed to protect users and to help them figure out who to follow
• Many beloved content creators from Twitter prefer it to Threads

Bluesky cons:

• Tone may be too goofily R-rated for some users
• Lack of algorithm makes it less likely random users will come across your posts

Please consider following Fast Company on both Bluesky and Threads.