Still processing the results of the 2024 Presidential election, members of the Montgomery County Council have decided to either leave Twitter / X completely or climb aboard the lefty “Bluesky” social media app bandwagon in addition to their Twitter / X and other social media accounts.
CM Gabe Albornoz announced he was leaving Twitter / X a few days ago, and has since de-camped for Bluesky:
He’ll no doubt wow his 45 followers with some powerful messaging about a recent award he was given by a MoCo business club association.
Interestingly, CM Kristin Mink seems to be signaling a full-on move to Bluesky / Blsky, but it would see hard to replicate her reach on the platform compared to X / Twitter, where she has about 28,000+ followers. At the time of this writing, her Bluesky reach only extended to… 55 followers. One of those was CM Gabe Albornoz.
CM Evan Glass has also joined Bluesky but maintains an active Twitter / X presence. He bests all the other CMs in followers on the social media platform, so far.
This is all a reaction to what these local politicians claim is constant “hate speech” and “vitriol” on Twitter / X, but it is also performative anger at X’s owner, Elon Musk, for supporting “he who shall not be named” in 2024.
It also shows a lack of wanting to engage on public policy failures and a desire to simply wallow in an ideological echo chamber. No social media space is perfect — and everyone should absolutely seek balance in their usage of such media — but Twitter / X maintains dominance because it is a truly open space. You can find and solicit many, many different views on it – also known as viewpoint diversity. Aka diversity of thought.
(Too many) of MoCo’s County Councilmembers don’t really seem inclined to embrace diversity of this kind. That’s a shame. Because Montgomery County will continue to be a diverse place with many kinds of opinions and views, whether they recognize it or not.
