Commenting on the surge, Gizmodo suggested that “apparently not everyone is ready to live in a post-truth world... Fittingly, Facebook competitors are also seeing a spike in interest. Bluesky saw a nearly 1,000% increase in searches during the same period that saw people looking to exit the Meta-verse of social apps.”

In the wake of Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will ditch professional fact-checkers in favor of a Community Notes-style crowdsourcing approach to accountability,