The City of Boston says its X account will stay alive while it gains a presence on Bluesky, a social media platform that has attracted millions of users following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in early November.

“The City maintains a presence on multiple communications platforms to reach constituents,” a city spokesperson told the Herald on Saturday. “We are not deleting our presence on other platforms as we establish new accounts on Bluesky to meet the surge of activity and local interest there.”

Critics accused the city of “running away” from Elon Musk’s “toxic” X platform after announcing it had created a Bluesky account last week.

“Hey Boston, we’re here!” officials wrote in their first Bluesky post, the day before Thanksgiving. “City teams are building accounts and making moves to make Bluesky our home. Stay tuned.”

The post included links to various departments that had already created Bluesky accounts including the Streets Cabinet, Parks and Recreation, and the Public Health Commission.

Bluesky had gained 1 million new users in the week after Trump’s reelection, as some X users, mostly liberals, looked for an alternative platform to post their thoughts and engage with others online.

Despite Bluesky’s growth, X reported that it had “dominated the global conversation on the U.S. election” and had set new records. The platform saw a 15.5% jump in new-user signups on Election Day, it said, with a record 942 million posts worldwide.

Bluesky has referenced its competitive relationship to X through tongue-in-cheek comments, including an Election Day post on X referencing Musk watching voting results come in with President-elect Donald Trump.

“I can guarantee that no Bluesky team members will be sitting with a presidential candidate tonight and giving them direct access to control what you see online,” Bluesky said.

Bostonians Against Mayor Wu, an X account critical of how the city is being governed, posted about the Bluesky development around 5 p.m. on Friday. As of 4 p.m. Saturday, the post had gained nearly 900,000 views.

“The city of Boston announces it is ditching @elonmusk’s X and moving all of their accounts over to X’s rival platform,” the post read.

Thousands of critics responded to the post, slamming the city for adding Bluesky to its social media repertoire.

Former Herald sports columnist and current podcaster Gerry Callahan chimed in: “Elon Musk: We will allow ANYONE to speak. No censoring. No shadow banning. No collusion with the government. Democrats: Sorry, not for us.”

The post even caught the eye of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has 3.4 million X followers.

“This is what cults do when they are exposed and in total collapse,” Jones posted on X late Friday night. “They run and hide from reality. This is the last stage of a failed ideology’s death. As Jesus said ‘let the dead bury the dead.’”

Mayor Michelle Wu has sparingly used her @wutrain X account since Musk took over the platform. She posted a link to her Bluesky last Sunday, days before the city announced its account.

In an interview with Commonwealth Beacon in January 2023, Wu said she’d stop using X as often as she did during her mayoral campaign as the platform became “an increasingly difficult place to share information and have civil dialogue over important issues.”

“I’ve experienced this platform becoming more and more toxic over the last year,” Wu said, “and it’s a direction that makes it a less productive use of my personal time to reach constituents about local issues.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.