Everything
It feels like the death of Twitter has dragged on so long that there are now kids hearing stories from their grandparents about how the heir to an emerald mine turned one of the most powerful social media platforms into a cesspit of cryptobots and fringe conspiracy theories.
But the most recent escapade from Elon Musk – capping the number of Tweets a person can view in one day – seems to have set many still holding on for the hope of a Twitter revival over the edge.
To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
– Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
– Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
– New unverified accounts to 300/day— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023
Add to this Google’s seeming scorched earth policy towards the platform, removing nearly all Twitter urls from their search engine after Musk failed to pay his bills on time… Maybe it’s time to find a new neighbourhood?
To get you started, here are five alternatives that could be worth checking out. Of course, perhaps the best thing for all of us would be just logging off for good and getting back outside and rediscover how to interact with real live people again…
Bluesky
Perhaps the closest as far as functionality and purpose to Twitter, a detail helped by the fact that Bluesky is backed by Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey, in that you can share updates, pictures and other people’s posts. But it is also decentralised, so you can create your own communities within the platform.
Bluesky also has the benefit (or not, depending on where you stand here) of also being invitation only for now. After Beta testing is done, it will open up to the general public.
Mastadon
There was a point in time when Mastadon was looking like it would be THE thing that former Twitter-ers would flock as they flew the coop looking for greener, less problematic, pastures. Then it didn’t. Boasting the title of biggest decentralised social media platform, Mastadon is also ad free. No more blocking every second piece of information! And, it’s open to all users right now.
Discord
Originally started as a network for gamers to communicate while playing, Discord has grown into a network of communities. Users are able to create professional and social circles on the platform to enable conversations. There’s no public channel like Twitter, but there are topic based servers.
