Mastodon, Tumblr, WT.Social, Tribel: 4 Twitter alternatives to escape Elon Musk and his haphazard policies for the social media site
- People are threatening to quit Twitter now that Tesla founder Elon Musk is in charge and making changes that many of them disagree with
- Here are four alternative sites to post on if you decide to delete your tweets forever, from Tumblr to Mastodon – known as an open-source alternative to Twitter
Since Elon Musk’s US$44 billion purchase of Twitter, there has been no shortage of users threatening to quit and go elsewhere.
Their concerns range from the billionaire’s stance on moderation and free speech, to his plan to let people pay for verification ticks.
The latest is the possibility of putting the platform behind a paywall.
But once a user closes their Twitter account, where can they go to attain some level of social media satisfaction?
Pretty much every time Elon Musk makes fun of people in his tweets we get an uptick
1. Mastodon
The social network Mastodon is often spoken of as an open-source alternative to Twitter. Users register their accounts on different “servers”, each of which are run independently with their own content rules, similar to Reddit’s community-controlled groups.
Instead of joining a single platform that blends everyone’s contributions, Mastodon’s servers are themed by interests, such as hobbies, countries or activism.
This gives users an immediate community, but they are still allowed to follow users on other servers. Posts are called “toots” and can include text and images.
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Mastodon was founded in 2016 and has more than a million active monthly users. About half a million signed up since Musk took over Twitter on October 27, according to founder Eugen Rochko.
2. Tumblr
Tumblr is angling to regain its erstwhile popularity amid the chaos of Twitter’s Muskification. In a Twitter thread, it played up to that platform’s defectors with promises of an ability to remove algorithm-suggested content, free edit features, a “ridiculously huge character limit” and “GIFs. A lot of GIFs. So many GIFs.”
After a US$1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo in 2013, the site failed to compete effectively with newer, mobile-first platforms like Instagram. Traffic numbers faced further challenges in 2018 when the platform said it would ban sexual content.
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While Tumblr’s focus on allowing lengthy blog posts and streams of multimedia used to contrast starkly with Twitter’s short-and-to-the-point text-only model, the latter’s expansion of character limits and support for threads and videos brought the two platforms closer from a product standpoint.
It might make it a suitable new home for Twitter escapees as a result.
3. WT.Social
WikiTribune Social, or WT.Social, has had a “strong rise in users leaving Twitter due to Elon Musk’s new ownership and policies”, founder Jimmy Wales said by email.
Wales, who also founded Wikipedia, said the website will fund itself by selling memberships, not through advertising, which he says gives users voting rights over content.
Billing itself as the “non-toxic social network”, WT.Social wants to establish authenticity by prioritising content based on truthfulness, as judged by what the most trusted people on the site think.
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This is in contrast to the engagement-based algorithms of other social media sites, where controversial content is often surfaced first.
In a version of the site coming in the next few months, users will be awarded with different “status levels” depending on how trusted their posts are deemed to be by other users.
In essence, it blends the approval-by-committee model of Wikipedia with the anything-goes appeal of a service like Twitter.
4. Tribel
The site came out of beta testing three months ago, which was “pretty fortuitous” timing given Musk’s purchase of Twitter, said founder Omar Rivero in a phone call. Two months ago, the site had 250,000 registered users but now has 500,000, he said.
“Pretty much every time Elon Musk makes fun of people in his tweets we get an uptick,” he added.
The text- and picture-based site looks somewhat like the news feeds of Facebook or Twitter, but posts can be sent to selective audiences.
Users can also search for posts in specific categories, meaning that a user’s first post can trend without having any followers, said Rivero, who also founded the partisan Occupy Democrats news site.
Tribel does not promote a specific political ideology, he said.
