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Bloomberg

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
Omar Rivero, founder of Tribel
“If you were following Kylie Jenner’s tweets and she left Twitter, don’t you just follow her on Instagram or TikTok instead?” asks Sarah Simon, a senior media analyst at Berenberg. Not necessarily. Here are some popular options:
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.
As Musk takes over, right-wingers ‘test’ Twitter with conspiracy tweets
Mastodon says it will only promote servers that “are consistently committed to moderation against racism, sexism and transphobia”.
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.
However, Tumblr announced last week that nudity would now be permitted, and in the past seven days, downloads on Apple’s App Store are up 58 per cent, according to a tweet by Matt Mullenweg, whose company Automattic now owns the site.
Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators
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.
Twitter rolls out new paid subscription
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.


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Mastodon, Tumblr, WT.Social, Tribel: 4 Twitter alternatives to escape Elon Musk and his haphazard policies for the social media site

Once a user closes their Twitter account, where can they go to attain some level of social media satisfaction? We take a look at four alternatives. Photo: Reuters

Mastodon’s servers are themed according to interests such as hobbies, countries or activism. Photo: Shutterstock

Tumblr has announced that nudity will be permitted once more after a ban in 2018. Photo: Shutterstock

WT.Social will fund itself by selling memberships, not through advertising. Photo: WT.Social

Omar Rivero is the founder of Tribel. Photo: Twitter/@OmarRiverosays

Twitter lost more than 1.3 million users in the week after Elon Musk bought it

Twitter headquarters is shown in San Francisco on November 4, 2022. Photo: AP 

In this photo from February 10, 2022, Elon Musk pauses as he speaks during a press conference at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas. Photo: AFP/Getty Images/TNS

Twitter’s pared-down staff struggles with misinformation ahead of US midterm elections

A blue verification check is seen on the Twitter account of Elon Musk in this photo taken on November 7, 2022. Photo: Bloomberg

Employees walk past a lighted Twitter logo, as they leave the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on August 13, 2019. Photo: AFP/Getty Images/TNS

Elon Musk attends the opening of a Tesla factory in Berlin, Germany, on March 22, 2022. Photo: AP

Buying your way to online legitimacy: What happens if anyone can buy Twitter’s ‘blue tick’ status?

According to Twitter, the blue tick lets people know an account of interest is authentic. Currently, there are seven categories of “public interest accounts”, such as government office accounts, news organisations and journalists, and influencers. Photo: dpa

There’s a fundamental mismatch between what Twitter wants the blue tick to mean versus how the public perceives it, something the Twitter safety team acknowledged in 2017. Photo: AFP

On Saturday, Twitter started giving users who sign up for US$8 a month a verified tick, days after owner Elon Musk floated the idea of a new verification system. Photo: TNS

Twitter is losing its most active users amid competition from TikTok and Instagram, internal documents show

The Twitter app seen on a smartphone in this illustration taken July 13, 2021. Photo: Reuters

Elon Musk has been a prolific user of Twitter, and he is set to secure a US$44 billion acquisition of the social media company. Photo: AFP

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Looking for a place to go after you delete your tweets forever? Here are four Twitter alternatives to escape Elon Musk, from Mastodon to Tumblr.


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