Elon Musk now owns Twitter. He promises he won’t make the place a “free-for-all hellscape.” I’m not so sure.
If Musk turns the place into a total nightmare, or you’re quitting Twitter now just on principle, where will you go?
If you don’t use Twitter now, what social media do you use?
Is Mastodon still a thing?
I’m asking partly for selfish reasons; I need to figure out where to go myself if (when?) things deteriorate precipitously on Twitter.
Comments, please!
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Can’t say, I never used Twitter to start with. I’ve always seen it as a place where intelligent conversation goes to die and that’s not going to change now.
Mastodon’s still very much a thing. joinmastodon.org can help you find a server.
I was only on Twitter for a few months, and this was several years ago. They seemed bad enough then, though I am certain their need to present some level of respectability kept them from falling completely into the abyss they now seem ready to jump into.
My brief foray into to Twitter taught me there was no need for me to have some sort of direct connection to all the people on the internet, so the closest I get to social media is a few comment sections like this one, and Discord for communicating with folks I game with. (Gravitating toward groups that bill themselves as LGBTQ+ friendly mostly keeps me clear of the Gamers mentioned in the previous article.)
I apologize that I have no good advice for folks like David who have a professional need to be able to publicly post things. The idea of some sort of internet-town-square that does not alliw harassment or hate speech doesn’t seem like a big ask, but apparently is nothing we are going to get any time soon.
I don’t use Twitter, I just chat on Discord in friendly servers. Keep my mental health better and there’s less chance of running into bigots.
I don’t know. Does Reddit still suck, or is it good now? Is Tumblr still a thing?
In fairness, I don’t think there will be a sudden dramatic mass exodus. More likely engagement will slowly drop off as harassment gets worse and the quality of the site tanks.
I only use Twitter in read-only mode. I read what people I follow post and never look at the replies unless they are from someone I also follow or are retweeted.
I know some people I follow have talked about switching to instagram to share similar content to what they are doing now but it seems worse for text-based things than Twitter.
I don’t know yet. I stick around Twitter and see what happens. I have ad block anyway so I’m not giving them revenue. If tons of people I leave go, I’ll follow to wherever they’re going. Not Tribel because that’s run by the Occupy Democrats grifters and I don’t trust it to not be a liberal version of Parler. Maybe Mastadon.
Honestly, I miss the blogging culture of years past and would love a return to that. It would be fun to have the comments section here be as active as it used to be.
Never used Twitter. I used to use Facebook, but haven’t been on in over a year (funny store – when I tried to log in today, I got a notice saying that since I was logging in from an unknown computer that I needed to upload photo ID to verify the account was mine – regardless of the fact that I’ve never uploaded any form of ID there, so how would they know that my ID really belongs to my account, and not just someone with the same name, or convincing fake ID??!?!) So I don’t use Facebook anymore either.
The only social media I use now is Youtube and Discord for a game I like (it has a good community.)
Mastodon is doing better than ever! Join up! Mastodon-to-twitter crossposters, but masto users get annoyed when it goes in the opposite direction
I’m on Mastodon but barely use it. I’m also on Ello but just post AI generated images. I plan on walking away from Twitter but I hate having to start from scratch.
I have never used Twitter.
I do use Discord, where conversations are more possible
counter.social or (sorry, WWTH) tribel.com .
I’m afraid I am another not-so-helpful nonuser of Twitter. I only follow the odd link to it, usually from this blog, where I get told it is so much better on the app
I looked at Mastodon a while back, but I never could figure out their terrible dashboard.
What’s all this talk of leaving Twitter?! Doesn’t anyone want to get in on Elon’s “everything app” that’ll take over the Internet and solve everyone’s probBWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I crack me up!
Matrix [matrix.org] looks good, too.
CounterSocial doesn’t seem to be too bad.
I use Pillowfort. it’s not got a huge amount of users, but it’s got a good set of tools to manage who can see which posts of yours.
It also is entirely user funded with no investors to come after them for unceasing growth bullshit.
I’ve got nothing helpful to say, so I’m glad some others do. I post only here and occasionally on Reddit. I’m kind of surprised that Reddit has some sub-Reddits that are reasonably respectful.
Will wait and see.
I never used it except occasionally in read mode when someone linked a cute cat or something. Which looks, in retrospect, to be a good plan. It was toxic enough at the start that it put me off.
I have FB only to send messages to people who are friends or relatives.
I have friendly message boards like this, old-school blogs, plus good old-fashioned email lists. (Still the best)
Some of the sub-Reddits are well-moderated, as are the commentary sections on some web pages, like this one.
I got enough friends.
A lot of serious German journalists are pushing Mastodon right now.
Whenever I open this blog, I feel the urge to sing, “I hunt the mammoth, but I do not hunt the mastodon”, to the tune of “I shot the sheriff”.
Just an additional note on Discord: You have ways to push messages to people on Discord, and they have various levels of intrusiveness which I find makes it a great communication tool.
It’s absolutely true that there aren’t nearly as many people on there as there are on Twitter, but having a Discord server would probably be a net plus for you.
The only question is whether getting it set up so that it runs without consuming your time managing it can happen quickly enough and easily enough to make it worth it. Just because Discord would benefit you doesn’t mean that it would automatically be a good benefit value for the effort.
I wish I could be more helpful, but I don’t really know how many total users Discord has and how many of them would want to jump on to a WHTM server.
If they do, though, you can leave messages tagged @Everyone (or whatever your preferred handle for all your Discord members would be) that will add a noticeable but non-intrusive red number (1 for each unread message that tags a person or that person’s groups) floating over your server’s icon so that people can be reminded to visit when you have an announcement.
It can also be set up so that people get a direct message of your announcement — kind of like a mass e-mail, I guess? And it can be automated so that the people who voluntarily sign up for those direct messages don’t need your help to get on (or off) the list. People get exactly as much visibility for your server as they desire.
Still, there’s some setup involved and I don’t know what the ratio of work to benefit will be for you.
I’ve grown to love Mastodon and Fediverse in general. Not that there aren’t problems with it, but it’s easy to block out bad actors and find like-minded people across multiple servers. I am on mastodon.art which has been a great home for me.
@magnesium:
Tumblr is definitely still a thing, despite the frequent reports of its demise. It has a weird in-jokey culture of its own, and I find it’s better for pictures and one-off posts than it is for conversations, unless the person making the original post is sufficiently well-known to get replies, or be reblogged with comments.
I was also part of the Livejournal-to-Dreamwidth exodus some years back—DW is a fairly good place if you like a more traditional blog-and-comments experience.