Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk buys the popular social medium Twitter for a sloppy 41 billion euros. Some critics therefore want to leave the platform. But where can you go?
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Twitter is what we call a ‘microblogging platform’: a place where you post short updates about what you’re up to. The emphasis is on text. If you are more interested in images or in longer texts, you can go to well-known apps such as Instagram, TikTok and Reddit for a long time.
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Twitter has been popular with politicians and journalists since its debut in 2006, who make up a significant part of its 206 million daily users. That makes Twitter a small but influential medium.
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Previously, groups of users dissatisfied with starting their own alternatives, such as the right-wing microblogging sites Parler and Gab. With the takeover by Elon Musk, even more people are now looking for an alternative that suits them.
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That’s tricky: there’s no other platform like Twitter that has the same reach. For those who really want to leave, we have listed a few options.
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Mastodon (https://joinmastodon.org/)
Mastodon is a beloved ‘alternative Twitter’ with a twist. The app is very similar to Twitter in design: you can easily post short ‘toots’ and read those of others in your feed. In terms of structure, however, Mastodon is much more complicated.
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The app uses a so-called federalist system. On Twitter, all tweets end up in the same bin, over which Twitter has control. Mastodon consists of many different bins. They are connected to each other, so that you can still communicate with each other.
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Such a container is called an ‘instance’, and you can create a new identity for each instance. You have general bins that resemble Twitter, such as mastodon.cloud or the Dutch language mastodon.nl. Other islands have a special approach, such as economy, My Little Pony or cooking. You can search for one that suits you via a site like instances.social.
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Management differs quite a bit from instance to instance. For example, you can post nude photos in one box and not in the other. The administrator also determines with whom the instance communicates – if the boss of the My Little Pony tank is angry with the cooking instance, you can no longer follow cooking accounts from your My Little Pony account.
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Plurk (https://www.plurk.com)
Plurk emerged just two years after Twitter, in 2008. This microblogging platform originated in Taiwan and has quite a few users who speak Asian languages. The approach is similar to Twitter – you can post short updates of up to 360 characters.
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The difference is in the design. If you open Plurk, you will see a horizontal timeline, which starts in the now and goes further back in time to the right. You usually get to see the top Plurk from a thread. If you click on that, you unfold all the reactions.
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With this, the platform tries to emphasize conversations. For good reactions you will be awarded ‘karma points’, which give you access to emojis.
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Tumblr (https://www.tumblr.com)
For a while, blogging site Tumblr seemed to become as big as Twitter or Facebook. At the height of the site’s popularity in 2013, Yahoo paid about $1.1 billion for it in an acquisition. Yahoo’s rule was not to the liking of users. Six years later, Tumblr was sold again for just $3 million.
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However, the blog site is still very active. Fans are resisting the arrival of modernizations from other apps. For example, Tumblr still uses a chronological feed, where you see the latest posts from followed accounts at the top – although the site does not clearly state the date and time.
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Text messages can be as long as you want, but are usually short. Many users like to create and distribute “gifsets”, collections of related GIF animations, drawings and photos. Central is the reblog button, with which you forward a post from someone else to your own Tumblr feed and optionally add descriptive tags or comments.
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Please note: Tumblr has built up a very idiosyncratic culture in recent years. There’s no harm in watching the cat out of the tree.
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Minds (https://minds.com)
Minds has been around since 2015, and prides itself on its belief in freedom of expression. The app is open source, meaning anyone can view and use the code. Minds gives you a minimalistic version of Twitter’s design. The app works almost the same.
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There are only a few major differences: Minds also allows you to create longer blog posts, in addition to Twitter-like posts. You can fine-tune the algorithm of the app itself, such as by saying how often you want to be confronted by opinions that are not your own.
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Finally, Minds uses crypto technology and crypto coins. One drawback for some users: there is no sharp moderation.
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