Logging Out of Twitter? Try These Social Media Instead
It seems, it is now one of the most popular topics on Twitter – a way out of Twitter you need. The microblogging platform is widely abused, and every day I see complaints that its moderators are not in control of harassment and bad behavior. As someone who has written primarily about video games for many years, I have seen many of my peers being overtaken by an oppressive crowd of lost gamers who lacked the ability to defend themselves. I also see (or at least read about) conservative users who feel their posts are being suppressed by the platform .
The company’s inactivity peaked last week when it suspended Infowars disinformation disseminator and creator Alex Jones for seven days for posting hate speech and incitement to violence , sparked by violent protests from users who demanded to join Facebook, YouTube and others. digital media platforms that recently banned Infowars from their corners of the web. Twitter divided the difference between outright ban and inaction, leading to an even bigger scandal with the platform. Nobody is happy. Some alt-right and neo-Nazis have reacted by migrating to Gab, a new service that caters to disgusting users that we will not recommend here for hopefully obvious reasons.
If you’re thinking of leaving Twitter for something less evil or toxic, we’ve compiled a list of places where you can find similar experiences in one form or another. No alternative will do Twitter as well as Twitter: some mimic all of Twitter’s quirks – hard caps on characters, channel scrolling, favorites, and more – but don’t offer the same social media reach. Others have deep, well-developed communities, but they don’t allow you to read and write your thoughts in the same way. Nothing will ever be an exact substitute, but if you’re ready to leave the ship and want something new to fill the void, here are your best options:
Mastodon
Maximum number of characters: 250
If you enjoy using Twitter but just don’t like interacting with a specific part of the community, Mastodon is really the best / only true Twitter alternative for most people. Mastodon is an open source, decentralized Twitter-style platform. Users can create independently hosted and moderated communities with varying levels of privacy. Depending on the server, you can send beeps and / or monitor users through the servers, or it can be completely isolated. It could be like Twitter, or it could be a private chat room that just looks like this.
A mastodon needs a little more savvy than regular social media. You have to join the server, which means that unless you have someone on purpose to pull you there, you have to select it without much information. There is also no official app for the Mastodon phone, so you’ll have to pick one of them too. These decisions are not difficult, but not easy to make, so it can take a while to find the community and setting that works for you.
As someone who uses Twitter primarily as a professional tool to reach out to readers and colleagues with whom my relationship is purely digital, the question arises, “What’s the point of using Twitter if you only plan to communicate with people you know?” The quality of Mastodon’s signature, his ability to maintain confidentiality, or at least moderate, limits his usefulness. Aside from a massive transition, posting a “viral” post on Mastodon will never be as powerful as a smart, stupid, or otherwise effective tweet.
But for groups looking to take entire communities out of the public eye or find new online friends in a less ideologically aggressive space, Mastodon has all the tools you need to live one version of your life on Twitter without the trolls.
Tumblr
Maximum number of characters: N / A
Of other established social media platforms, Tumblr seems to be best suited to fulfill the role that Twitter plays for many people – communities where people can share their thoughts on topics that interest them with equally interested people.
Tumblr does not exist as an “alternative to Twitter,” so unlike the other entries on this list, it does not look exactly the same or comply with the same restrictions. There is no character limit in texting, and most of his community only exists to curate and reblogged other content already on the site. However, no one bothers you to publish your thoughts in the form of digestible passages, the length of which can be or at least 280 characters.
What Tumblr has to offer, which you won’t get from a service that seeks to directly mimic Twitter, is a source of deep, well-established communities on any number of issues. Find any topic – from a broad topic like “politics” to something as specific as fan art about your favorite planet from Star Wars, and you’ll find a rabbit hole to knock down. (Sorry). Regardless of what you love to talk about, there are people on Tumblr who write, share gifs, and otherwise interact with each other on any topic (s) that interest you. And unlike Twitter, these communities all coexist but are very isolated, so while you’re not necessarily immune from trolls, you’re less likely to overlap.
Amino
Maximum number of characters: N / A
If you check Twitter primarily to read and write on one or more very specific topics, Amino is a mobile network of deep fan communities that allows you to join, post and chat with people about your hobbies. Amino is a lot like Tumblr, which formalizes the process of creating individual communities. Rather than just starting a blog and writing about anything, you are encouraged to join Aminos, communities revolving around specific topics where you can write blog posts and chat with fellow fans.
As such, Amino is extremely single-minded. You need to know what you want to talk about and be extremely passionate about it. Amino is definitely not the place to find out what’s going on in the world, but it’s probably a great place to find out everything you have to say about yesterday’s episode of Riverdale.
Plurk
Maximum number of characters: 360.
Twitter has been around since 2006, so most startups trying to compete and / or copy it have come and gone. Plurk, one of Twitter’s early competitors, is one of the few remaining longtime competitors.
Quite frankly, Plurk is a ghost town. It seems that the platform has remained untouched since its launch in 2008. I wandered around Plurk and couldn’t help but think back to early versions of Twitter and Foursquare (I did dive into Foursquare for a minute. Please don’t judge me).
While I feel like it’s not exactly good – the site offers the option to pay to remove ads, but I haven’t found one – there are iOS and Android apps and at least a few themes that seem to get regular, albeit infrequent. , conversations about memes, games and anime (although most of it seems Japanese).
It’s hard to consider using Plurk as a legitimate alternative to Twitter – you certainly won’t be able to use it to get news or comments on it, but then it generates a lot of toxic traffic on Twitter, so you might be left alone with your thoughts. so bad?