Ever since the news broke that Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, Twitter users have been freaking out about the fate of their favorite social media platform.
Many express a desire to leave the service, mainly due to Musk’s Twitter behavior, with many flocking to the new platform called Mastodon in recent weeks.
They have legitimate concerns that under his leadership the service could stray too far from what it is today and shift to some of Musk’s interests, such as NFTs and cryptocurrencies. However, his mass layoffs of the company’s employees and his plan for a subscription platform, Twitter Blue, have already accelerated the departure of users.
However, many others ask where they could go instead. With that in mind, here are three platforms that can scratch your Twitter itch.
Mastodon
This is Twitter if it was open source and there were multiple instances of the social platform.
You can join servers on Mastodon, which can be seen as different communities, although it can sometimes be confusing to tell which one you are in.
we we dipped our toes (opens in a new tab) to the platform and compared to Twitter, trying to join a server is currently a challenge due to the number of new users in the last few months.
It’s inspired by the Twitter layout, but you can also view news and hashtags, then follow and “boost” Mastodon’s take on retweets as you like.
Due to the platform’s ironic trend on Twitter after news broke of Musk’s purchase of the company, along with his plan to charge $8 / £8 / AU$9 for a blue tick, an army of new users has marched to Mastadon, who are now battling for their support, which may be the reason why we were unable to log into it Android and iOS Apps (opens in a new tab) also.
Discord
Once thought to be an app that only talks about your favorite games while streaming on Twitch, it has become a place where you can create a “server” to discuss almost anything.
First launched in 2015. Discord (opens in a new tab) allows you to be part of the community via text, voice and video messages as long as you join the appropriate servers and follow their rules. If you participated in the forums on some websites in the early 00s, you will feel right at home here. These old forums were also focused on topics where you could create your own threads and posts on related topics.
The same goes for Discord, but in a way that allows you to stay in touch with users through, say, video. It also integrates with your Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation profile so you can let others know what games you play.
Think of it as about bulletin board page (opens in a new tab) full of news and entries created by its users. You can “vote” and “upvote” these posts and they will be displayed in a growing list of “subreddits” that will show how popular these posts are with others.
While it’s not a scrolling feed of people you follow, you can follow subreddits and your homepage will display a curated list of all these topics, based on how new and popular they are throughout the day.
There are also third-party apps you can use on Reddit that are available for iOS and Android, such as Apollo – these offer features not available on Reddit. official app (opens in a new tab)such as gallery view.
With over 450 million users on the site, it’s unlikely you’ll find a topic that hasn’t been covered or has its own subreddit.