Elon Musk’s controversial Twitter takeover in October 2022 is facing more scrutiny after the Tesla CEO announced another shift to the social media platform this Saturday. Musk implemented a “temporary limit” on the amount of posts users can view per day, defined by varying limits depending on users’ subscription status.
Musk had previously come under fire after acquiring Twitter for laying off around 80% of the company’s employees, reinstating once-restricted profiles and tweeting conspiracy theories. Musk’s controversial leadership of the site has left some users in search of another text-based social media platform.
Here are six alternatives for those considering quitting Twitter.
Bluesky
Bluesky was founded in 2021 by Twitter’s former co-creator and CEO Jack Dorsey. As of now, the site operates on an invite-only format, allowing users to post content up to 300 characters long. Because the platform is more exclusive than its predecessor, it currently holds around 180,000 users with a whopping 1.9 million people on its waitlist to join. Bluesky utilizes a lucrative AT Protocol to “unlock a new era of experimentation and innovation in social media.” The network’s official website explains that “researchers and communities will have the ability to jump in to help solve the problems social networks currently face, and developers will be able to experiment with many new forms of interaction.”
Spill
Defined as a “visual conversation at the speed of culture,” Spill was founded by Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell and DeVaris Brown and launched in January. Both Terrell and Brown were former Twitter employees, with Terrell previously serving as Twitter’s global head of social and editorial prior to Musk’s layoffs. The platform aims to “cater to culture drivers who frequently set new trends yet routinely get overlooked and under-compensated,” Terrell previously tweeted. “Yes, we mean Black creators, queer creators, and a variety of influential voices outside the U.S.” Ahead of its launch, Spill had nearly 20,000 users on its waitlist in December 2022.
Mastodon
Mastodon, unlike many of the other Twitter alternatives, was launched way back in 2016 and rose to popularity in 2022. It’s defined as a “social networking [platform] that’s not for sale,” created by German programmer Eugen Rochko. The key difference between Mastodon and Twitter is that the former is decentralized and operated by many independent servers. Users are able to join varying servers based on different central topics. The platform has 10 million registered users, making it the most-populated site for Twitter quitters.
Threads
Instagram’s Twitter competitor, Threads, is set to launch July 6 and its potential is evident. Just as Instagram launched Reels to compete with vertical video giant TikTok, the Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta will soon release Threads, a text-centered application that will rival Twitter. Executives have teased that the biggest difference between the Meta app and Twitter is that Threads will be “sanely run,” but most information has been kept strictly under wraps. Threads now appears in the Apple app store ahead of its release, and the app info says users will continue to use their Instagram log-in and can easily follow the same accounts they follow on Instagram.
Post.News
Noam Bardin’s Post.News presents itself as “a social platform for real people, real news and civil conversations,” where users can “access journalism from premium publishes, without subscriptions or ads,” hinting at its publisher-based format. The app launched in November 2022, around the time of Musk’s Twitter takeover, leading to around 440,000 waitlisted users and 206,000 active accounts in December 2022. On a post to the site, Bardin stated his intentions for Post are “not to be the ‘Liberal Twitter.’” He continued on to urge users to “be respectful of opinions you disagree with. Our worth as citizens of a democracy is measured by how we treat people we disagree with, not the opinions we share. Let’s make sure all people are welcome, even if we disagree with their opinions.”
T2 Social
Gabor Cselle, Sarah Oh and Michael Greer launched T2 Social in November 2022. Cselle and Oh previously worked at Twitter, as a group product manager and human rights advisor, respectively. The community is currently in the early stages, defined as “a place to have the authentic conversations we’ve always wanted to have,” with a character limit of 280. It initially launched with less than 1,000 users on its platform, which has since expanded to around 20,000 in an invite-only format.
