After Elon Musk enraged Twitter users yet again by placing limits on the number of tweets that can be viewed per day, yet another alternative to the social media platform got its moment in the spotlight: The invite-only start-up Spill.
Spill was developed by two former Black Twitter employees who were among those laid off after Musk bought the company last year: Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell, Twitter’s former global head of social and editorial, and DeVaris Brown, a former product manager lead. The app topped the download charts on the App Store on Saturday and is currently No. 3 on Sunday at time of writing as thousands of Black Twitter users tried to sign up.
In an interview with TechCrunch shortly before Spill’s launch this past January, Brown said that Spill would be designed with Black users in mind, with particular focus in filtering and combatting hate speech via artificial intelligence designed by Black developers.
“We’re going to be more intentional and be more accurate around things that will be deemed offensive because, again, this is our lived experience or learned experience,” Brown told TechCrunch. “It’ll be much more accurate to catch those kinds of things that will detract from the platform, that would not lend to creating a safe space for our users and our creators.”
Spill got a boost in downloads after Musk announced in a tweet that due to “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation,” users will be subject to different limits on how many tweets they can view per day depending on whether or not their accounts are verified via an $8/month subscription service. Those who exceeded the viewing limits reported receiving a “rate limit exceeded” error message.
Musk changed the limits several times on Saturday, at one point announcing that verified accounts could view 10,000 posts a day, while unverified accounts could view 1,000 and new unverified accounts could view 500 posts. His announcement was met with widespread criticism, along with accusations that the rate limits were an effort to push users into paying to have their accounts verified and receive the higher rate limit.
It remains to be seen whether Spill or any of the other Twitter alternatives that have popped up following Musk’s purchase of Twitter will prove a real challenge to the site. Mastodon, a Twitter alternative that has been around since 2016, got a surge in recent months and currently has around 10 million users, little over 2% of the 450 million active monthly users Twitter currently enjoys.
Other platforms that have gotten some attention include Bluesky, another invite-only newcomer created by Twitter co-creator and former CEO Jack Dorsey, that currently has 1.9 million people on its waitlist. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is also developing Threads as a direct competitor to Twitter, though its launch date is not currently set.
