It’s been two years since Elon Musk bought Twitter, and has basically run it into the ground in the name of turning it into his own ego- and right-wing-politics-driven platform, “X.” Musk has somehow managed to make Twitter even worse since I looked at his one-year purchase anniversary in 2023, using it to promote Trump’s re-election while letting misinformation run rampant.
At this point, Musk has achieved most of his goal of turning Twitter into a Truth Social/Gab clone, albeit one with actual minorities, non-conservatives, etc. present to harass—er, “debate outside an echo chamber.” Of course, he’s also driving away both advertisers and users.
I left Twitter within weeks of Musk’s purchase; the return of Donald Trump to the platform was my final straw. While I’ve tried several platforms, I’ve ultimately settled on Mastodon and Bluesky as my Twitter-replacements. Part of the reason for using both platforms? The tech crowd from Twitter mostly went to Mastodon, while the media side (including comics/animation crowd) went to Bluesky.
Below I give my thoughts on the current state of these Twitter alternatives.
Mastodon
Mastodon hasn’t seen as much growth as Bluesky (more on Bluesky below), but it’s seeing some uptick post-election. It’s now at about 9 million users.
At this point, I’ve got almost twice as many followers on Mastodon as I ever had on Twitter. That said, I’m not sure how many are still active.
Among the things I like about Mastodon:
- Its underlying tech. Mastodon has features Bluesky took awhile to add, such as blocking.
- ActivityPub’s been around longer than Bluesky’s AT Protocol, and is more widely supported.
- The ability to edit posts.
- A nonprofit business model, which mitigates some of the worst aspects about social media (doing consumer-unfriendly stuff in the name of profit, being at the mercy of mercurial billionaires, etc.).
- Flipboard’s come on board for ActivityPub in a big way, and that’s helped regarding finding accounts to follow. You can now follow ESPN, NPR, People magazine, IndieWire, The Verge, The Hollywood Reporter, and other mainstream media outlets on Mastodon.
Things I don’t like about Mastodon:
- I’ve had a few users scold me on how I’m supposedly misusing hashtags to self-promote my blog. It’s been awhile since this happened, but still worth noting.
- There aren’t many mainstream pop culture related accounts on Mastodon, though as I said above, Flipboard helps.
- I’d rather call posts “posts” and not “toots,” thanks.
- Mastodon has had issues with attracting users, thanks to perceived difficulty for non-techies (in finding users, signing up, etc.). Fortunately, Mastodon’s been trying to change things to be more user-friendly, but I worry it might be too late.
Bluesky
Bluesky’s seen a big uptick in users over the past year, and especially since the election. As of this writing, it now has 16 million users, and is the most popular free apps in iOS.
My Bluesky following is currently about two-thirds that of what I had on Twitter. The number’s grown recently with the post-election migration away from Twitter.
Things I enjoy about Bluesky:
- The use of “starter packs” as a way to offer public lists of accounts worth following. This helps with the “who to follow” aspects of setting up a social media account.
- It’s easy to use for non-techie users.
- The media crowd I used to follow on Twitter has mostly moved here, so there’s plenty of posts about comics, animation, etc. (Politics as well, just as on Mastodon.)
Things I don’t enjoy about Bluesky:
- Bluesky invented its own protocol, AT Protocol, instead of using ActivityPub. While I can see why they did it (they didn’t like a few things about ActivityPub), it still boils down to a standards fight. Outside of Bluesky, there isn’t any real traction for AT Protocol, versus ActivityPub seeing more use (Threads, Flipboard, etc.).
- How long it took to add basic features like blocking, though that’s improved in recent months.
- While I enjoy the pop culture driven aspects, I’m sometimes reminded it’s not as big of a tech crowd. A few users I’ve seen treat “Linux” or “open source” like four-letter words.
- Some of Bluesky’s culture feels inane, or like a bunch of junior high schoolers making crude jokes. I don’t care about “sh*tposting,” I call posts “posts” (versus what Bluesky opts to call them—a sex-related slang term), and I roll my eyes at the “ALF” references (don’t ask). I know, I’m a fuddy-duddy… whatever.
- Bluesky still has no clear business model, which makes me wonder about its long-term future. While it’s a “public benefit corporation,” what’s there to truly prevent Bluesky from going down the same track as every other commercial online service? (See: most of Cory Doctorow’s blog posts about platform decay.) At least the AT Protocol means someone could potentially set up a Bluesky fork if the worst comes to pass.
Shared Mastodon and Bluesky flaws
For both Mastodon and Bluesky, a few flaws include:
- What feels like a lack of Black users of both platforms compared to Twitter. Though again, this is hopefully finally changing thanks to the post-election exodus from Twitter.
- There’s no ability to pre-schedule posts built into Mastodon or Bluesky, something Twitter offered. It would make some of my social media posts (alerting to new blog posts, etc.) a lot easier.
Conclusion
At this point, we have to accept that Twitter’s pretty much going the way of MySpace. Unless Musk gets bored and sells Twitter for pennies on the dollar, it’s pretty much dead for anything other than right-wing politics.
Again, I feel users should close up shop on their accounts and move to anything else: Mastodon, Bluesky, a self-hosted blog, a newsletter, whatever. If Musk wants to turn a once-useful platform into a more “mainstream” version of Truth Social, there’s no reason users should feel compelled to prop such up, or stay on a site where they’ll be targets for unchecked harassment. We had the internet before Twitter, and activists, creators, reporters, etc. did just fine—they’ll also be fine after Twitter.
