麻豆传媒

EVEN if you have never glanced at Twitter, you have probably seen the news about its untimely fall from favour. Billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform, pledging to make it a free speech paradise in his copious spare time between launching rockets with SpaceX and making cars with Tesla. After and several , he is left with what insiders estimate to be 2000 to 3000 people running a system that previously required 7500 staffers and . So it is looking a little the worse for wear. Features , the place is swarming with and propaganda, and droves of are leaving.

So where are former tweeters going? I decided to find out. I am one of the many longtime Twitter users who locked their accounts and left last month, and I went on a journey across the electronic ether to find a new home.

Mastodon looks a lot like Twitter and you can do Twittery things like follow other people and post short (500 characters or less) 鈥渢oots鈥� on your timeline. You can 鈥渂oost鈥� other people鈥檚 toots and search for interesting topics. But unlike Twitter or Facebook, which are centrally controlled by a single company, Mastodon is made up of hundreds of loosely linked servers called instances that are run by volunteers. When you join Mastodon, you are actually joining one of these instances, which have names like Infosec.exchange (for computer security) and Astrodon.social (for astronomy).

Each instance has its own government, if you will, and its own rules. That is why Mastodon鈥檚 world is called the 鈥淔ediverse鈥� 鈥� it is like a group of federated tribes, and it is popular with scientists, journalists and academics.

How it improves on Twitter: no more viral garbage. It is hard for a post to get millions of random views within hours because the Fediverse model puts a bottleneck on information flow between instances. I find this appealing, because viral tweets often led to loss of context and nasty pile-ons. When you boost a toot on Mastodon, you can鈥檛 add commentary to it either. This cuts down on 鈥渉ate tweets鈥�, in which people retweet someone to get them pilloried by an online mob.

Another option is Hive Social. Created just three years ago by , it has been popular with Generation Z iPhone users for a while (the Android app is still pretty shaky). But as Twitter imploded, its user base to a million practically overnight. Hive looks and feels like a nice combination of Twitter and Instagram: you follow friends in a chronological stream, choosing to view posts as pictures or text. Press the beehive-shaped icon and you see posts from pals. Press the search icon and the app suggests posts based on interests you have chosen. (There is no algorithm that guesses what you like 鈥� it is all based on topics you picked.)

A lot of creatives have flocked to Hive, so there is fun stuff to see. But with perhaps only three employees and a tiny amount of funding, the functionality and moderation are still nascent.

How it improves on Twitter: you aren鈥檛 the product. Pop has promised that Hive will never have advertising and won鈥檛 sell user data to make money. Her business model is based on in-app purchases. For a few bucks, you can get a cool song on your profile. As the app grows, users will be able to buy more things 鈥� thus making you a consumer of products, instead of being the product.

Then there is TikTok, a hyperactive stream of video almost entirely controlled by algorithm that is beloved of Gen Z and the young at heart. It is a place where you can watch tech how-tos, gawk at adorable kitties or see a new dance. You can post your own videos or search hashtags for topics you like. The app is clearly designed to be addictive and to foreground virality above all else. That means TikTok exacerbates many of Twitter鈥檚 problems with virality and bullying.

How it improves on Twitter: it is just fun. It is much more visually entertaining, plus it is especially appealing to those under 25.

Finally comes Tumblr, which was all the rage 10 years ago. Since the Twitter meltdown, . Join up and create a microblog, where you can post long essays, pictures or links. You can follow other people鈥檚 blogs and have conversations in 鈥渘otes鈥� or 鈥渞eblogs鈥�. Tumblr is popular with people in fandoms, from Doctor Who to romance novels.

How it improves on Twitter: you can write lengthy posts and have in-depth discussions that feel intimate. It is more like a book club than a crowded theatre.

For now, I am trying out all of these, though there are other options, from Instagram and Discord to Twitch and Slack. I think our future social media experiences will be fragmented across many platforms, and the best thing to do is try several and see which ones feel like home.

Annalee Newitz is a science journalist and author. Their latest novel is The Future of Another Timeline and they are the co-host of the Hugo-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. You can follow them @annaleen and their website is