Want to leave Twitter? Here are 3 cool options to try
(Pocket-lint) – There’s a lot going on with Twitter right now. Elon Musk has taken it over, fired thousands of employees, and is rolling out (and rolling back) changes on an almost daily basis at this point. It’s pure chaos, honestly. If you’re uncomfortable with what’s happening on Twitter for whatever reason, you can simply choose to use another platform instead.
Best Twitter Alternatives
Here are three unique alternatives to Twitter. We don’t just list the most popular social networks here. We actually find different sites that have a very Twitter-like experience or vibe.
Mastodon
Mastodon is a free social media site that works much like Twitter. You can post “toots” (instead of tweets), follow other users and brands, and favorite (like) and boost (retweet) posts. It is a decentralized open source social networking platform. It was created by Eugen Rochko, CEO and lone employee of the non-profit organization Mastodon gGmbH.
Being decentralized, it allows users to create, host and moderate their own communities, or “instances”, which can communicate with each other through a system called Fediverse.
A few popular cases include PeerTube for videos, Funkwhale for music, PixelFed for photos, and NextCloud for files. Perhaps the most famous Mastodon instance is Truth Social, also known as “the social network” of former US President Donald Trump. He started Truth Social shortly after Twitter banned him. There is no common Mastodon area for everyone – like with Twitter – so you have to register on a specific Mastodon instance, which can be based on a geographical location, topic or something. You can join as many as you like and leave or switch instances at any time.
And you can follow people across instances, so choosing one doesn’t prevent you from communicating with them in other instances.
Antisocial
CounterSocial launched in November 2017, with its infrastructure based on the open source code of Mastodon (another platform we recommended). CounterSocial is unique because it has zero tolerance for trolls, spambots, misinformation campaigns, harassment and foreign political influence. The pseudonymous hacktivist known as “The Jester” created CounterSocial because they claimed to be tired of disinformation – so they went ahead and developed a controlled or gated social network where all of this could be moderated.
As of August 2022, the site has approximately 100,000 users and, according to its founder, continues to see steady growth.
So, what does it do like Twitter? If you’ve ever used Tweetdeck, CounterSocial’s column-based interface will be instantly recognizable. You can delete, reorder, or create columns, and columns can be based on hashtags, user lists, and topics. If you are a free user, you can follow, like, forward and comment on posts and replies. You must pay for a pro account ($5 per month) to access more premium features, such as changing your status and setting posts to “explode”.
Co-host
Cohost is currently in beta. It is an ad-free social media platform that was founded by Colin Bayer and Jae Kaplan. It was first rolled out to selected users in February 2022.
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On Cohosts, posts fall into a timeline that runs vertically, just like Twitter. Instead of the timeline being algorithmically driven, posts are always listed in the order they were posted. It feels like a classic blog site. Posts have no character limit and there is an option to create multiple pages for different topics or projects. You can create a shared site that several people can use, for example for podcasts. The co-host offers a subscription to unlock premium features – such as larger uploads – and promises to “never sell your data”.
You don’t need an invitation to join Cohost. But if you don’t have an invite, you can just look around and may have to wait up to “a day or two” before posting.
Want more Twitter options?
Here are some other options – but these are more popular and chances are you’ve already tried them:
LinkedIn: More for business people looking to network, but it has a news feed and the ability for users to follow each other and share posts, photos, videos, polls, etc.
Disagreement: Prominent social media site with over 150 million active monthly users. But there is no feed. There are chat rooms where you can communicate via voice or video calls.
Clubhouse: More for people who like Twitter Spaces. It allows you to host live audio chat rooms. The clubhouse became popular at the peak of the pandemic.
Written by Maggie Tillman.
