Twitter Alternatives: Mastodon, Post.news, Threads, Bluesky, and others

Spoiler: People are evaluating the various Twitter alternatives as separate entities, but if Post.news and Meta’s Threads, follow through with their promise to federate, the way to think of the platforms will be “walled gardens” v. platforms that are connected to the fediverse.

If you know what these words mean and how they relate to social media, you’re in the advanced group and you can skip to the new section on Meta’s Threads:

• decentralization
• the fediverse
• the network effect
• walled gardens
• Activity Pub
• protocol
• algorithms
• content moderation

Note: I’ve observed that some social media users and Twitter Migrants tend to be territorial: defending their choices while deriding others. Keep in mind that different users have different needs.

I will begin with a way to think about social media and democracy. I will then compare and contrast the social media platforms.

Part I, Algorithms, Internet Triggers, Authoritarianism, and More

A definition:

An algorithm is a technical means of sorting posts based on relevancy instead of publish time, in order to prioritize which content a user sees first according to the likelihood that they will actually engage with such content.

Algorithms help good jokes, cute pet videos, and clever quips go viral, which provides a lot of fun. They can also do a lot of harm. The Pew Research Center says this:

Nearly all the content people see on social media is chosen not by human editors but rather by computer programs using massive quantities of data about each user to deliver content that he or she might find relevant or engaging. This has led to widespread concerns that these sites are promoting content that is attention-grabbing but ultimately harmful to users – such as misinformation, sensationalism, or “hate clicks.”

The Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen explained that Facebook algorithms incentivize “angry, polarizing, divisive content.” In her testimony before Congress she said:

Facebook repeatedly encountered conflicts between its own profits and our safety. Facebook consistently resolved those conflicts in favor of its own profits. The result has been a system that amplifies division, extremism, and polarization — and undermines societies around the world. In some cases, this dangerous online talk has led to actual violence that harms and even kills people. In other cases, their profit-optimizing machine is generating self-harm and self-hate — especially for vulnerable groups, like teenage girls. These problems have been confirmed repeatedly by Facebook’s own internal research.

In a 60 Minutes interview, Haugen explained that content that gets engaged with – such as reactions, comments, and shares – gets wider distribution. Facebook’s own research found that “angry content” is more likely to receive engagement. She said that content producers and political parties are aware of this.

From Stephen Wolfram:

Billions of people are being fed content that is basically selected for them by AIs, and there are mounting concerns about this, as reported almost every day in the media.

Are the AIs cleverly hacking us humans to get us to behave in a certain way? What kind of biases do the AIs have, relative to what the world is like, or what we think the world should be like? What are the AIs optimizing for, anyway? And when are there actually “humans behind the curtain”, controlling in detail what the AIs are doing?

The problem, of course, is that:

Most successful businesses on the internet—including Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter—make their revenue not from their users, but instead from advertisers who are going through them to reach their users.

Metrics:

Content providers on platforms like Twitter can see, in real-time, what content drives engagement. They can see which of their posts get more “likes” than others, and which result in an increase in followers. Most people want to be popular. Twitter even offers users an “analytics” page where they can see which of their Tweets earned the most engagement. People who want to be popular on social media can learn to manipulate the algorithms to boost themselves.

Getting the Fighters Fighting (and keeping them fighting)

The Platformer learned that Twitter, under Musk, maintains a list of around 35 VIP users whose accounts it monitors and offers increased visibility alongside Elon Musk. The list includes:

• • • Daily Wire founder and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro
    • Pseudonymous conservative commentator @catturd2
    • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY

@Catturds and Ben Shapiro enrage the left. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enrages the right. Among other things, this list will get fighters fighting and keep them fighting, which of course, stimulates engagement and helps bring in advertising revenue.

Both sides think they win a dunking contest: The dunker (usually a liberal) shows how clever he or she is, and the dunkee (usually a Conservative) gets to be the star of a show entitled “Watch Me Trigger the Libs.”

Internet Triggers

Social media + algorithms amplify what Timothy Snyder, in this video, calls “Internet Triggers,” which he defines as something a person sees on the Internet, often because an algorithm directed the content to the person. The person then feels triggered and repeats it to someone else, who also feels triggered and in turn repeats the phrase. Soon you have an Internet Trigger gone viral.

PART II: Twitter Alternatives

Mastodon

I will begin with Mastodon because it allows me to introduce these concepts:

• • Decentralization
  • Fediverse
  • Activity Pub
  • Protocols

Mastodon was created in the hopes of solving the problems caused by:

• Owners using and selling personal information
• Targeted advertisements
• Algorithms that incentivize rage-generating and polarizing content

Mastodon launched in 2016 when German software developer Eugen Rochko (working for a nonprofit) didn’t like Twitter so he wrote the Mastodon code and made it public. Anyone can use it. Nobody “owns” it.

Mastodon does not collect user data, so there are no targeted advertisements and no concerns about data breaches. And the default does not contain an algorithm telling people what they should see or suggesting content.

Metrics are de-emphasized: “Liking” a post does nothing to help boost it. It’s also hard to tell when looking at a post, how many “likes” it has, and because Mastodon is decentralized, the number is misleadingly small. The idea is that content should matter, not metrics.

There is limited search ability because this was too often used on Twitter to find people to harass (although there is talk of this changing).

Mastodon is decentralized: Anyone can download the Mastodon software, set up a server, and enter the conversation. Individuals, organizations, and institutions can operate their own servers.

For about $10 per month, you can use a dedicated Mastodon hosting provider and have your own server. You can see the costs here. For about $40 per month, you can host 500 Mastodon users. Or you can do it the hard way and have complete control by following these instructions. which takes some technical expertise.  Warning: It’s harder than it looks and needs to be done by someone with technical experience.

The “fediverse” is thousands of Mastodon servers and other sites that communicate with each other through a protocol called Activity Pub.

(Being a non-techie I had to stop here to try to understand what a protocol is. A techie friend helped me, and here is what I gather: Protocol is bunch of code (looks like gibberish to non-techies) it’s set of rules that allow people and/ or code to work together with understanding. Diplomatic protocols enable officials from different countries to know what to do around each other. Table protocols prescribe which fork to use. Software protocols allow software code in one place to communicate with code somewhere else. Analogy: In the early days of email, you could only send email messages to people on your own network. Now email uses a protocol that lets Gmail users send emails to, say, AOL.com users.

If the server is on this list, anyone can join. Because there are no advertisements, servers open to the public are usually funded through donations.

Content Moderation is always a headache. As Mike Masnick said in 2019 when describing moderation on major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter;

“. . . almost no one is happy. Some feel that these platforms have become cesspools of trolling, bigotry, and hatred. Meanwhile, others feel that these platforms have become too aggressive in policing language and are systematically silencing or censoring certain viewpoints.”

Mastodon leaves content moderation up to each individual server. If you don’t like how your server is moderated, you can move to another and transfer all of your followers with you. There are Mastodon servers where Nazis and spewers of ugly stuff are welcome. Gab, for example, is home to avowed Nazis. Every server on this list, has Gab blocked.

In addition, users on Mastodon, as elsewhere, have tools to help with moderation. They can block entire servers or individuals. They can also mute individuals. They can report offensive posts to the administrator of their server.

Growing numbers of platforms have been joining the fediverse:

Medium recently announced that it is now operating a Mastodon server for the writers who publish on Medium. This offers Medium writers a way for their work to have wider exposure.

MIT set up a Mastodon server for the MIT community. A Stanford University professor recently asked Standford to set one up for the Stanford community.

The latest: Mozilla is now operating a Mastodon server.

A WordPress will soon support ActivityPub ,allowing WordPress websites to join the fediverse (it is still in beta). WordPress powers a whopping 43% of the Internet. If each wordpress site can connect to the fediverse, the implications are huge.

One developer is talking about an app that will allow cell phones to operate like a Mastodon server. In other words, if you have a cell phone, you can create your own server/account and connect.

Those who believe Mastodon is the future argue that the fediverse has the same potential for growth as the Internet itself. The analogy (flawed but useful) is to email: Originally, email servers could only communicate with each other. If you had an AOL account, you could only communicate with others who had AOL accounts. Then the barriers came down so that anyone with an email account could email people who used other providers.

No Algorithms Can Feel Weird/ Some people may miss them. I say good riddance. You have to work a little harder to find content that interests you, but it seems to me it’s worth the effort.

People complain that Mastodon isn’t intuitive and takes some getting used to. Learning a new platform takes always time. I understand that people are busy and may not be able to. At the same time, I suspect that figuring out how to select a Mastodon server no harder than deciding which candidate to vote for in a local primary.

II. Post News

A few months ago, Noel Baron, co-founder and CTO of Post News said this:

Before I get to what Post News may look like after supporting Activity Pub, a bit about Post News:

Post News was founded by former Waze CEO Noam Bardin and is funded by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and investor Scott Galloway.

Post News says it takes moderation seriously and they don’t put up with trolls and they banish Nazis and other extremists. The site tilts to the left.

Here are my reservations:

1. Post is limited to news and current events and platforms like Twitter are much broader so network effect is unlikely.
2. It is a blogging rather than a microblogging platform and conversation doesn’t work as easily.
3. Post plans to use reputational algorithms.

Reputational Algorithms.

Noam Bardin, founder and CEO of Post News explained how back-end reputational algorithms will control behavior on the platform:

“From a vision perspective, what we want is a situation where, if you are a verified user…and there’s no verification not being under your real name…you’re going to get into our recommendation engine, and we’re going to try to distribute your content. If your score, your reputation score goes down because people are complaining about it, we’re going to take you out of the reputation {sic} and suddenly your content will only go to your explicit followers, and, if you continue to misbehave, then your followers will not be able to re-share that content on the network, until the point where we throw you off. (For the source for this, see this post.)”

News reporting obviously should not be a popularity contest. Not everything true is popular, and sometimes the truth can make people angry.

And now, the question of the hour . . . (cue suspense music, da dum, da dum, da dum. . . )

What Will Post News Look Like After Supporting Activity Pub?

The question is: Will Post News essentially join the Fediverse? Or will it remain a “walled garden”?

“Walled Garden”: The term for a platform cut off from the rest of the Internet.

The answer is: Nobody really knows.

• • • Will this mean that accounts on Post will be able to follow accounts on Mastodon?
    • Will Twitter Migrators not need both a Mastodon account and a Post News account?

Post News could become the place Mastodon users go for their news, while Mastodon may be the place Post News users go to hang out and talk.

It’s also possible that nothing will come of this announcement, and Post News will remain a walled garden with a narrower focus than Twitter.

III. Threads

Meta’s Threads took the social media world by storm on Wednesday, just a few days after one of Twitter’s major technical meltdowns.

Unlike other Twitter alternatives, many of which were basically siphoning users from Twitter, Threads (part of Zuckerberg’s Meta) allowed Instagram users to download an app, press a few buttons, and join Threads, bringing a ready-made community of their friends and contacts.

Prior to Wednesday, the record for the most downloads of a single app was OpenAI, ChatGPT which acquired 1 million users just 5 days after launching.

Threads had 2 million signups in two hours. Two days later, Threads was up to 70 million. 

The negatives are obvious: A lot of people don’t trust Mark Zuckerberg, and they don’t like all the ads on Facebook, and they don’t want Zuck to have access to their personal information.

Now here’s the important part: Threads will Federate. 

This means that from any server in the fediverse, you can follow any Threads account. A person with a Thread account can follow any account on the fediverse.

 Beware: From Mastodon, you can only connect with Threads if your server allow it. There are some servers that want to cut themselves off from Threads.

Threads’ verification is limited to widely known celebrities and brand names. Threads is also actively courting celebrities. Within a day, the following celebrities were on Threads:

• Oprah Winfrey
• Steph Curry
• Jake Paul
• Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe Kardashian
• Kylie Jenner
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Gavin Newsom
• Tom Brady
• Dalia Lama
• Jennifer Lopez
• Shakira
• Gordon Ramsay
• Michael Strahan
• Ellen DeGeneres

Unlike on Twitter, where verification means nothing, fans on Threads will know that they are following and talking to the real Jennifer Lopez.

Wait, you ask. What about news organizations?

Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram had the following conversation with Alex Heath.

Heath:

How do we reconcile this with Mark Zuckerberg’s obvious desire to kill Twitter?

The answer is federation, which will work like this: If you are on Threads and you want to follow breaking news, you follow any of the journalists or outlets on Mastodon or Post (after it federates.)

Threads becomes a one-stop-shop and Threads doesn’t have to do the really hard part of moderating: verifying news sources, worrying about lies and polarization.

Threads can be a fun place to wave to Oprah Winfrey. The difficult political conversations can happen elsewhere.

This is how Threads can (1) kill Twitter and (2) avoid the hard moderation decisions.

People on Mastodon were worried about Meta federating. They had questions like,

• We will have to see all those horrible ads?
• What about all the Nazis that roam Facebook? Will they overrun us?
• Will Zuckerberg be able to farm our personal information?

The answers are no, no, and no. Eugen Rochko, Mastodon CEO and developer, wrote this in response to the worried questions.

People who find Mastodon too difficult can join Threads. It will be easy peasy (instead of requiring some decision-making.)

Zuck will make it easy for you. In exchange, you have to look at his ads. Nothing is free, after all. If you want to avoid ads, you can create an account on any other federated instance or server, or platform and wave to Oprah Winfrey from there.

If you have a Mastodon account, your friends on Threads can follow you and chat with you there.

“But why isn’t it federated yet?”

Quite obviously, Threads wasn’t ready yet for release, but Zuck wanted to seize the moment when Twitter was in meltdown. Federation (which apparently will happen) is supposed to be “soon.”

IV. Bluesky

In 2019, Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter was funding something called Bluesky, which sounded a lot like Mastodon:

Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open-source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard.

He then explained why:

First, we’re facing entirely new challenges centralized solutions are struggling to meet. For instance, centralized enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long term without placing far too much burden on people.

In other words, moderation over a global platform is just too difficult. Also:

the value of social media is shifting away from content hosting and removal, and towards recommendation algorithms directing one’s attention. Unfortunately, these algorithms are typically proprietary, and one can’t choose or build alternatives. Yet.

He also recognized the problem of rage-inducing content:

Existing social media incentives frequently lead to attention being focused on content and conversation that sparks controversy and outrage, rather than conversation which informs and promotes health.

Dorsey added another reason for Twitter to decentralize:

Finally, new technologies have emerged to make a decentralized approach more viable.

Dorsey next cited Mike Masnick’s “Protocols, not Platforms” thus implying that the solution was for Twitter to decentralize to let individual communities make their own rules and decide for themselves how content would be optimized.

The plan for Twitter seemed to have been to decentralize where each separate entity would create its own rules for moderation, thereby freeing Twitter itself from that headache. Twitter would be both decentralized and a walled garden. The goal would be to shift the burden of moderation outward.

In 2019, Dorsey also warned that it would take many years for this to develop. When Musk purchased Twitter, Bluesky continued on as a would-be Twitter competitor. (The CEO is Jay Graber. Dorsey, one of two co-founders, is on the board.)

Bluesky is now being rolled out and is in the beta phase. We now know from reporting that:

Bluesky plans to be federated, meaning that endless individually operated communities can exist within the open-source network. Bluesky is calling its software AT Protocol. Evidently, once things launch, any developers outside of Bluesky who build their own social app using the AT Protocol, can interact with users on Bluesky, and Bluesky users can jump over to the new app and port over their existing followers, handle, and data.

Notice: Bluesky will not use Activity Pub, the protocol used by the fediverse. Instead, Bluesky is building its own called AT Protocol. Here is the license.

In 2019, when announcing the plan as part of Twitter, Dorsey did use the phrase “open source” to describe AT Protocol.

Does that mean that Bluesky will interact with Mastodon, Threads, Post.news and others, which of course, would reduce the competition between sites and the tendency of users to become territorial?

Cue the song: 🎶Oh the cowman and the farmer should be friends🎶

While some developers are already working on “bridges”  between Bluesky and other platforms, it is unclear how much interconnectivity there will be.

At this point, I think we can assume that the plan is for Bluesky to look like Dorsey’s plan for Twitter in 2019: a walled decentralized platform in which communities do their own content moderation (thereby relieving Bluesky of that burden) and decide how they want their content optimized.

In such a Bluesky, therefore, Trump would not be “banned” — he would be free to find a home in an entity that will have him, and bring his followers and his following list with him. He could similarly move around Mastodon. This comment on the differences is from software developer Dan Morris:

My guess is that Bluesky will have a layer that will aggregate totals (likes, views, etc…) from all entities, so it wouldn’t be like Mastodon, where an entire server like Gab would just not exist anymore. You’d still see it. People would still want access to it if they can see it. And the ugliness would still be there.

If Bluesky and Mastodon become competitors, you can expect nastiness between users of each platform because the users of each platform will hope that their choice will achieve network effect and become the Next Big Thing.

(So the cowman and the farmer won’t be friends.)

Pro Tip: You will not help your chosen platform achieve a network effect by trying to shame people for their choices or begging your favorite celebrities to join the platform of your choice. The network effect, if it happens, will happen organically.

Bluesky Today: 

It is by invitation only, so it feels like an insider club.

It is also easy to join Bluesky because all users enter the same entity, bsky.social (which sounds a lot like mstdn.social, right?) Blue Sky also looks and acts like Twitter, so Twitter Refugees have no trouble getting started.

Suggestion: Perhaps this isn’t actually “beta testing,” it’s letting in the big fish in the hopes that if the big fish get addicted, then everyone else will follow thereby achieving a network effect and making Jack Dorsey and his co-board members even richer.

Bluesky Tomorrow:

Bluesky plans something called “composable moderation.” This is from Wired:

A key goal of Bluesky Social is that it be decentralized—people linked across independently owned servers that use the AT Protocol protocol, with the Bluesky UI/UX overlaying it all. Crucially, users and servers will be able to label posts or specific users—e.g., with a tag like “racist”—and anyone can subscribe to that list of labels, blocking posts on that basis. Bluesky calls this “composable moderation.”

Color me skeptical, but it’s hard for me to see this working. What if someone labels something ‘racist’ but it isn’t?

Lots of questions about Bluesky remain:

• How will these individual entities come about? Will people create their own when they become dissatisfied with bsky.social? Will foreign governments maintain their own to bring moderation in line with local laws and customs? Will Bluesky help create them?
• If the federated entities are privately owned, how will they raise the funds necessary to maintain a presence on the Internet?
• Will the moderators still be employed by Bluesky? If not, how will they be paid?
• How will ad revenue be divided?

IV. Counter Social (A walled garden)

Counter Social, like Truth Social, uses the Mastodon software but has elected not to be part of the fediverse. In other words, Counter Social is a Mastodon server (with tweaks) disconnected so that you can only communicate with others who have joined Counter Social.

In other words, it has become a walled garden.

Counter Social promises “unique protections: No trolls. No Abuse. No Ads. No Fake News. No Foreign Influence Ops.”

Basically, Counter Social offers a “safe” place.

The best way to give my opinion of Counter Social is to recount my personal experience:

In early November after Musk purchased Twitter while we were all exploring options, a number of people urged me to try Counter Social, so I opened a Counter Social account. Once weekly, I posted a link to my blog and occasionally I reposted something I’d done elsewhere. I had no strong feelings about Counter Social.

Then one day I had an unfortunate encounter with Jester, the anonymous owner of Counter Social. What happened was this: One of my followers, asked, “What about Counter Social?” Emma, who has since left Twitter altogether, said, “I don’t trust the owner of Counter Social.”

She did not tag Counter Social or Jester, but he found her tweet. Either he was searching for mentions of Counter Social or someone alerted him.

Emma, by the way, is here in the comment section. You can find her with the “search” function.

He directed two Tweets toward Emma. In the first Tweet, he demanded evidence for her assertion. In the second, he went on the attack. He used the phrase, “if you are so stupid.” Three or four of Jester’s followers piled on and said unkind things to Emma.

This was all on my feed, so I stepped in and said, “Is this how you all behave on Counter Social?” and I asked them to stop the pile on. Then, Jester’s supporters turned on me. One Jester supporter told me that I deserved what I got because I “attacked” Jester. Another said, “four people is not a pile on,” and another said, “That was the gentlest pile-on I’ve ever seen.” To counter that, I showed a screenshot that one of them used the “f” word in attacking Emma. Two of them then mocked for being sensitive about the “f” word. One said, “So you never go to r-rated movies?”

As this was going on, I tried to log on to Counter Social to delete my account. I intended to scrub it of my personal information but I found I was locked out. I asked people to check, and they told me my account had been deleted.

Evidently Jester deleted my account and locked me out. He then deleted his tweets to Emma. On his feed, tweeted the lyrics to “Shake it off.” (His response to the incident.) He also blocked me.

I emailed Counter Social’s help account and asked for my account to be reinstated long enough for me to scrub it so that my picture and other information were no longer there. The person lied and told me that I had deleted it myself. (I hadn’t.) The person responding to me said he wasn’t Jester, but the snide tone was the same.

I had a similar experience about 10 years ago. I created an account on a forum for writers.  It was loads of fun. I met other writers. We exchanged ideas and talked about writing, literary agents, publishing (traditional v. self-publishing), and everything else of interest to writers. Then the platform was purchased by someone who was combative and argued with people who disagreed with her.

Initially, she agreed with my views and all was good. But then I formed an opinion about literary agents that she thought was wrongheaded. I stated my opinions anyway. She didn’t want me to spread my views on her site. It was her platform so she had the power to control the content. I deleted my account.

Even people on the same side of the political spectrum—and even members of the same political party—can have furious disagreements. Just look back at some of the more contentious primaries. Just because you and the owner both dislike right-wing extremists doesn’t mean the day won’t come when one thinks the other is spreading misinformation.

In other words, banning Nazis does not assure harmony.

V. Spoutible (Another walled garden)

The two stories I included in the last section illustrate why I am unwilling to invest too much time in a centrally-owned site where the owners can decide they don’t approve of my content or they just don’t like me. It’s happened twice now. It could happen again.

I started drafting a section on Spoutible with examples of things I have observed which have raised red flags for me, but it comes down to this: I am reluctant to invest my time in another centrally-owned platform, even if that person is someone I like and think I can get along with. 

Adding: Spoutible, like every other platform except Mastodon uses algorithms to generate engagement.

VI. Other Walled Gardens

Walled gardens can serve a purpose for a particular kind of social media user. It is a good place to chat with friends or talk to like-minded people. You must be willing to accept the decisions of the person in charge and prepared to leave at any time if you and the person in charge find that you do not get along.

I can see this working well where people on the platform share a common goal or interest.

VII. Substack 

Substack is a blogging platform, as opposed to a microblogging platform. It’s a place for long-form writing. Basically it does what a WordPress site does with two exceptions:

• WordPress sites cost money to build and maintain. With Substack, all you have to do is open an account and start blogging.
• Substack allows people to monetize.

Substack has recently opened a new feature called Notes, which acts like a social media platform, allowing users to talk about the substacks they’ve read and to share links. Notes is a way for readers to amplify content they deem worthy. Whereas Medium did this by means of a Mastodon server, Substack choose instead to remain a walled garden.

A number of my favorite Twitter experts have chosen to migrate to Substack, which means I have a lot of Substack subscriptions.

The disadvantage is obvious: Twitter users are accustomed to scrolling through their feeds and getting quick takes from dozens of experts. Paying $5 a month for each one can quickly become prohibitive.

Conclusion: Future Possibilities

It’s possible that for the foreseeable future, no single microblogging platform will achieve a network effect. Many Twitter refugees will then maintain accounts in various places and watch to see what develops.

However, given the kinds of numbers that Threads is showing, and the sheer brilliance of making it a fun place to interact with celebrities while shuffling the hard political content and moderation elsewhere, the choice is more likely to be binary:

• Join one of the platforms connected to the fediverse and connect widely, or
• Select a walled garden, a safe place to huddle with your friends and people you feel comfortable with.