Mastodon, Others To Benefit From Musk's Twitter Chaos

Twitter has been a bit of a mess since billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk took the helm, cutting the company’s workforce in half, upending the platform’s verification system, sparring with users over jokes, and acknowledging that “dumb things” might happen as he reshapes one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems, Barbara Ortutay reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: Lesser-known sites Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new, or renewed, alternatives.

On Thursday, amid an exodus of senior executives responsible for data privacy, cybersecurity, and complying with regulations, he warned the company’s remaining employees that Twitter might not survive if it can’t find a way to bring in at least half its revenue from subscriptions.

While it’s not clear if the drama is causing many users to leave — in fact, having a front-row seat to the chaos may prove entertaining to some — lesser-known sites Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new, or renewed, alternatives.

Named after an extinct mammal resembling an elephant, Mastodon has emerged as a frontrunner among those curious about life beyond the blue bird. It shares some similarities with Twitter, but there are some big differences — and not just that its version of tweets are officially called “toots.” Mastodon is a decentralized social network.

That means it’s not owned by a single company or billionaire. Rather, it’s made up of a network of servers, each run independently but able to connect so people on different servers can communicate. There are no ads as Mastodon is funded by donations, grants, and other means.

Mastodon’s feed is chronological, unlike Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter, which all use algorithms to get people to spend as much time on a site as possible.

Another option, Counter Social, also runs an ad-free, chronological social platform that’s funded by users. Counter Social says it blocks access to Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Syria. It boasts of offering one-click translation into over 80 languages. It has over 63 million monthly users, according to its website.

Remember Clubhouse, back when we were all under lockdown and couldn’t talk in person? It’s the buzzy audio-only app that got somewhat overshadowed by copycat Twitter Spaces, which also lets people talk to each other about topics of interest.

For longer reads, newsletters, and general information absorption, Substack and Medium are perhaps closest to the blog era of the early 2000s.

You can read both without signing up or paying, but some writers, creators, and podcasters create premium content for paying subscribers.

Tumblr, which was all but left for dead, appears to be enjoying somewhat of a resurgence. The words/photos/art/video site is known for its devoted fan base and has been home to angry posts from celebrities like Taylor Swift.

It angered many users in 2018 when it banned porn and “adult content,” which made up a big part of its highly visual and meme-friendly online presence and led to a large drop in its user base.

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