(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Ack, Ack...Musk is destroying Twitter! Where to Go Instead of Twitter?

As the implosion of Musk's Twitter continues, people are desperately hunting new versions of it. Kind of reminds me of the great LJ exodus to Dreamwidth, and then the Tumblr exodus to well Pillow(?), and then Ao3 exodus...to SquidgeWorld or in my case, to Wordpress and Squidgeworld. We're all looking for back-up plans.

Twitter, however, has been a bit more difficult. None of them are workable, until...now.

Apparently, Zuckerberg finally took advantage of his tech billionaire rival, Musk's, stupidity in regards to social media - and built his own version of Twitter, entitled Instagram Threads. And unlike all the other versions, it's a lot easier to get on, follow folks, and use.

If you already have an instagram account? (And let's face it - most everyone on Twitter does). This is remarkably easy to pop into. You just sign in using that account, and it will carry all the folks you are following from instagram onto threads. And then some.

So what are the alternatives...and are they worth the effort?

* bluesky aka [Bad username or site: bsky @ com]. which is still in the beta stages, with a waiting list, and by invite only. It's by Jack Dorsey. And it's hard to find people on it. Neil Gaiman and a bunch of folks from book twitter leapt onto it. Considering they mainly used to Twitter to promote themselves - I foresee a shift to instagram threads. Because it's not happening on bluesky until everyone is on it. If most people can't get on it - you are mainly talking to yourself. (Kind of like I've been doing here the last few posts and on Twitter for the most part.)

* Mastodone - is difficult to use, and no one can find anybody. I went on it, and gave up. There appears to be only 20 people on it.

* Spoutible - is worse than Mastodone, and I didn't think that was possible. It took forever for me to get on it, and I couldn't find anyone but weird marketing folks, and jumped off.


They were discussing Instagram Threads on NY1 this morning - and loving it. NY1 jumped on it, along with all of the NY State agencies, government agencies, and media outlets. Then the celebrities followed. I don't think the politicians have yet, so the media is enjoying it at the moment. The media has decided they like Threads better than the other alternatives. And where the media goes - everyone else goes - if they want to market themselves and their wares. It's really the news and entertainment media that's going to pick the outlet. And they'll pick the one that's easiest to maneuver, and follow people, and find newsworthy items.

***

Everyone at work is still traumatized by what happened Wed. It scared them.
And they are all happy to be in the union. (I'm glad I wasn't there - I probably would have said or done something I shouldn't. But I got all the stories from my co-workers, and several were contradictory. They all had different perspectives. But all agreed it was uncalled for, nasty, and bad, and that BYT went too far.)

This place has taught me to follow unions. Didn't think that was possible, but here we are.

***

I bought more books via Smart Bitches for about $1.99. I swear I'm nickle and diming myself to death on books. My weaknesses are books, television streaming services, and music.

I was told by Amazon that I'd already purchased one of the books way back in 2021. I keep forgetting which books I've bought.

***

Comments

[brittdreams]

I think I'm in the small group of people who was Twitter but not IG or any of the other Twitter alternatives.

[shadowkat]

I'm still on Twitter, but I jumped on the others - to keep in contact with the folks I'm in contact with on Twitter - who are jumping there. It's confusing.

But there's a lot of folks like yourself who haven't jumped, mainly because it's hard to replicate the same interactions they currently have on well, Twitter. IG Threads does provide more protections against hate speech. I think the others do as well. Although I managed to avoid the hate speech posts on Twitter - because I auto block anyone who is bigoted in any way. And Twitter like most marketing platforms sends you what you like, and doesn't send anything you tend to hide, block, or mute.

[brittdreams]

Yea, everyone keeps telling me that they haven't been able to replicate the same interactions, which is one of the reasons I haven't moved to any of the others. I'm also pretty able to avoid bigots and hate speech on Twitter but I also block a lot of people.

[shadowkat]

Exactly. Twitter is no different than any other platform - just block and ignore the people and things that make us crazy or offend. I block and mute a lot of people. In 2016 - I blocked the Doofus, and anyone promoting or discussing the Doofus. I still do.

I think the problem people are having on Twitter (besides being disgusted with Musk) is that he keeps limiting how many posts they can make every once and a while. But I don't post that much?

And it is almost impossible to replicate the interactions elsewhere. It's why I'm still on it along with a lot of other people.

[brittdreams]

The real loss, imo, is that emergency services and government people haven't yet figured out where they're going to post their announcements if not Twitter. During our hurricanes in the fall, I was getting updates on what was open and what wasn't via Twitter. If I have to check like 4 platforms to figure that out, it's going to be a mess.

But yea, limiting tweets is a problem. I get why Reddit, Twitter, etc. are upset that the LLM/AI people are profiting off of their datasets but also, the cat's already out of the bag on that so IDK how much limiting things going forward really helps at this point, you know?

[shadowkat]

I don't either. I honestly find high-techs obsession with bitcoin/cryptocurrency and AI annoying.

The emergency services is a huge loss - that can't be replicated on Threads. Zuck couldn't figure out how to do it on either Instagram or FB. Threads is only doing better than the other startup alternatives - because it's linked to Instagram. Blue Sky could potentially work in that way - but not at the moment, its exclusive. As is Mastodon - you have to get accepted to it. None of the above are open enough.

Even Twitter has become less open, and you now have to "join" or "log in" to Twitter to see anything on it, when before you didn't.

[brittdreams]

Yea, the lack of openness on these platforms is a real issue. At some point, we need to make it easy for info about major events, especially weather-related ones, to reach people quickly and easily.