I tried Twitter alternatives so you don't have to

Trying out alternative social media platforms

Image Source: Edited by Michelle Zhang

This piece will be broken up into two parts, Part 2 will be sent on Friday 1/13 so be on the lookout! (Update: Part 2 is here!)

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, users of the social media site said that they’d leave and go to other platforms. But are these alternatives capable of replacing Twitter? In this piece, I try Post, Mastodon, Hive Social and even Donald Trump’s infamous Truth Social.

Twitter was flawed way before Musk took over. Its core business model that’s built to maximize engagement so that users stay on the platform longer enables the proliferation of misinformation and hate speech. Due to these fundamental flaws, others launched platforms with unique features that sets them apart from mainstream social media platforms. Post wants real conversations. Mastodon wants a more democratized form of governance. Hive Social wants more self-expression. Truth Social wants… free speech? Continue reading to find my experience and thoughts on each of the platforms. 

Post

I first heard about Post on Twitter, where the founder ambitiously tweeted that his goal was to bridge social media and the news. It was launched mid November last year, making it only nine weeks old. Signing up requires you to join a waitlist and I managed to get off the waitlist after a few weeks. 

Post is still in beta and not all features are available yet. Trying to see a user's posts and replies on their profile page, similar to the “Tweets & replies” section of Twitter, still gives the “Coming soon!” message. The mobile app is also not yet available, so it can only be accessed from a web browser. The feed is similar to that of Twitter and they generally have the same features, such as liking and reposting posts with your own commentary.

Post’s features

A key feature that immediately sets Post apart from Twitter is their comment section, called the “Conversation”. A disclaimer reads:

 “Discussions are moderated for civility” 

It’s interesting that they make content moderation a feature instead of a form of damage control. 

My favorite feature of Post is that you don’t immediately get notifications when someone likes or comments on your post. When I created my first post, I didn’t get any indication that people were actually seeing it and it felt like I had just posted in the void. I checked back 30 minutes later to see it had 12 likes and 3 well-thought out comments with perfect grammatical accuracy, not something often seen on Twitter. I do like the lack of notifications to bethat this is the default as it doesn’t create the urge to constantly check the app to engage with comments. Not sure if this is meant to be a deliberate feature of Post or notifications just hasn’t been added yet. 

Another key difference between Post and Twitter is the tipping feature, which is a unique way of incentivising quality content. Each user starts off with 50 points, where 1 point is equal to $0.01, and you can tip creators from a link on each of their posts. 

Mastodon

Probably the most well known alternative to Twitter is Mastodon, which doubled its user base after the Musk takeover. Two common adjectives associated with Mastodon are “open source” and “decentralized”. Open source means that the code behind Mastodon is available for anyone to see and modify. The decentralized nature of Mastodon comes from how it’s made up of servers that are independently run by an individual or organization. This makes it so that there is not just a single company in control of the platform.

I tried to join the most popular Mastodon server, mastodon.social, but a message states that this is currently not possible at this time. However, the site assures me that joining another server would still let me post on mastodon.social. How this works was brilliantly described by a TechCrunch article that compared Mastodon servers to choosing Gmail or Yahoo to create an email account. No matter which server you choose, you can see and interact with posts from users even if they’re from a different server.

The page to find a server was, well, interesting. Most require you to apply to join and your application would be reviewed manually. Since you can still interact with those outside your server, the only difference between servers is that they have their own rules on issues such as content moderation and privacy. I joined an art based server that didn’t require you to sign up and went back to mastodon.social.

Mastodon’s features

Posts are shown on your feed in chronological order and only posts shown from those you are following are shown. On the “Explore” page however, you’re shown posts from both the server you’re on and other servers that are popular on your current server. 

Instead of likes and retweets, Mastodon has “favorites” and “boosts” which serve the same purpose and function as their Twitter counterparts. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon has no ads and instead is funded by sponsorships from individuals and companies.