What to do, where to go for your SocMed fix then? The Mastodon network could be worth a look.
With Mastodon, you join a server like mastodon.nz or cloudisland.nz that is run by someone who feels like it. Some instances are for paid subscribers, others are free or ask for donations to cover server and other costs, and the operators set the accepted use policies.
The servers and individual accounts join the "Fediverse", a terrible portmanteau of "federated universe". It's possible to hang out with users on other servers - that's the federation feature. Server operators and app developers can also block filth-spewing domains like Gab and Trump's networks, which ripped off the Mastodon code.
You can shift servers, and bring your followers with you; basically, the idea is that you control your social content and data.
Scads of people have opened Mastodon accounts recently, and the network should hit six million users soon. The New Zealand instance I connect to has grown rapidly, to more than a thousand users.
It's not huge in Internet terms, but Mastodon users tend to be familiar people you interact with on Twitter. If that's what you're after rather than viral avalanches it works well.
Mastodon clients are not bad, and have features you wish Twitter had. That said, like Twitter where staffers and now Musk can read your direct messages, don't expect privacy on Mastodon.
Unfortunately, the federated nature of Mastodon is also its biggest weakness. As well-known open-source developer Matthew Garret noted, the way to find the right Mastodon instance is to … ask people on Twitter.
Twitter will have to become really unbearable before people close their accounts, especially if they have large followings. A single site with huge, global reach is a very attractive proposition.
Technically, the Fediverse itself is based on social network protocols that are ideologically very different to commercial ones, and which have been built by open-source developers since the early 2000s.
In fact, Twitter co-founder, free-speech maximalist, Bitcoin booster and Musk admirer Jack Dorsey, kicked off the Bluesky project that has been misreported as a competitor to the bird site even though it started in 2019.
Bluesky has been spun off from Twitter and wants to build a federated Authenticated Transfer or AT Protocol for social networking.
This is similar to for example Mastodon which uses the ActivityPub social networking protocol, and provides account portability, with no central authority and choice of providers.
It also promises algorithmic choice for users, and generally independence from platform providers. Like BitTorrent peer-to-peer networking for social media in a sense. I suspect politicians won’t like it as it’s not clear how moderation and censorship could be implemented across a network.
Bluesky is quite deep geek and there's a libertarian web3 tinge. The whole thing is about "user-generated authority through self-certifying protocols" which means nothing to most people wanting to post selfies and cat videos. Also, see above about federation and decentralisation not really being features anyone's interested in.
Social media wields huge power over people though. It’s why Musk spent almost $76 billion (US$44b) on Twitter. Even Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame has tried to boot up a network without “clickbait nonsense”, the WT.social. Google tried too but didn’t get anywhere, unlike Microsoft which is now sailing smoothly with LinkedIn after much trial and error.
Twitter might very well poison itself with hate and harassment and die like MySpace did (karma points if you remember that name) while Facebook's Zuckerberg has set fire to billions of dollars trying to copy Second Life with the legless metaverse.
Nevertheless, something else will come along as it always does, but please don’t let it be TikTok.
