What social media site could replace Twitter?

The vast majority of commenters here fundamentally misunderstand what Twitter is, or rather what it has become.

It's not a "social network" anymore. I mean, it is in the technical sense - you and I can both sign up for an account. But what it is today is an elite coordination mechanism, and Twitter became this because it was the first of it's kind and some sort of momentum or technological inertia put us where we're at. Journalists, politicians, business people, elites more generally etc. all use this thing to coordinate what they think about basically everything.

So you're really asking "how do I create another semi-public elite coordination system that could step in if Twitter falls apart".

I have a problem with this fundamental thinking of what "site" should replace it.

This is exactly why I'm an ActivityPub geek, because it's not one site, it's sites. It's many softwares and many sites. Now I'm not claiming it will replace twitter, or that it's easy to use for most people. I can say for a fact that it is not, I see twitter users come over confused all the time.

But regardless I think the concept of federation being available to any software like Wordpress or Nextcloud is truly something we should treasure. It might not replace twitter, but it might actually turn the entire internet into one big social media federation.

My mind keeps putting ActivityPub into the context of the late 90s and 2000s when I was registered on countless message boards. Imagine if all those message boards could inter-communicate using a common protocol. That's where ActivityPub could lead us.

The usability aspect can be worked on, it can be worked around. The gain in internet freedom is worth the effort.

Right now it's clearly aimed at slightly more adept users. But imagine if Joe Sixpack could login to the modern equivalent of AOL, post a message, and that message is federated across hundreds of softwares and hundreds and thousands of sites and eventually Joe gets a reply from someone halfway around the world using a completely different software. That is what I find magical.

how about we don't fall into mass hysteria and wait?

People don't move from platforms, they drift away naturally.

I didn't move away from slashdot, I just found reddit suited my needs and naturally visited the site less and less.

and then, I didn't move from reddit to HN, I just used reddit less and less until I realized HN fit my niche more.

I still have my slashdot account, but it's been unused since 2014

with reddit, I deleted my account in a fit of depression... but hilariously I still visit the site regularly (much easier to track my various entertainments there), i just no longer comment there.

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I don't user Instagram because, I just don't... get it? Too old for it.

I deleted Facebook when I realized all my extended family was on it and I just didn't to see them on social media.

Who knows how I'll fare with Twitter. I rarely tweet (honestly, because I am afraid of speaking on the platform, public speech is dangerous in my country) but I regularly use it, because where else will I get my instant updates?

So I will go where the updates are.

I think the "blue check" verification on Twitter is its most powerful asset. The most important people in the world (culture icons, heads of state & companies, and subject matter experts) congregate there to share their thoughts.

Personally I think Twitter would work best if it was left to be just that. I don't think anyone really cares about what I have to say, for example. I'm just some random guy who works at a software company, and just being honest I don't believe that I have contributed anything super valuable to the world thus far. If I do, maybe I become someone important in my field or part of launching some important project/company, then maybe I could be invited to Twitter. Kind of like those high end credit cards that one has to be invited to based on their income/asset level.

Then again, I have no idea how that would make money (besides showing ads to followers like me) so I'm back to just following those important people for now lol. No way I'm paying money to view twitter, I'm cutting down on how much I spend on these monthly subscription services.

Isn't Mastodon pretty much a drop-in replacement for Twitter? And it has the advantage of being distributed and it supports Fediverse cross-platform sharing (with Friendica, GnuSocial, etc).

I'm on Friendica so I can follow people on both Mastodon and Diaspora (which would be the drop-in replacement for Facebook).

Still, I think we need something better. I'd like to see a social network with all of that, and support for email, but with sender-authentication (to stop spam), builtin encryption, but also Whatsapp/Signal style chat. And easily shift to whatever mode you're most comfortable with. And maybe also integrate blogging a bit more. I don't like having to choose between commenting on the blog itself or on the social share of the blog post; those two should be integrated.

I see the current flock of distributed social networks as basically the testing bed that should lead to something like that. We're not there yet.

It'd be nice if there was a platform that was specifically designed for People, not bots / propagandist. Corporations should need to pay to be identified as such, and we should know when a person vs a corporation says something. Does this exist... not that I've seen. Vanity metrics like number of users have become real metrics for valuation... until that's broken we can't have these discussions. But my biggest problem with Twitter is it's easily manipulated. Small groups of people can pretend to be large groups by making a small topic tend.

We act like likes are votes, but anyone can create multiple accounts .... Imagine if we did democracy this way ....

Mastodon.

https://joinmastodon.org/

But people go where people are, so we’ll see if it gets traction.

Millions have been using the Fediverse for years, I haven't looked back for the past two years myself. It's built on open protocols and it's multi-platform by definition. You can even follow your Twitter accounts from Mastodon. So what exactly are you folks waiting for, and why do I have to keep hearing the "is there an alternative to social network X" question every couple of days? Just jump on any Mastodon instance, invite others to do the same, and let's stop whining.

If Instagram had better text post support, I think everyone would just go there. They basically are already. Bands and companies promote them selves there already more frequently. Stories let people already share their stupid political hot tales. Honestly not sure what Twitter has over Instagram.

Instagram starting from scratch for small text posts would allow them to fix a lot of mistakes Twitter made

Maybe reddit, but seeing how their new ui is going I doubt they have the right people to make decisions there

Also, Twitter was is already dieing naturally. I don't think people actually want more Twitter

There's the nostr protocol that could be a good censorship resistant decentralised alternative [1]

Jack Dorsey (ex-Twitter CEO) is also working on a protocol with similar properties [2]

Neither can really replace Twitter right now, but they're interesting alternatives coming down the pipeline.

[1] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr [2] https://blueskyweb.org/

Every network is unique, I don't think you could ever replace Twitter. Anything not Twitter is going to be different. Twitter itself is constantly changing.

A better question might be, what are you CURRENTLY using as a place to find communities (if this is what you're looking for) outside of Twitter? Answers to this question are going to be the most useful.

Every community is unique. FB is useless to me for most things, but there are some communities which thrive in FB groups. Some communities have a thriving Discord, other communities in adjacent domains might be more into Slack. Finding the right spots requires a bit of hunting. Reddit is great for some communities, dead to others.

What I like about Twitter vs any other network tool, is the random interesting stuff I can come across which is still somewhat related to people I follow. I don't see that replaced by any other platform. Niche places have more utility in some ways, but less randomness.

Never had a twitter account and never will. Twitter doesn't need a replacement.

Maybe this will lead to the people who spend all day arguing about trivial BS on twitter to actually touch grass for once.

And then get rid of the other attention parasite bullshit sites TT, FB, Reddit, etc.

If Matrix.org adds a dedicated “user feed” feature for public facing timeline then it could slowly gain traction. The protocol and infrastructure is already there, just need to build functionality on top.

I'm hoping it would not get replaced. There are no mannerisms at all. For example: HN tries to cultivate intelligent posts full of information, fosstodon looks for kind, easygoing posts. Twitter looks for (and finds) the worst kind of sarcasm and toxicity. Self-moderation is discouraged, because it is not a site-wide rule.

Personally, I don’t think we need a twitter replacement. Mastodon is nice, but ultimately suffers from the same problems but at smaller scale.

I think it’s more likely that users will move to smaller communities - Discord, Telegram & WhatsApp groups etc.

I’m surprised that Whatsapp hasn’t developed better community functions.

I would suggest just logging off. The healthiest periods of my life, both mentally and physically, have come during Twitter hiatuses, and I’m permanently off now. I read books. I buy a physical newspaper. I am not angry and anxious all the time. Life is good out there.

It's going to be a free-for-all wild-west like the early 2000s again.

https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog

Twitter's only power was "eyeballs" and now there are going to be a dozen sites trying to take a cut of that.

(how on earth Twitter is going to make $1 Billion/year to pay financing is beyond my grasp)

None. The power of Twitter is the people there. The huge network effects.

If people leave Twitter, they’re not all going to go to the same place. They’ll go to different places or give up on the concept all together.

It’s irreplaceable. It’s an artifact of a very different time. I don’t think it can ever be recreated.

People are still using twitter…? Steve Inskeep of NPR nailed it on Up First when he started his report “Hard to say what the media mogul [Musk] will do with the site that most people do not use but which has a huge influence over news coverage.” (Fri, Oct 28). My bet is on TikTok, where millions of people already prefer to spend their time.

There are probably 100 twitter alternatives and none are close to replacing it . Hard to say but does not look promising.

We're working on a p2p protocol which aims to be a long term solution to this and, more generally, a social web, which has:

1. 100% portable accounts (you can unilaterally move host, and you keep your social graph, and all links to your content continue to work)

2. You only see things from people you follow (the poster can also choose their audience)

3. Everything is end-to-end-encrypted (no server admin can read anything)

You can read more here: https://peergos.org/posts/decentralized-social-media

You can also write your own apps that leverage the private social storage: https://peergos.org/posts/a-better-web

I think that Twitter's problem is more bots, shills, and manipulation than centralization. I would like to see another centralized platform which takes bots more seriously with maybe some other features like up/down vote, rather than just "likes."

I don't know what will replace twitter, but I'm scared it might end up being something I actually use - causing its inevitable downfall.

Please, Musk, keep that cesspool open so that all those flies will stay there - I don't want them in my neck of the woods.

For me, it already has been replaced for a long time by reddit and instagram.

Twitter and reddit share essentially the same purpose (content discovery) but reddit has much less noise and a better experience.

Instagram is where I follow my friends and the odd famous person.

Twitter has nothing to offer for me

Hmm, at the moment, I don't see any one option taking over in that regard. Mastodon is probably the most likely option so far, since I've seen a few people I follow there creating accounts there, but it's not a huge wave of people and I'm not sure it'll work out in the long run. Stuff like Discord, TikTok and Facebook have been mentioned, but they're just so different from Twitter that I don't see any of them replacing it (or Facebook doing well in the future in general).

So I guess it's going to be a matter of seeing which of the Twitter esque replacement systems wins out eventually, whether it be Mastodon, Blue Sky or Nostr.

For me, this is really the only social media place I’m active (that’s why I have so many posts, hereabouts).

I have a whole bunch of accounts in other venues, but most lie fallow. They are basically “placeholders.” I have to use a couple, from time to time.

All that, to say, I don’t especially care what happens to Twitter.

From where I sit, it appears as if a troll has bought it, and has declared that he plans to make it a troll playground.

Sounds like fun, but I feel it was basically there, already.

I have a lot of respect for Musk's tenacity and engineering prowess, but this is a different substrate.

People aren't as easy to manage as engineering challenges.

Picks any two of these three, I don't believe it's possible to do all three:

1. Decentralised

2. No Spam/manipulation

3. No censorship

(The boundary between what is classed as manipulation, and what shouldn't be censored will never be solved)

the federated social web built upon ActivityPub, merely because it can not be put back inside the bottle.

There will come along something more usable and interesting than Mastodon but talking the same standardized language for interoperability.

I saw a couple of people move to cohost.org. Some people are moving to Mastodon.

There was a Southpark episode about this. Well, not Twitter, but Walmart. Same or very similar problem. Everyone in town was convinced to stand up to the big-man and riot against Walmart in favor of the little stores that had more integrity. Walmart was destroyed, people rejoiced and everyone went to the smaller local store. This caused the local store to get big and experience the same problems that Walmart had and displaced other small businesses. Then they rioted and burnt down the formerly small store. Rinse and repeat.

So Mastodon then? It is federated, but does that solve the problem? Or do a handful of clusters get really popular and then all the people that made Twitter toxic move in and corrupt the Mastodon nodes? Does Mastodon then create mechanisms similar to "verified" accounts, shadow banning, de-ranking algorithms, etc...? Do bots infiltrate Mastodon? Does the DHS Ministry of Truth coerce the popular Mastodon instances into having a government portal for monitoring and silencing posts? Are we entirely certain that governments did not pay developers to create Mastodon? I ask because that is exactly how Google project Birds of a Feather, Stanford SRI and Facebook project LifeLog, DARPA/CIA started. I honestly don't know the answer, just a gut feeling.

Is this just a technology problem or also a societal problem? Could it be that when the internet was small, there were little pockets of people forums, chat groups, etc that had mostly like minded people and they mostly sortof got along and were not popular enough to draw in coercion from corporations and governmental entities? Did Twitter connect all those pockets of people, corporations and governments leading to the inevitable drive to win the psychological control over the masses? Is there money, power or control to be obtained in winning the hearts and minds of the people?

I know no one wants to hear this but... Facebook.

It does the same thing. With less character limit, more functionality and equally huge (actually bigger) user base.

Sure we can all go and re-invent the wheel for the 800th time (I am still fond of my ex company myspace!) but if you just want to move away from twitter TODAY there's Facebook (and instagram)

Gab is doing well and growing all the time.

Nothing is going to replace Twitter. thankfully. We're heading toward smaller communities with 1000 max member forums, about narrow topics, hosted by regular people and not startups. Centralization needs to end.

Twitter barely made any money and VC aren't willing to invest in these projects, again.

How about none?

Maybe we are seeing the beginning of society putting less value on anyone and everyone having a global public podium? If all social media public content reverts to streams of ads, influencers, marketers, politicians, misinformation campaigns and every nutjob on the planet providing their "expert" commentary, then why bother? I can't see the signal of people I want to follow anymore with all that noise and I'm sure others see the same thing.

Social media has regressed to being a tabloid paper that talks about UFO's, bigfoot and what celebrity is divorcing or whatever. Its complete nonsense and mostly fabricated. Any new platform setup with similar features is going to regress to the same.

I hope none

I'd rather have people divide into smaller sites, forums, news aggregators

Just to see how it'd work

I think substack is probably in the best position:

- Asymmetric. You can follow people who don't follow you. The most important differentiator twitter has from facebook.

- Easy to get started writing, and even easier to get started reading, subscribing - you only need an email.

- Community. Substacks at least have comment sections. Still, not the same as twitter.

I think the basic of idea of substack - building it around email - has more potential in general. Maybe that's the future. Email is the open protocol for messaging and identity that everyone uses.

I want it to be Mastodon

I think it'll be TikTok

You can have a blog anywhere, but to promote it to people who aren’t subscribers, you’ll likely still want to post links to Twitter, and maybe other places too. It may make sense to treat Twitter solely as a way of advertising content hosted elsewhere.

Thinking about where you might post a link, Hacker News and Facebook and Reddit can sometimes work, when appropriate. It seems unlikely that Twitter will stop being a good place to do this?

This will happen as with World of Warcraft - there will be years of talk about a "Twitter killer", and nothing will match that, but lots of alternates will appear. Twitter will be the Twitter killer as it fades away, not to nothing, but to a fraction of what it once was, still populated by some people that enjoy it, but will become less and less of a cultural mover. Which is really a good thing.

Here's an idea: stop trying to fix social media and instead try to connect with people in real life and we as a society might be happy again

Probably some ActivityPub-based megasite, federated with smaller (even self hosted) sites everywhere. Mastodon seems to be on the right track here. Personally, I think an updated version of good old NNTP - the protocol underlying Usenet when it was at its largest - would be far better than ActivityPub as it exists, but there seems to be little developer/hoster appetite for that.

Nothing needs to replace Twitter, but I do think now would be the perfect time for someone to launch a competing service whereas that would have been foolhardy a few months ago.

Nothing to do with the Musk takeover being seen as a negative or a positive, just perfect timing in the sense that there is suddenly a lot of attention being placed on Twitter right now.

TikTok is most likely to become the first mega app (what Elmo has stated he wants to create as X) that's popular in the US.

people seem to focus on the negative.

It's strange how since 2016 or so people have been trashing Twitter saying it's toxic, and now people want to protect it now the boss has changed, similarly seeing the worst.

I think Musk can only improve matters here. I don't mind if it crashes and burns, it's already a Bad Thing. I'd like to see it improve.

Author here of Sqwok, it's a hybrid microblog/public chat app meant for having live public conversation around a topic.

Each post has a chatroom instead of comments, with expected chat features and more.

Not trying to build a Twitter or X replacement, just a quality place for live discussion.

https://sqwok.im

Why do we need anything to replace Twitter?

A library card could replace Twitter.

Please try out my mini social media site called Taaalk (https://www.taaalk.co/).

It's a platform for long form conversations. Not quite like Twitter but good for in depth discussions

For me the biggest value of Twitter is that some celebrities are using it. So, media they choose will be a new big thing. But I would like them to use some kind of Blockchain-powered source because what celebrities publish is history sometimes.

In the case it dies I don't think the users will go to a particular social media. Some will go use different social networks, some will use nothing instead and will find other ways to consume their time.

Twitter is now too big to fail and paid verification is a very smart business move. Those displaced by the changes will just move to platforms that are a better fit. I don't see what the problem is.

Your use of the word "site" implies that Federated systems like Mastodon and Matrix can never fulfill their promise.

I think the last thing we want is another site owned and controlled by a for-profit company.

Lens protocol: lenster.xyz

A new instance of Twitter.

"What social media site could replace Twitter?"

Targeted ads by celebrities. That's mostly what it is these days.

Someone else mention journalists, but God do I hate "articles" fragmented as tweets.

None, I don't think a majority of people would move to something new. Twitter is an old outdated concept now and people are too wary to move to something new.

Lots of people are on Telegram nowadays

but then I follow a lot of Russian and Ukrainian sources so that’s why. It’s very popular there.

I still don’t know how they make money though. It’s shady.

I believe we've come to the end of the social-media road. There is now new social media platform that will replace or outdo existing ones

Surprised not to be hearing more about Tumblr. It's got the infrastructure... it would just need to develop a more serious vibe.

Is anyone working on something like twitter with a focus on curation?

I have a lot of thoughts about it and would love to chat :)

There is nothing that can compare with this addictive ticker. A huge and lindy network effect.

the story about missile strikes on Ukraine pop up last night on Twitter via BBC News's tweet.

you can get the latest news/tweet from on the ground reporters.

i don't know which social media platform can give me this type of update.

> If Twitter crashes and burns,

Are you spitballing or is that a wish?

I hope it doesn’t. It’s just as evil as Facebook.

Not "if," but "when".

I'm sure it won't be mastadon

Bluesky, Dorsey’s new platform.

Bluesky

Discord and/or Slack.

RSS was a good protocol

LinkedIn

forums

Twitter is an internet megaphone. Plain and simple.

Some people use it like those assholes who drive around neighborhoods blaring something out of their portable car megaphones.

I heard them recently while traveling through small towns in Eastern Europe.

They usually blare political rhetoric or advertising.

Don't really see how you can stop them or their Twitter equivalents unless by using a point based reputation system.

Then however we won't be able to say we are different than China as far as the social credit thing goes.

Once the box is open, it's difficult to find all the pieces that wondered around the floor.