Twitter is going downhill. I’ll stay there as long as I can, but I’ve been looking for a new place. I’m back from safari. Here’s my report on a few alternatives. I’ve visited Reddit and Imgur as well, but they seem qualitatively different from an actual twitter successor.
Micro.blog
Been there: Since 2018. Cost: Everybody pays $5/mo. Activity level: Quiet.
The place’s affect is weirdly decaffeinated. The population trends younger X to Millenials. People here don’t like my jokes much.
This is the most interesting place from the social/software point of view. You’re not supposed to be a mere consumer of social media and clicker of hearts. Your posts to micro.blog are actually links to a real blog in an old-fashioned web-ring. Things you post here, i.e. to your micro-blog, will show up in a Google search. Every account has a built-in podcasting capability, too, though I’ve never used it. The site doesn’t have passwords; the server sends an e-mail with a link to click every time you log in. The iOS app is good (and you stay logged in). You can’t “like” a post; you have to say something nice instead. Nobody uses hashtags; they use emojis instead. Supports markdown for formatting posts.
I’ve only found one interesting professor to follow on this site. Lots of photographers.
Counter.social
Been there: Since April. Cost: Free, but I pay $5/mo for Pro membership. Activity level: Firehose
The friendliest social network. Everybody there seems cheerful and they’re promiscuous with upvotes and shares. It’s run by a famous hacker (all by himself). Counter.social is built on the Mastodon platform. When I joined I thought it was part of the Mastodon fediverse, but they’ve had a disagreement, so it went its own way. That means you can’t follow other Mastodonians from here. The Jester is so serious about keeping misogynists and fascists out that he’s blocked entire countries. I trust the security on this site. Somebody may try to get in, but I pity the fool. There are places for Virtual Reality chat rooms on the site. If anybody has ever used them, I haven’t seen it.
Update: you can get to CoSo from the web. Here I am, and here’s Corlin who clued me in.
No academics here. It’s mostly for everyday life and snarking about politics. A stranger once congratulated me for a “Tolkien deep cut” on this site. It was a quote from LotR.
Mastodon
Been there: 1 week. Cost: I’ll start chipping in if I like the place. Activity level: Firehose.
I’m on the universeodon server, which I can’t spell. I chose it because a couple of people from my Twitter feed are there. This site is the closest to reproducing my Twitter timeline. People I follow are here, as well as quite a few people I never followed because all their tweets got retweeted to me anyway. Old-timers use pseudonyms; twitter refugees use their real names. The program has gotten a bad rap on Twitter but I haven’t had any problems with it. I use the web interface because I haven’t heard enough good things about the app. Weirdly, “log out” is under the Preferences menu. Is that an omen?
The hard part is choosing a server, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t pick the ideal one. They’re interconnected really well. All the admins seem to be suffering a mild case of shock these days. If things coalesce in a few months, we can all get together somewhere.
I’ve found lots of interesting professors to follow. Humanities Commons runs its own Mastodon instance, invitation only, but they’ve had a really bad week for crashes.
Post.news
Been there: 1 day. Cost: complicated. Activity level: Garden hose.
Intended to be a place for grownups. You have to ask to join, but if they let me in they must not be too picky. (Write something interesting in the box where they ask you who you are; it helps.) People mostly use their real names. In terms of appearance, Post looks like Apple where Mastodon looks like Linux. It’s a private, for-profit company like Twitter that’s planning to make money off its users’ network.
The site is changing by the hour – things that were bugs this morning are fixed now. Supports markdown for formatting posts. The unique feature here is that you can tip the writer for a good post. 1 point is a US penny; everybody gets 50 of them to start with. This might be a good way to pay writers who only occasionally come into my sphere of interests. People here like my jokes. I had followers within a few hours of joining.
So far it’s mostly journalists, humorists, and people with cats and dogs. This might turn into my new “front page”.
Fern Lovebond
If you failed to find the academic community on Counter Social, it was likely you didn’t look very hard. I’ve got a list of users I have come across and sometimes managed to keep track of which includes those posting links to scholarly articles, teachers, university students, university staff, and a number of scientists, including physicist Dr. Lollie of IU (@michellelollie https://physics.indiana.edu/news-events/news/2022-10-19-michelle-lollie.html), and the official NASA account for the HiRISE team (@HiRISE), to boot. I’m only passingly interested in academic accounts, and don’t follow all that I see, so there are bound to be more of them there than I’ve found, and my list is about 50 accounts long.
Joe
Michelle Lollie sounds like a fun person, and I’ve followed her. Not sure what search string I’d have used to find her, though. The last month she’s talked about everything but. Thank you for the recommendation.