Are there any good alternatives to Twitter?

[KevinSig]

What I liked about Twitter, was the ability to just input my interests, and would get related posts. I'd then add a few people I liked, and my feed expanded from there.

Currently, I'm looking at Mastodon, but it seems to be lacking the interests element, and jumps straight into personal connections. That's fine & all, but for an introvert like me, I like to have something to divert my attention, rather than just jump into conversation.

Or maybe I just don't understand the specifics of the platform.

Regardless, I'd like an alternative to Twitter, as the new management doesn't impress, and I'm fairly certain the shenanigans have only begun. In fact, I'm kind of paranoid there's going to be an "outage" on election day, since Twitter tends to be tool to organize these days.

Anyway, despite my paranoia, do you have any suggestions?

Kevn

 

[Dekafox]

Honestly, TikTok, despite its video focus, is probably the next closest thing, IF you want to keep the algorithm controlling your timeline, as it is VERY heavy on algorithm bias. Mastodon is more for the folks who want to ditch the algorithm-controlled content and grow their list organically, through retweets of cool stuff and such - HOWEVER because it's decentralized, you can also look for a Mastodon server that caters to your specific interest and set up shop there, then expand.

Like for example, I'm based out of meow.social for the moment, which is a Mastodon instance that's aimed at furry folk(mostly because the only dragon ones I found were all closed for new registrations). So in this case instead of searching for your interests directly, you'd want to look for Mastodon servers that are based around your interests first, then set up shop there. It's not a monolithic site like Twitter where mastodon.social or whatever is the only place to go.

I personally side with the algorithm-avoiding folks, as, while it can help you find things of specific types easier, it also will tweak things for the site-owner's benefit. For example, Twitter has been de-ranking artist posts for a while, especially if they use certain words like commission or Patreon. It's now gotten tot he point even retweets and likes won't boost the posts, commenting on them directly seems to be the best way to get eyeballs on it. Which makes a twisted kind of sense if you look at the algorithm's purpose as keeping the most eyeballs on the site the longest. What better way to boost engagement than to get people to react enough(in anger or otherwise) to actually say something to keep the discussion or argument going? One might even consider that perhaps the algorithm could be tuned to uprank heated topics just to suck people into arguments that keep them too busy fighting to leave the site, and perhaps see more ads...

But I'm getting off on a tangent here. To my knowledge, outside Mastodon-based social media, pretty much everything else is algo-based, so take your pick, and I'll again say that TikTok and Mastodon are probably the closest things you'll find to twitter itself in terms of format and design. Facebook is what it is, Tumblr doesn't really do discussion threads the same way to my knowledge, Instagram is art-biased, and so on.

 

[Paladin]

Think you're there.