The hunt for the next Twitter: all the news about alternative social media platforms

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It’s been more than two years since Elon Musk officially took over as the owner of Twitter — now X — and while a lot of platforms rushed in to try and be the next big microblogging service, many haven’t survived. Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky have all proven to be viable alternatives, but places like Pebble (formerly T2) and Post News didn’t make it.

Threads is perhaps the likely successor, having reached 275 million monthly users as of October 2024, and it seems committed to fediverse integration by building features around the ActivityPub protocol. Bluesky, which relies on its own decentralized AT Protocol for social networking, continues to grow and saw a surge of users after the 2024 election, though with somewhere north of 14.5 million users, it’s still well behind Threads. Mastodon, which also uses the ActivityPub protocol, was already well-established by the time Musk bought Twitter but has struggled to grow its active user base.

There still isn’t a clear successor to Twitter. X hasn’t become the massive “everything app” that Musk says he wants it to be. But despite the success of Threads, continued existence of Mastodon, and the growth of Bluesky, X is still the place where many people and companies post things before they go anywhere else — at least, for now.

Here’s our coverage of the alternatives to X.

Hello Bluesky.
The Verge’s Bluesky account is now actively posting stories from the site, and there’s a starter pack for following individual reporters, editors, and others. Come find us!
Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Bluesky gained more than 700,000 new users in the last week and now has more than 14.5 million users total, Bluesky COO Rose Wang confirmed to The Verge. The “majority” of the new users on the decentralized social network are from the US, Wang says. The app is currently the number two free social networking app in the US App Store, only trailing Meta’s Threads.
People posting on Threads, on the other hand, have raised complaints about engagement bait, moderation issues, and, as of late, misinformation, reports Taylor Lorenz. And like our very own Tom Warren, I’ve come to dislike the algorithmic “For You” feed that you can’t permanently escape, and it certainly seems like we’re not alone in that opinion.
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How to deactivate your X account
Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
Once upon a time, Twitter — now X — was the place to get your memes, world news, and pop culture. However, even at the time, being an active Twitter user also required sifting through a daily deluge of toxic characters, bots, and deepfakes. Then the Elon Musk circus came to town and began steadily altering the formerly popular social network to the point that many of its adherents began bailing by moving to one or more of the new social networks, such as Threads, Bluesky, or Mastodon.
Now that the 2024 US presidential election is over, Musk looks like he’s going to be at least one of the powers behind the throne. Add to that recent changes that have made X less safe to use, and it’s no surprise that there is now a new wave of X users looking to leave the platform. If you’re one of them, here’s some advice on how to deactivate your account.
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Mastodon instance botsin.space is shutting down.
The long-running instance hosts some of the fediverse’s great bots, like one that imagines the Google Searches of Star Trek: TNG’s Commander Riker. Another is posting 2001: A Space Odyssey, one frame at a time (which could take about five years).
Blaming ongoing expenses, botsin.space creator Colin Mitchell writes in a blog post that, starting not long after December 15th, it will go read-only until March 2025.
The Verge’s favorite social networks
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
Social networking has become more disconnected, to say the least. Two years ago, Elon Musk began transforming Twitter into what is now X, and the ensuing chaos drove a lot of former users elsewhere — elsewhere being several places, including Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and even Facebook or Instagram.
We were curious as to where our staff members were going for their social networking fix these days — or whether they had given up on it altogether. Here are some of their answers.
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Bluesky says it won’t use blockchains even though it’s funded by Blockchain Capital.
Its $15 million funding round was led by Blockchain Capital, a venture capital group that has invested in crypto firms, like Kraken, OpenSea, and Coinbase. Despite this, Bluesky says it’s not changing its stance on blockchains:
This does not change the fact that the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.)
Bluesky is working on a subscription, but it won’t give you a blue check
Image: Bluesky
Bluesky is working on a premium subscription that will add features like higher-quality video uploads and some profile customization options. Unlike the premium subscription offered by X, however, Bluesky’s paid tier won’t boost the visibility of your posts, nor will it give your account a “verified” status. In a post on its blog, Bluesky also notes that the platform “will always be free to use.”
“Subscription revenue helps us improve the app, grow the developer ecosystem, and gives us time to explore business models beyond traditional ads,” Bluesky chief operating officer Rose Wang wrote in a post. “Paid subscribers won’t get special treatment elsewhere in the app, like upranking premium accounts or blue checks next to their names.”
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Threads can now show you when people in your feed are online
Illustration: The Verge
Meta is adding an “activity status” to Threads so that you can see who’s actively online as you’re scrolling your feed. In a post, Threads boss Adam Mosseri pitches it as a “way to help you find others to engage with in real-time.” The activity status will show up next to your profile picture in the feed and on your profile, based on screenshots Mosseri shared.
Fortunately, if you don’t want people to know when you’re online, you don’t have to share that. “Only people who have activity status turned on will be able to see when you’re online, and you can turn this off within your settings at any time,” Mosseri says.
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Mastodon switches things up to make its app a little easier to use
Mastodon is getting some much-needed tweaks.
Image: Mastodon
Mastodon just released version 4.3 of its web app, and CEO Eugen Rochko says its new updates, like grouped notifications, should make the open social network easier to use.
For example, a “Who to follow” carousel that shows up in the home tab now recommends a mix of “generalized results” such as profiles that are popular in your language and personalized recommendations based on who you follow, making it easier to find new people you might like to follow, too. And as a little treat, there are explanations for why you’re seeing those profiles when you click “view all.”
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Mozilla will shut down its Mastodon server on December 17th.
The company is ending its Mozilla.social Fediverse experiment in content moderation and will remove all content and accounts — but you still have time to move elsewhere:
At any point before Dec 17, 2024, you can migrate your account to another instance on Mastodon by following these instructions.
TechCrunch notes that Mozilla had about 270 active Mastodon users as of Tuesday. A tracker based on the Mastodon API reports about 8 million accounts and 1 million or so active users overall.
You might start seeing Instagram comments on Threads soon
Illustration: The Verge
Instagram might roll out a way to share comments on other Instagram posts to Threads, according to Alessandro Paluzzi, who often reverse engineers Meta’s social media apps to find coming features.
Paluzzi shared an image showing that when commenting on an Instagram post, there could be a new dropdown menu that lets users choose to share the comment only to Instagram or “also share on Threads.”
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Does Threads have the wrong vibe for the displaced Brazilian internet?
In today’s issue of Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick argues that the lively Brazilian community of X users may find a home on Bluesky, but not so much on Threads, whose heavy-handed algorithmically sorted user interface doesn’t click with Brazilian internet culture.
A caveat from The Verge: we still don’t have official numbers on Brazilian sign-ups for Threads over the weekend.
Bluesky adds ‘anti-toxicity’ options to limit dogpiling and hostile quote posts
If a post is being shared as part of a dogpiling effort, Bluesky users can now limit people from linking to them directly.
Image: Bluesky
Bluesky has introduced a bunch of new “anti-toxicity” features that aim to help users protect themselves against harassment and dogpiling. Announced via a recent blog post, version 1.90 of the decentralized social media platform adds tools that can limit exposure to unwelcome interactions with other users, such as an option to detach your post from somebody else’s quote of it.
The update allows users to view all the posts that quote a post they’ve made, then detach their original post so it can no longer be seen beneath the other user’s commentary — preventing readers from seeing it and clicking through to engage. You can already cut off engagement by blocking a quote poster, but detachment offers a less drastic option.
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Threads is giving Fleets a shot.
Meta is now testing posts that will disappear after just 24 hours, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. (You may recall Twitter’s short-lived version of this, Fleets.)
When replying to one, you’ll see a timer next to the person’s name, along with a banner at the top that says the post will disappear, taking any replies with it, the outlet writes.
Mike Masnick is joining Bluesky’s board of directors.
Masnick, the founder of Techdirt, wrote the “protocols, not platforms” paper that inspired Twitter to kick off the Bluesky project in 2019.
“It is, of course, exciting to see thoughts I’ve expressed for how to fix the Internet actually start to become tangible reality, which is why I’m excited to be involved with Bluesky to help it continue to move forward,” Masnick says.