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Elon has arrived, Twitter is gradually becoming a shit show. What are some Twitter alternatives you can explore keeping decentralization in mind? Let’s see.
Elon Musk finally completed his long-awaited Twitter take over on Oct 27, 2022. The deal was closed at $44 billion with the buzz around it spreading like wildfire, especially throughout the crypto and tech industry.
As much as we’d like to see the good that Elon Musk does for Twitter, we cannot unsee the bad that has already happened.
For one, apparently, hate speech skyrocketed on Twitter shortly after the takeover. According to Bloomberg, there has been a 1300% spike in racist slurs.
Then, around 90% of the Twitter team in India was laid off just recently.
And lastly, several celebrities, social media influencers and the likes have announced they’re leaving Twitter because the prestigious blue tick might be up for sale on subscription.
Is everyone looking for something like Twitter that’s not Twitter? Methinkso.
Where do we go from here? 🤔
The hashtag #twittermigration has been trending all over social media.
New sites such as Mastodon, Counter Social, and BlueSky have come under spotlight as users express the desire to flock to some Twitter alternatives.
Mastodon
Mastodon is an early front-runner for people searching for Twitter alternatives. The number of people who have signed up for Mastodon has surpassed 230,000 already. This brings the total number of users on Mastodon to nearly 5.9 million. Damn.
This is a decentralized, open-source platform and it has been around for 6 years already. They’ve probably been waiting on the sidelines, hoping for people to realize how important decentralization is. And their moment has come.
This week Mastodon tweeted that ‘it is a public square’ and ‘a global decentralized social network’. Moreover, the organization added that ‘your server is where your account is hosted, communication is global’.
Counter Social
Counter Social brands itself as the ‘next-gen social network’. Its goal is to achieve no trolls, abuse, ads, fake news, or foreign influencer operations on its platform. Basically the antithesis of Twitter.
Moreover, Counter Social claims to be the first social media platform to have a zero-tolerance stance against hostile nations, trolls, bot accounts, and misinforming accounts.
The emerging platform also promises to not mine and sell any user data.
Jack Dorsey’s BlueSky
BlueSky is a project commissioned by Jack Dorsey when he was still the CEO of Twitter. A few days ago, BlueSky saw more than 30,000 waitlist signups in less than two days. The general opinion states this project to be a great alternative to Twitter.
What is it, you may wonder. Well, it is an initiative to develop a decentralized social network protocol. Announced in 2019, it’s currently in the research phase. The BlueSky team itself owns the company, and Twitter does not hold a majority stake.
If we’re being honest, Twitters failures led to BlueSky’s ideation and launch. The app was announced at a time when social networks were being accused of misinformation, election interference, and misappropriation.
Jack also pointed out an issue faced by Twitter, about it being a centralized social organization, in a 2019 tweet thread. Existing social media often leads to a focus on content and conversations that spark controversy and outrage, rather than conversations that inform and promote healthy discussions.
Furthermore, in the same thread, he talked about the newly emerging technology of blockchain and decentralized solutions. He also mentioned how blockchain points to a series of decentralized solutions for open and durable hosting, governance, and even monetization.
The BlueSky team expects not only to develop a decentralized standard for social media but to also build an open community around it, inclusive of companies and organizations, researchers, civil society leaders and all who those think deeply about events and their consequences, whether positive or negative.
#Twexit isn’t a one-off, others are next
Having a decentralized social network is the need of the hour. Privacy is being invaded, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We are all still very early and there’s scope for such applications to grow beyond our wildest imaginations.
If you’re a developer and have a builder mindset, you MUST build your own decentralized application… or even your very own decentralized Twitter alternative. Put your skills to good use.
You’ve seen how changes in Twitter have sparked a migration, maybe there’s another web2 social network next in line.
Let me help you in taking to first step,
Build a decentralized Twitter app with this step-by-step course.
You don’t necessarily have to build decentralized Twitter alternatives with this course. It could be any social media dApp – think big. 😉
With all that said, if there’s more you want to learn in the blockchain and web3 development space, you should learn from our top tier web3 projects here.