Want to quit X? Here's your guide to the alternatives
In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, many people are reconsidering how they follow the news. A lot of this has to do with X, which was once a lively platform to follow and comment on current events. Elon Musk bought the site formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 and has transformed the site into a megaphone for right-wing misinformation. With Musk formally joining the Trump administration, the site will become little more than a vehicle for government propaganda.
The number of people who use X has dropped precipitously since Musk took over, losing one-fifth of its daily active users over the last year.
The users "that have stayed on X now largely see posts that skew toward the political bent of Musk himself," the Washington Post reported last month. X also "has secretly throttled traffic to the New York Times and other sites Musk has vilified," including sites hosted by Substack like Popular Information. Meanwhile, Musk directed engineers to increase the distribution of his own tweets. The resulting change in the algorithm "artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000." A recent experiment by Fortune found that all X users are bombarded with Musk's political musings, whether or not they follow any other accounts related to politics.
It is becoming increasingly clear that X is no longer an effective place to distribute or discover reliable news and information. Here is your guide to the alternatives.
Bluesky
Bluesky was created in 2019 by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. It initially received financial support from Twitter, but became an independent company in 2021. It launched in March 2023 as an invitation-only service and opened to the public in February 2024. Dorsey cut ties with Bluesky in May.
The format will be very familiar to Twitter users, particularly before Musk's takeover — and that's by design. There is a 300-character limit for each post. Users can also embed photos and videos.
One of the unique aspects of Bluesky is that both the algorithm and moderation policies are controlled by the user. You can choose what algorithm populates your feed (or select multiple algorithms to browse) and what kind of moderation system to apply to the content you see.
Many other networks force algorithms on users that degrade their experience — like downranking posts that include links to other websites — but increase their profits. Bluesky does not impose those kinds of restrictions on users.
One of the primary limitations of Bluesky is that it is still relatively small, and most of its users are liberal. This makes it a friendlier social network, but potentially too insular.
That is changing rapidly, however. Since Election Day, Bluesky has added over 1 million new users and has 15 million users on the service. (By comparison, X has about 300 million active users.) A higher percentage of Bluesky readers post on the service, giving it a lively feel despite its smaller size.
Substack Notes
Substack Notes is a social network associated with the newsletter platform. (Full disclosure: Popular Information uses Substack to publish this newsletter.) It is available through the Substack app or the Substack homepage.
There are a few advantages to Substack Notes. First, it has no character limits and allows advanced formatting options. This makes the network conducive to more complex and nuanced thinking. It is also integrated with the Substack ecosystem, making it easy to subscribe to newsletters from thought-provoking users.
Substack has not released data on how many people use Substack Notes, but 35 million people have active subscriptions to Substack newsletters. Some portion of those subscribers use the service.
The primary limitation of Substack Notes is that its algorithm frequently promotes older content posted days or weeks earlier. This makes it less useful for following the news. But Substack Notes only launched in April 2023, and its algorithm is still under development.
Threads
Threads, which Meta launched after Musk bought Twitter, is much larger than the other X competitors. Drawing from the billions of Facebook and Instagram users, it reportedly has 275 million users, approximately matching X's scale.
But Meta has undermined Thread's utility by artificially limiting the distribution of all political content. Threads will not display posts from users who regularly discuss political issues or "social issues" to any account that does not already follow that user. That means it is very difficult for people who post about politics to reach new audiences.
The same limitations are placed on individual posts about political issues from people who don't regularly post about politics. Meta applies the same policy to Instagram and, for one user, anytime she mentioned the word "vote," her audience became 63% smaller.
Users can opt-out of the policy, but only by changing a setting that is difficult to find within the app. As a practical matter, Meta knows that very few users will be aware that the setting exists, much less take the time to change it.
Mastodon
Mastodon is a decentralized social media platform. This means that it is made up of thousands of different servers that use a common protocol. The servers, which can be created by anyone, have different themes, rules, and levels of moderation.
When users sign up, they can choose to join a specific server, but they can also follow and interact with users on other servers. Servers are usually self-funded by the users that created them, and some creators accept payment for running the server through Patreon. Since May 2023, users have also had the option to join a default server operated by Mastodon.
Mastodon’s default server allows users to post up to 500-characters, along with pictures, links, and videos. The site, which was launched in 2016, had a surge of users in 2022 after Musk bought X, and now has almost “9 million users and around 880,000 active users.”
One of the advantages to Mastodon is that it gives users a lot of control over their experience on the platform. Users can choose to join a server related to their interests, and one that aligns with their moderation and privacy preferences.
But Mastodon can also be confusing for users, especially at first. It is currently working on upgrades to make the experience more user friendly, but has struggled to match core features of other social networking sites. Currently, the site is creating a feature to allow users to quote posts.
Worth mentioning that The Guardian paper has stopped posting to Twitter, due to its inherently corrupt and conflicted nature.
All journalists of integrity should dissociate from it. I wish a few of the big papers/networks formed a consortium to host a "journalist only' official server on Mastodon. What a great way to regain control and verfication
Thanks for the info. FULL DISCLOSURE I am 82 and don’t have any “social media” accounts. However , here is something i heard a long time ago : “don’t write it if you can say it and don’t say it if you can nod” . Also it would be better to get your news information from actual journalists FIRST HAND and that you choose your journalists and that you be willing to pay for it. Substack for example. Social media , like AI , gets its information for free I believe. We used to call that stealing. You know , just like we used to call misinformation LIEING .