Mastodon
The #1 Alternative is the still small Mastodon social network, which is a microblogging platform (aims to post short text notes of up to 500 characters in one profile – ed.). Today, the social network has more than 2.5 million active users. Mastodon’s audience is still around 100 times smaller than Twitter’s, but it’s growing rapidly amid the competitor’s problems. As of early November, the service had only 600,000 active users. In many ways, the social network is thriving through the efforts of media, often in English. bay Mastodon is in the first place in the elections with alternatives to Twitter.
Mastodon was created by Evgeny Rochko, a native of Russia. In terms of interface and user experience, Mastodon is an almost complete replica of Twitter. The exception is the registration process – to start using Mastodon you need to choose one of several thousand servers divided by languages, interests, countries and other criteria. By signing up for one of them, the user will have access to both local content and everything else.
There are still very few Russian-speaking users on Mastodon. socialbites.ca correspondent managed to find only one Russian presenter mastodon.ml. It has about 1.5 thousand users.
By the way, it is clear that interest in the service has increased in Russia – this can be judged both by the discussion of Twitter users, and by new comments on the application page in Google Play.
Additional advantages are that the interface of the site and the application are translated into Russian and there is no need to use a VPN when connecting to the service.
Tumblr
Alternative #2 – Tumblr. Created in 2007, this social network is focused on publishing micro-texts and images. In the Runet of the 2000s and early 10s he became very famous thanks to the youth subcultures (what was then called “emo” or “hipsters”) – Tumblr played the role of Instagram, which for many still does not exist (the owner of Meta was considered extremist and banned in Russia). According to Statista, the service website alone received nearly 300 million monthly visits in 2022. At the same time, the social network has iOS and Android apps with hundreds of millions of downloads.
One of Twitter’s recognizable features is the moderators’ loyalty to adult content, but Tumblr used to be the main “pornosocial network.” Everything changed in 2018 when the service owners banned the posting of very obscene content.
Has Tumblr gotten any less immoral since then? If before Tumblr was the main porn social network, now Tumblr is the main ero social network. The service still has many bloggers posting obscene content.
Also, just a few weeks ago, amid problems with Twitter, on Tumblr started Dissolution: the social network allowed the posting of “sexual content”, but with the appropriate disclaimer.
Thus, in case Twitter shuts down, the hashtag addict “naked Thursday” (flash mob where participants share their nude photos) and “nsfw” (derived from the expression not suitable for work, can be translated as “not suitable for work”) can safely act on Tumblr. For other features of modern social networks such as memes and news discussions, you can of course also look at Tumblr.
Alternative #3. If Twitter in terms of functionality is most similar to Mastodon, in terms of content and influence on the media space, Reddit is closest to the social network of Mask. Reddit was originally a forum for sharing and discussing news. However, for the last 5-6 years, Reddit has had all the features of a social network: profiles, subscriptions, likes, reposts, hashtags, a feed, and more. The service has more than 52 million active users.
Just like on Twitter, you can select topics (subtitles, – ed. note) from the posts from which the news feed will be created in Reddit. The user himself can also dilute this publication with posts. True, this must be done carefully – on Reddit every topic has a moderator who can expel the user for inappropriate behavior.
A feature of Reddit is the high participation of users in the events discussed. The social network often generates scandalous newsletters for the media. For example, in 2021, Reddit users artificially inflated the GameStop chain of video game stores to save the company from shutting down. Judging from this scandal in Hollywood, even make a movie.
However, this activity also has disadvantages. Reddit users who are enthusiastic about discussing various topics sometimes feed off conspiracy theories. The most notable examples are QAnon and PizzaGate. Both are devoted to the fact that the US government (or the entire world) is made up of a sect of cannibalistic satanists and pedophiles. Against them, as you can imagine, is former President Donald Trump.
Separately, it is worth noting that cult memes that spread around the Internet often appear on Reddit. This is why Reddit is often referred to as the “home page of the internet”.
Telegram
Well, Telegram. Although primarily a messenger, it has many social networking features. Telegram users do not have the blog (channel) opportunity by default, but they can still start it. Also, besides texts, you can send photos, videos, audio messages, audio files and files in general of all formats. The news feed consists of subscriptions to the same channels.
A big advantage of Messenger is that the Russian-speaking community is very well developed in Telegram.
In Messenger, not only bloggers and show business stars, but also politicians and high-ranking officials have long opened their channels. Also, Telegram has official channels of most Russian departments. Fans of political debates on Twitter will feel right at home on Telegram.
The downside of Telegram is the low level of interaction. Usually, a single-threaded type of communication is established in Telegram: from a blogger to subscribers, but not vice versa. While channels feature comments on demand, discussions between bloggers and Telegram subscribers have never been a popular format.
Source: Gazeta
Jackson Ruhl is a tech and sci-fi expert, who writes for “Social Bites”. He brings his readers the latest news and developments from the world of technology and science fiction.