A “great migration” is under way from Elon Musk’s X.
After an election in which the world’s richest person helped propel a convicted criminal into the White House, around 115,000 US users reportedly deleted their accounts from the platform formerly known as Twitter on Wednesday alone. Stephen King and Don Lemon have both vowed to quit, as has The Guardian.
Meanwhile, rival services such as Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon are all rapidly surging. But which one is the most worthy contender for Twitter’s old crown? And which one is actually right for you, if you’re one of those people making the jump?
I’ve been a Twitter/X user – okay, fine, an addict – for 13 years. Although I’m not personally planning to stop posting there, I am trying to diversify my diet, and frankly it’s all very confusing.
So if you’re in a similar boat, here’s a quick and dirty guide to your three major options – alongside some personal impressions from a lifelong internet user whom God has cursed (or blessed) to be forever learning.
Bluesky: ‘Theater kid energy’
Bluesky is perhaps the clearest spiritual successor to X. It was set up by longtime Twitter boss and co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2021 to fix, and perhaps atone for, the “original sin” of his previous company (though he’s since washed his hands of Bluesky too).
On the surface, it looks and operates pretty much like Twitter used to. Dig into the options, though, and you’ll find some thoughtful special functions. You can adopt custom timeline filters and algorithms created by other users, or block yourself from posting images until you add a description for people who use screen reader software. Posts are officially just called posts, but colloquially called ‘skeets’, much to the chagrin of Bluesky’s developers.
Vibes-wise, it feels exactly like Twitter did a decade or so ago. It’s chaotic and irreverent and freewheeling, full of passionate opinionated people with strange expertise sharing confusing local memes, as well as lots of real time commentary on politics and sports. It’s also earnest: for now, most people using it are there because they wanted to be part of something better.
So far, it also seems far less toxic than Twitter was in 2014 (when it was already well on its way to being a gladiatorial “hellsite”). It has some smart conflict mitigation features, such as letting users retrospectively revoke permission to quote their posts and a so-called “nuclear block”. We’ll see if that lasts.
PROS: Feels like the old Twitter. ‘Starter packs’ created by other users make it easy to find people to follow, or you can just import your list. Run by a public benefit corporation, which means (in theory) that it’s legally bound to some positive social purpose. from X. Also, Dril is there.
CONS: Its users are mostly from the English-speaking developed world, at least for now, and appear to be mostly left-wing. Also, those early-Twitter vibes might not be what you’re after. One tech journalist said it has “theater kid energy”; another called it “millennial roommate board game night energy”. Oh, and you still get glitches and outages sometimes.
WHO’S THERE? News junkies and political anoraks; academics, policy researchers, authors, and journalists (so many journalists). In other words, nerds.
Threads: No politics , please
A fellow Twitter junkie once told me that Instagram is for hot people, whereas Twitter is for ugly people who had no choice but to learn to be funny. If that’s true, who is Threads – a Twitter clone by Instagram – for?
At present the answer seems to be: lifestyle influencers. Celebrities. Casual users. Normies and turbonormies. Liberals engaging in election denial conspiracy theories. A smattering of journalists and politics-heads complaining about the algorithm. Posts are definitely just called posts, thank God.
To be clear, Threads is vastly more popular than Bluesky, with roughly 275m monthly active users as of August compared to Bluesky’s 17m or so today. In fact, the number of users Threads gained this month so far is nearly equal to Bluesky’s entire audience.
But for me it also feels more staid and locked down, with the same heavy-handed AI-powered moderation that has become a trademark Instagram’s parent company Meta (which also owns Facebook) and a doggedly algorithmic default feed that blurs together posts from five seconds ago and two days ago and frequently shows you posts you’ve already seen.
PROS: Chiller and more laid-back than Bluesky, with a far bigger audience. Strict anti-nudity rules, if you’re into that sort of thing. Integrates with Instagram. Also deliberately de-emphasises politics, so if you want to steer clear of political discussion it’s a great place to be.
CONS: As I mentioned, Threads does not like politics, or news media in general. Instagram CEO Alex Mosseri has said most users aren’t interested in that, and while he initially claimed that the app wouldn’t “discourage or down-rank news or politics”, it later reversed course. It’s also difficult to find new people to follow and near impossible to escape the grasp of Meta’s recommendation and timeline sorting algorithms. Obviously, using Threads also lines the pockets of Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, which you may have Opinions about. Also, still glitchy sometimes.
WHO’S THERE? Everyone not on Bluesky and Mastodon, apparently.
Mastodon: Home of the supernerds
Mastodon is the most complicated contender. Like Bluesky, it is designed to be decentralized, and not controlled by any one person or organization. But whereas for Bluesky this mostly happens behind the scenes – and much of it is still in the future – with Mastodon it’s front and center.
Rather than one monolithic social network, Mastodon is really a federation of different social networks that all talk to each other. When you create an account, you must choose a specific “instance” to be your home. Instances can be run by anyone: companies, universities, private companies, or just enthusiasts, and each one has its own rules and moderation procedures. If this sounds like a high-pressure choice, by default you can just pick Mastodon.social – run by a non-profit founded by Mastodon’s creator Eugen Rothko.
Once you’re in, it’s not too confusing. Posts – called ‘toots’, I guess – can be up to 500 words, giving it a bit of a Tumblr-y, bloggy feel. Unsurprisingly for such a (relatively) complex service, the user base seems to skew heavily techy.
Mastodon is part of what’s called the “fediverse”, a loose connection of social media sites that use the same underlying technical standards. The hope is that, at some future point, all these services will work together; that choosing a social network will be less like picking between Netflix and Disney+ and more like choosing a web browser or an email service. Each service’s content would be visible through all the others, and users would simply be deciding how they want to engage with the underlying activity.
Even now, Threads is actually partly compatible with Mastodon, allowing you to automatically make your Threads posts visible on fediverse services. So perhaps one day the real Twitter successor will be all of these services simultaneously. Or perhaps not.
PROS: Decentralised, with a high degree of user control; hell, you can even set up your own instance just for you. Or just find an instance whose operators you like and trust. You’re a free speech absolutist? Someone’s probably catering for that. Want zero tolerance for fake news or bigotry? Likewise. It’s also extremely customizeable, with very granular privacy settings.
CONS: Steeper learning curve than other services. Hard to find people to follow, now that most automated follow import services have been broken by Elon Musk’s policies.
WHO’S THERE? Techies, open source software advocates, old school “declaration of the independence of cyberspace” internet freedom warriors, Linux users, and transgender hackers. In other words, super nerds.
