Anyone sane has left Xitter already and the crazies stay on their own platform, making the Web generally much more pleasant, as less and less sites link to Xitter.
I don’t know why you guys keep pretending X is Truth Social levels of dead. Is this just copium or are you really that far removed from reality? X is absolutely in a significant decline but it’s still the dominant microblogging platform by a mile. All politicians, all media organisations, all celebrities use X. And ultimately these are the accounts that will determine whether X remains relevant in mainstream society.
Even assuming 25% of Twitter users are bots (probably a significant over estimate), and even if half of Twitter’s users quit in the next year, it would still be 150x bigger than mastodon
(Mastodon has ~1m MAUs, compared to ~421m for Twitter)
From my understanding, Bluesky (despite its recent growth) isn’t particularly big either. Threads claims to have a lot of users and I assume it would have the easiest time attracting normies, but I am still sceptical of its long-term viability. I feel like the people leaving X would have quite a bit of crossover with people who despise Meta.
So that leaves us with a fourth competitor, which is nothing at all. Anecdotally I think this is what I am seeing the most - people who leave X are just abandoning the entire concept of microblogging, since the point of it is to speak to a large audience and none of the competitors can really deliver that right now. The appeal of Twitter was that everyone (who was interested in microblogging) was on it; smaller, niche communities are fine for discussion boards and group chats but microbloggers don’t really want to be screaming into a void where most people will never hear them. Microblogging was never even particularly popular anyway (when compared with other forms of social media) and I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if the downfall of X eventually kills the concept for most people in society.
iirc when you sign up for threads it links your Facebook/Insta account and there’s no way to delete your threads account without deleting the whole thing, so their numbers are likely inflated
all media organisations use X
NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’
All true.
With that said, Bluesky has had one hell of a growth month - not just from Brazil - and that’s nice.
I prefer Mastodon to what is ultimately still a for-profit corporation (“public benefit” notwithstanding), but both are better than Twatter.
I’d like to like Mastodon better. I’d like it - ot a simular open, decentralized platform - to be the one that everyone uses, if anything.
However, I do not like it as much. And Bluesky is getting the momentum, which is important.
They’re also at least theoretically relatively open and decentralized (but we do all know how that would go long-term)
But like you said, either is dramatically better than Twitter. Heck, just having many healthy options is good.
Imagine thinking that platform only “went bad” recently.
Twitter is defined entirely by what is followed, you can stay completely out of the toxic far right stuff and block those that don’t know where they are. There are still plenty of sub communities there that exist no where else and you can control your feed better than Lemmy and other forum like systems. Twitter overall is declinimg but it’s not the full picture because what is happening doesn’t impact lots of people who use the platform that much.
I mean Musk said Twitter was a Bad Thing and problematic.
Then a year or so later bought it, and immediately started doing things which reduced it’s popularity and influence.
I think he wanted to run it into the ground or make it a fashist/rightwing/propaganda site before the US elections and it looks like he’s pretty much there. It’s in a horrible state. Could be worse, but it’s really bad.
Public micro blogging overall is a bane, so yes.
