Quitting Twitter? Here are some alternatives

S1: This is KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. Elon Musk bought Twitter last October , and for many people , the app has never been the same. According to the Anti-Defamation League and other groups that study online platforms , Musk's rollback of content moderation rules has opened the gates to a wave of hate speech on the platform. Musk's personal tweets are often offensive , and now NPR and KPBS have stopped using Twitter because Musk has labeled NPR. Government funded media. Now , having said all that , as a lot of disgruntled Twitter users have found out , it's easy to say you're going to walk away from Twitter , but it can keep pulling you back in. It's a dilemma. Washington Post writer Heather Kelly has been looking into since last fall , and she is here to tell us what alternatives she's found. And hi , Heather. Hi.

S2: Hi. Thanks for having me.

S1: So there are a lot of different social media apps out there to start off with.

S2: We just want to see a few arguments , some things not working every now and then. And I think Twitter somehow in its latest stages of its life , has actually had more drama than usual , and it's extremely hard to look away. There are a lot of other sites to go to. Something like Mastodon , which has a lot of the same smart people talking to each other respectfully and kindly , and it's just not the same.

S3: So it doesn't it doesn't have that edge to it , is what you're saying. Exactly.

S2: And I think I mean , we might we might deny that's what keeps us there. But we do love to be entertained. And I think social media is , in a way , a lot about entertainment now.

S1: I saw that you listed and you just mentioned Mastodon. You've also listed hive counters social t to post. Are any of these alternatives catching on ? No.

S2: And it's interesting because when I first wrote this article , we were looking at it know right when Elon took over in October and we were like , These are the companies that are going to try and really capitalize on this and get those users. And now that we've checked in quite a few months later , we see that none of them has really taken off. Nobody's been able to replicate exactly what Twitter has. Part of that is they're not able to replicate the social network it's created , which is the hardest thing. You're not going to get all the exact same people , the same communities. So none of them has really broken out from the pack so far. Some had a brief moment and now they've also lost users.

S1:

S2: And while the way we used to use Facebook isn't as common , like we're not posting to our walls , we're not posting publicly , which is kind of what Twitter is. Facebook groups are still pretty much thriving and they are one place where you can find similar communities of like minded people to discuss topics. So if a closed group is something that you are missing in a community , Facebook is a place that people are going to find that right now.

S1: And is it satisfactory ? I mean.

S3:

S2: You know , I think the crowd skews perhaps still a little older. The people you're going to have conversations with there are maybe not going to be the same group of deep thinking academics that you were used to on Twitter. It might be like your neighborhood group or , you know , a fandom groups of people who are all interested in the same musician or something like that. So it's not going to be an exact replica and it still has all the limitations of Facebook , namely things like it's very common to still get hacked on there. There's scams , there's bots.

S1: Okay , So a lot of people use Twitter as a kind of just time.

S3: Wasting kind of a thing. You know , just scroll and scroll and scroll.

S1: You can kind of do that with tick tock.

S2: It's in the news a lot. But the people who are on TikTok and I find this fascinating are kind of happy with being on TikTok. They love it. They are happy to scroll for hours and hours and find people who are still on something like Facebook or Twitter. They describe it as a place. They're stuck like , Oh , I can't escape this site. I'm still using it. You talk to people on TikTok , they're like , Yeah , I'm having a great time. I think this has also been a really great moment for people moving to TikTok specifically. And almost surprisingly to me , they're finding news. They're they're seeing news pop up earlier , which was very much a hallmark of Twitter.

S1: What about the social aspect of TikTok ? Is there any There is.

S2: The comments on TikTok are gold. Obviously , you could tell I used to talk , but the comments really are fantastically entertaining. One of the limitations of it is like if you want to post to TikTok , you've got to make a video of yourself or of something. And that's a really high barrier for people who are like , Oh , I just put two sentences onto Twitter and now you want me to make an entire video with my face in it. And so I feel like the people who post it's going to be a much smaller crowd. It's much more selective , but there is participation in the comments. Now.

S1: Now. Heather , you give a rundown of things people should do if they're thinking of leaving Twitter before they leave Twitter.

S2: You want to save possibly. I think a lot of people would like to save all the tweets they've had over the years. I mean , it's been around a long time. They've had friendships , They've had conversations. And so the first thing you want to do is export a copy of all your information , which is something Twitter offers. You can find it in settings. And then one thing a lot of people like , Oh , I'm just going to delete my Twitter account. You don't actually want to delete your Twitter account because that makes your handle , which is the name you have on Twitter. It's going to make it available for somebody else to grab. And what happens a lot of times is people will grab them and turn them into spam accounts or try and promote like inappropriate sites so you can delete all of your tweets , you can take down your name , but don't give up that account yet just to protect this thing that's already connected to your identity.

S1: Now let's look at specific alternatives for things that Twitter provides. People jump on Twitter when there's breaking news.

S2: It's in the moment. It's right away. It's the first place you'll hear about something. But there's also not a lot of time to ask yourself , is this real or not ? Is this misinformation ? Who is posting this ? Should I click this ? So I really like alternatives that are a little slower , she said , working for the Washington Post. Right. Like a news outlet like we have. And one of the best places to get a lot of different news outlets is something like the built in Apple News apps on iPhones and Google News. They aggregate , but they don't have a lot of user generated content. So you're going to have a lot less misinformation and you can still get things pretty up to date.

S1: But many police and government agencies release emergency notifications on Twitter.

S2: And what that means is that a lot of emergency services are saying , you know what , this is no longer going to be the best place for us to give you updates. Please find us on. And because everybody has a million different emergency organizations , depending on the state and the city , what you want to do first is find your local emergency organizations and see where they say they're posting. They're going to be on Facebook , they're going to be on next door. A lot of the neighborhood apps have posed for them. But my biggest tip is to text your zip code to eight , eight , eight , seven , seven , seven , and that signs you up for one of the biggest alert companies we have called Nixle. And a lot of local agencies use that to give evacuation warnings , severe storm warnings. You want to sign up for all the alerts from your local agencies , and that's going to be the safest way to stay on top of those things.

S1: And that number , once again , is.

S2: It's eight , eight , eight , seven , seven , seven. But you can also go directly to your local emergency and kind of organizations and see what service they use. And they'll give you instructions on how to sign up for alerts. Okay.

S1: Okay.

S3: All right. Another specificity here is one of the things that is really so engaging about.

S1: Twitter is that you can see posts from. Oh.

S3: Oh.

S1: Experts , your favorite actors , celebrities , politicians , all sorts of people. They're all free and they're easily accessible.

S2: I think personally , this is one of the hardest things to replicate. And you're going to see it sort of scattered across different sites. One thing a lot of people who like to share their opinions publicly , they kind of line up with the kinds of people who have newsletters. And so you can sign up for substack or medium newsletters for anybody who has one. We're looking for smart people , entertaining people , experts , pundits , anybody you really want to hear from there on there. You'll also find a lot of kind of bigger name influencers like that on something like Patreon or Coffee , and those are sites where you sort of donate to get access to content from them. And then also , of course , you want to follow them anywhere else they are. Maybe they're active on TikTok , maybe they're active on Facebook. So it's kind of a pain , but you want to track down your favorites. And part of exporting your Twitter account is you get to export a list of everybody you follow and then you can use that to find them later.

S1:

S2: I always forget about YouTube , but it is in fact , it's actually the most popular social media platform with people under 18 , according to Pew. It is huge. You can find them on there. And now YouTube has something called YouTube shorts , which is like its version of TikTok , where you can also see shorter versions of all the people you like to follow instead of the longer videos. Okay.

S1: Okay. So , okay , let's talk about relationships. People have made friends on Twitter. They formed communities. It's become a big part of many people's social lives , actually.

S2: It's not easy to make friends in general. It's not going to be easy to recreate this. One thing you want to do is refine your communities , the places where you're making friends. Reddit is probably the most similar place for like a public place where people are posting under their , you know , their own identities and sharing information with each other. It's been around forever. It has a message board which is called subreddit for nearly any topic that you could possibly be interested in. There are also , I would recommend , if you have made these friends take them with you , get their phone numbers , get their emails , start a group chat. It's the era of the group chat. People are going to be on WhatsApp , they're going to be on Signal , which is a chatting app where things disappear automatically. You can just do iMessage if you're on iPhones. If you have one person on an Android , the bubble is going to be green , but you can work with it. So that's that's one way you want to take these groups of friends with you. And there's also this boom in dating app adjacent products. Where instead of trying to find love or sex , you're actually just looking for friendship. One example is Bumble BFF , which stands for Best Friend Forever. And if you're looking for new friends in the real world , that is something you could try.

S1: You know , even before Elon Musk came along. Twitter was criticized for its trolls and , you know , toxicity.

S2: I don't know what it is. People are announcing weddings and and births of their children on there. They're always congratulating each other on jobs. Well done. They share their life updates. If all you want is is pure positivity , you can definitely find that on LinkedIn. TikTok also has a very positive side , but it's so difficult because you have to train your algorithm to know that , Hey , I only want the cute stuff. I don't want serious news , I don't want arguments , I want puppies , please , and kittens. And so that one's going to take work. But if you do train it , it is just a delightful way to find some positive communities as well.

S3: Now , as.

S1: People go around searching , as you say , for all of these alternative apps , you warn them to protect their privacy and security.

S2: One of the biggest things they're going to say is , hey , if you want to find your friends here , give us access to your your contacts , list your address book on your phone. Do not give them access to your contacts list. They can access all sorts of fields on there. They can see people you haven't talked to in 20 years and you forgot we're in there and they'll start suggesting , say your posts to these people that you perhaps don't have the kind of relationship with. So I recommend trying to find people manually don't give access to the camera or microphone and especially especially not your location unless you have a very good reason to try and lock down all of these settings as you're setting it up. You can also go into your Android or iPhone settings into the privacy section and uncheck them one by one. Do a little audit of all your apps , but be very careful about what you share.

S1: You know , having one site you.

S3: Don't recommend is.

S1: Donald Trump's Twitter alternative Truth social.

S2: It's actually a spam bias. It has been very much overrun with bots and other things like that that are making it difficult to use the app in a way that it was meant to be used. So , you know , there are some like minded people who find each other and talk about current events , but for the most part it's been a little problematic for , you know , hey , buyer vitamins by gold is one of the scams we found. So you would want to be careful if that's where you ended up. Okay.

S1: Okay.

S2: I no longer use it for my best jokes. I am posting stories of colleagues in my own to promote them. I will stick around and tell the bitter end. Or maybe , you know , it'll be fine because I cover it and because I do. I do like mess. It is extremely entertaining , if nothing else. Okay.

S3: Okay. I've been speaking with Washington Post.

S1: Writer Heather Kelly. Heather , thank you for.

S3: All that good advice.

S2: Thank you. This is great.