Twitter alternatives

Amid the chaos of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, lesser-known sites such as Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new or renewed alternatives.

German non-profit Mastodon has quickly become a frontrunner among those curious about life beyond the blue bird. It shares some similarities with Twitter, but there are some big differences — and not just that its version of tweets are officially called “toots.”

Mastodon is a decentralized social network. That means it’s not owned by a single company or billionaire. Rather, it’s made up of a network of servers, each run independently but able to connect so people on different servers can communicate.

Once left for dead, Tumblr also appears to be enjoying somewhat of a resurgence. Onboarding is simple, and for those who miss the early years of social media, there’s a decidedly retro, comforting feel to the site.

For longer reads, newsletters, and general information absorption, sites such as Substack and Medium are perhaps closest to the blog era of the early 2000s. You can read both without signing up or paying, but some writers, creators and podcasters create premium content for paying subscribers.