Liberals struggle to find viable Twitter alternative after Musk takeover.
Some of Twitter’s disaffected have closed their accounts. Many more have kept their Twitter handles while adopting new ones on other sites, thronging the virtual gates of previously unheralded platforms Mastodon, Hive and Post.
Now, social media colonists are laboring to rebuild their networks on new sites while keeping an eye on the old one, to see how the Twitter wars play out.
“I think Twitter is falling apart,” said David Karpf, a political scientist at the George Washington University. “I’m also going to be one of the last people to leave Twitter.”Karpf joined Twitter in 2008. He amassed a following one tweet at a time until 2019, when he penned a post that likened conservative columnist Bret Stephens to a bedbug. Stephens complained. The exchange went viral. Karpf’s following exploded.
After Musk swept in, Karpf followed the lead of many in academia. He opened an account on Mastodon, a decentralized social network launched in 2016. All but unknown last spring, Mastodon now claims more than 2 million users, a milestone announced, ironically, on Twitter.
LOVING THE NEW TWITTER!!! pic.twitter.com/QN1L1U4Gyo
— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) December 14, 2022
h/t SG