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Ask HN: Why haven't alternatives to Twitter taken off?

by uger on 3/14/23, 12:47 AM with 13 comments

• by rsynnott on 3/14/23, 4:27 PM

  So I think in a way the premise of the question is a bit weird. The likely outcome is _not_ that 250 million people up sticks and move to Mastodon or nostr or the Facebook Twitter-y thing or the Tumblr activitypub thing or some latter-day Google Buzz or whatever. Like, that _could_ happen, I suppose, but it is not historically how social networks die.

  Take LiveJournal. The 'alternative' to LiveJournal, by and large, was not another LiveJournal; LiveJournal users just shifted their attention to various other _different_ things (Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, maybe Deviantart?) as it died. For those who really wanted another LiveJournal there was DreamWidth and similar (you could see those as a partial analogy to Mastodon for Twitter), but that's not where most people went.

  I'm not sure that the like-for-like replacement thing has _ever_ happened. Maybe Friendster?

• by MilnerRoute on 3/14/23, 1:03 AM

  Last week Meta said they're working on a Twitter clone - and that you'd be able to log into it with your Instagram credentials. Theoretically that still has a chance of "taking off." (Both in terms of attracting a large user base, and then in earning significant advertising revenue.)

  But somewhere in there is an answer to why other alternatives haven't had viral uptake. Basically it's the network effect. If everyone is on your service and there's a ton of cool stuff, then everyone else wants to be on it too. (And "fear of missing out" kicks in.) But it's hard to jumpstart that critical mass.

  Maybe part of that is it's hard to get people excited about Twitter -- since the functionality has been around for over 15 years now. (Mastodon actually had a worse interface, which probably slowed down its adoption.) What I'm wondering is if the Twitter-verse will splinter into little local micro-services. (Imagine a Twitter-like service, just for students at one university, or for one city....)

• by smoldesu on 3/14/23, 12:58 AM

  Probably because everyone's idea of Twitter has been proven wrong. Now that it's been bought and sold, nobody can lie to themselves and say it's a platform embracing free speech or encouraging diverse content. It's an ad pipeline decorated with celebrity content, and now the magic is gone. There are alternative microblogging platforms, but I doubt the masses will find them sexy post-Twitter-acquisition.

• by rektide on 3/14/23, 3:35 AM

  Extremely prissy piece-of-shit useless attitudes from the people who should know better and should be the alpha geeks leading the charge, but instead have piss & spray to spread instead. This world is far more malleable & interested in switching up than anyone rates & the little niceties everyone swears are the death of all alternatives are actually basically irrelevant: the social pressure of the leavers hasn't built up enough, hasn't materialized visibly enough, and worst-most is so very actively undermined by so many doomsaying negativity-bearing anti-trying attitudes, so abundantly on display, that defeatism dominates trying. The should-be, capable, could do folk are actively working against trying, are busy convincing everyone else not to bother even exploring or trying.

  Except not really, or only partially. The network externalities Twitter is possession of, as the sole actually interconnected global platform- where any given post potentially stands a greater than zero chance of showing up for you- is a huge factor that's hard to overcome with competitive compatibility. It's the Apple iMessage of the inteenet, a miserable locked in piece of shit rattrap no one can ever escape from or improve, that the victim users have no choice but to keep using, for the circular logical fact that most other people also haven't left & to try to leave yourself would be akin to voluntary noospheric exile.

  The actual costs aren't really so awful, if the geeks lead the way & actually work to subvert the rat trap behaviors. But there's just vast negativity. People fucking love pissing on good tech & good alternatives & prognosticating from the chair why it won't work, why it's wrong, why it will never work. But it's actually quite easy, works fine, it's just conservative prissy attitude & lack of try, the social fact that these doomsayer voices predestine us to disbelieve, to not try.

  Thankfully I just see a ton of hope on the horizon. Intranet walled garden winter won't be forever. Whether it's ActivityPub (semi complex), Noste (dead fucking simple), ssb/handshake, or just email+++ (deltachat) or xmpp or matrix doesn't really matter, and if any starts winning for real it will likely syndicate elsewhere, and POSSE will happen.

• by joezydeco on 3/14/23, 12:48 AM

  What's your definition of "taken off"?

• by Nextgrid on 3/14/23, 1:06 AM

  All the "alternatives" focus on decentralization or some other technobabble and address zero of the concerns that non-tech people have with mainstream social networks.

• by orionblastar on 3/14/23, 1:30 AM

  People want a Twitter alternative that is easy to use and configure. Mastodon is too complex to configure and no verification system or blue dot to tell the real deals from the fakes.

  Remember that Trump built a Twitter alternative that didn't take off either.

  It is like comparing macOS to Linux.

• by Sunspark on 3/14/23, 1:03 AM

  My opinion, what's the return on joining yet another social media network so you can receive ads and see messages from bots screaming about mRNA vaccines and Hunter Biden's laptop? That's one extreme. The other is highly controlled content from dictators-for-life (e.g. unelected moderators or technology company employees) who will ban/shut you down for expressing an opinion that doesn't fit their narrative. It's fine until it's you they decide to cancel. The only way to avoid that is be an invisible lurker.. but then, why not read a newspaper or a dedicated topic website instead? At least everyone writing in a newspaper isn't intellectually challenged or a bot.

  Using your real name isn't enjoyable anymore because people look for things to use against you. Did you say or do something 25 years ago that today people will penalize you for? They'll search for it. So, using a handle.. ok, see the first paragraph above.

  What does one get out of joining new social media? You can be amazingly creative or eloquent. Nobody is going to care and whatever it was, it is forgotten the next day. Create or dialogue for your own entertainment, at the end of the day, it's completely unproductive. No one will remember your contribution, no one will even remember you existed the next day.

  I think we've all seen enough photos of people's dinners or pets.

  So what is left?

  I think one problem is audience reach. It's all-or-nothing. Do you really always want to broadcast to the world? (Twitter) or do you always want to broadcast only to your "friends" (Facebook) or do you want to collect names but never speak out of fear of workplace politics (LinkedIn).

  One social media network I thought was interesting, but is dead now due to mismanagement (as usual) was Google+. It had the concept of circles. It was more work absolutely, but you could tag people with being a family member, or a highschool friend or a circle of people who climbed Mt. Everest with you. The advantage of this would be you could write about how great this nylon rope is, and not have it go to your family or work colleagues in the non-rope industry, or whatever.

  It took years, but Google+ was STARTING to grow, then Google as usual decided to kill it off, along with Hangouts which was their iMessage competitor (included SMS at one point).